# Orgzly Revived, a community continuation of the Android Org Mode outliner > Orgzly Revived is a fork of the Orgzly Android app, taken over by the community after the original development halted and its author disappeared. It keeps the original promise, notebooks stored as plain-text Org files synchronised with a local directory, an SD card, WebDAV or Dropbox, and adds the parts a maintained app has to keep up: current Android versions, translation infrastructure and a signed build you can verify. **orgzly-revived/orgzly-android-revived** — Outliner for taking notes and managing to-do lists - Repository: https://github.com/orgzly-revived/orgzly-android-revived - Website: https://www.orgzlyrevived.com - Stars: 1,147 · Forks: 109 - Language: Kotlin - License: GPL-3.0 - Published: 2026-10-19 · Updated: 2026-10-19 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/orgzly-revived-orgzly-android-revived ## Why a fork exists at all The reason for this project is stated in the documentation and it is not a licensing story. Orgzly is an outliner for taking notes and managing to-do lists, and Orgzly Revived is a community-maintained version of it, because the development of the original app has been halted. The rebranding is due to the disappearance of the Orgzly author, so the community had to come up with a new solution, and the original source code is still available in its own repository. The project plan is to continue development of the application: adding useful features, fixing bugs, keeping up to date with technological evolution, and generally maintaining the Org Mode outreach and its support on Android. There is also an explicit continuity policy for issues, where the community generally plans to leave existing open issues in the original repository and reference them there as they are addressed, which is a courteous way of keeping one tracker from fragmenting. The result is a fork with a new package identity and a new distribution channel, but the same file format and the same user-facing idea. ## Plain text files, and where they live The core design is that your notes are not in a database. With Orgzly, you can keep notebooks stored in plain-text and have them synchronized with a directory on your mobile device or an SD card, a WebDAV server, or Dropbox. The file format is Org mode's, and the documentation quotes the description of that format directly: Org mode is for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, planning projects, and authoring documents with a fast and effective plain-text system. That combination is the reason people stay with this kind of app for decades. The file survives the app, so a note written in 2026 is readable in 2046 with any text editor, and a note written elsewhere can be dropped into the directory. The synchronisation targets cover the three sensible cases, a plain local directory for people who sync with a desktop, a WebDAV server for people with their own server, and Dropbox for the rest. The trade-off is the one that comes with the format: Org mode is a markup, and the outliner assumes you are comfortable with its conventions. ## Four distribution channels, and the package identity The app is available through the usual Android channels plus one that reflects the project's circumstances. There is an F-Droid listing, a Google Play entry, and an IzzyOnDroid repository, and the badges in the project documentation link to each of them in that order. The package identifier has been changed as part of the rebranding, and the readme's APK verification section names the identifier com.orgzlyrevived, so the revived build is a distinct app on your device rather than an upgrade of the original. That matters in practice, because Android will not treat the two as the same application, so the original Orgzly and Orgzly Revived can sit side by side and you can migrate by copying the notebook directory. The repository also carries a crowdin.yml file, and the translation status badge points at Toolate, where translations can be contributed, so localisation is handled by a service rather than by hand-edited string resources. ## Verifying the APK, and why the fingerprint matters The project publishes the SHA-256 checksum of its APK signing certificate, and this is a section more community projects skip. The documentation explains the purpose directly: this is so that you can verify your downloaded APK using tools such as AppVerifier or apksigner, and you should also check that the checksum matches the one published on the project site. The value of the fingerprint is the last paragraph of that section. Once you have installed the APK, Android should refuse to update the app to any new version which was not signed by the same private key. So the fingerprint is not only a way to check that a download is intact, it is the mechanism that lets you detect a substituted build before you install it. Publishing the certificate digest, and pointing at a second copy of it on the project's own site, means a compromise of the repository alone is not enough to fool an installer who checks. ## Building and testing from the command line The build is a standard Gradle Android project, and the documentation covers the command line path for people who do not use Android Studio. The standard set of Gradle tasks is available, and two are named: the build task builds the project and generates the APK files, and the connectedAndroidTest task runs the instrumented unit tests. One practical warning is attached to testing: make sure you turn off animations for the device you are testing on, which is the usual requirement for Espresso based instrumented tests since animations interfere with the timing assumptions the framework makes. The repository also contains a shared-test/ directory and a sample.app.properties file, which together suggest the tests are parameterised against a sample configuration so the same suite can be pointed at different build variants. The build is driven by build.gradle, settings.gradle and gradle.properties, with a gradlew wrapper committed for both Unix and Windows. ## Nix support, and a bug that shapes the command There is Nix support in the repository, with a flake.nix and a flake.lock, and a devShell that can be used via direnv, which means entering the checkout gives you the toolchain automatically. The documentation is unusually candid about a snag. Due to a linked nixpkgs issue, you must run gradle in a specific way, and the workaround is a single shell invocation that passes the gradle options through the environment. The comment in the source says to remove it when the issue is fixed and the flake is bumped past the fix, which is the sign of a temporary measure that is documented rather than hidden. A .envrc file sits at the root for direnv. This is the shape a Nix flake in an Android project usually takes, since the Android SDK and the JDK are the parts that need pinning, and the resulting shell gives you a reproducible toolchain without a container. ## Releases, and what the three tag styles mean The release history shows three different kinds of tag, and reading them tells you how the project ships. There is a weekly unstable build, weekly-unstable-26.10.13 dated 2026-10-13, which is a rolling channel for people who want the newest changes. There is a beta, v1.24.0-beta.1 from 2026-10-11, which is the next stable line under development. And there is a stable, v1.23.1 from 2026-10-04, which is what most people should install. The numbers run in parallel with the weekly channel, which is a bit unusual but makes sense for a project that wants a stable release every few weeks and a continuous build for the people who test. The repository is not archived, the last push was on 2026-10-18, and the licence is the GNU General Public License version 3 or newer, with the file at the root. ## Where it fits, and what to check first This app is for a specific person and it is worth being honest about who. Someone who already keeps notes in Org mode, or who wants to, and who wants them as plain files on a phone that syncs to a directory, a WebDAV server or Dropbox, without handing their notes to a proprietary sync service. For that person it is a good fit, because the fork keeps the format stable and the community keeps the build current. For someone who wants a fast text editor with a folder of notes, the outliner model is a learning cost. The limits are structural rather than bugs. Org mode is a markup with conventions, and an app that assumes them will feel awkward to anyone who does not want them. The synchronisation model is file-based, so it assumes a device and a storage location you control, and it is not a shared editing environment. The two practical checks before you commit are the certificate fingerprint and the storage target, and after that the format is the thing to get used to. The project keeps its documentation in a separate repository and asks questions in the discussions, with a Matrix room at #orgzly:matrix.org open to anyone. ## Conclusion Adopt Orgzly Revived if you want your notes as plain-text Org files on Android and the original project is dormant, and skip it if you need a rich text editor or collaborative editing, because Org mode is a markup format with a specific workflow rather than a general purpose notes app. Verify three things before you install an APK from outside the store: that the signing certificate SHA-256 matches the one published on the project site, since the repository publishes the fingerprint for exactly this reason; that your existing notebooks are in Org mode format, because the app stores notebooks in that format and importing a different structure is a manual job; and which build channel you take, since the stable tags, the beta line and the weekly unstable builds are published side by side. ## FAQ ### What is Orgzly Revived? It is a community-maintained version of the Orgzly Android app, an outliner for taking notes and managing to-do lists. It exists because the development of the original app has been halted, and the rebranding is due to the disappearance of the Orgzly author. ### Where does Orgzly Revived store my notebooks? Notebooks are kept in plain-text files in Org mode format and synchronised with a directory on your mobile device or an SD card, a WebDAV server, or Dropbox. ### How do I verify that an Orgzly Revived APK is genuine? The project publishes the SHA-256 checksum of its APK signing certificate so you can verify the download with tools such as AppVerifier or apksigner, and you should check that it matches the one published on orgzlyrevived.com. Android then refuses to update the app to any version not signed by the same private key. ### How do I build and test Orgzly Revived from the command line? The standard Gradle tasks are available: `./gradlew build` builds the project and generates the APK files, and `./gradlew connectedAndroidTest` runs the instrumented unit tests. You should turn off animations on the device you are testing on. ## Sources - [License: GPL-3.0](https://github.com/orgzly-revived/orgzly-android-revived/blob/master/LICENSE) - [orgzly-revived/orgzly-android-revived on GitHub](https://github.com/orgzly-revived/orgzly-android-revived) - [Project website](https://www.orgzlyrevived.com) - [README](https://github.com/orgzly-revived/orgzly-android-revived/blob/master/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/orgzly-revived/orgzly-android-revived/releases) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/orgzly-revived-orgzly-android-revived