Cherrytree is an open source lightweight, fast, hierarchical note taking application available in Linux. There are very few note taking application present that represents your notes in a tree structure. It is such a versatile and powerful tool that offers wide range of features such as rich text, syntax highlighting, images handling, hyperlinks, import/export with support for multiple formats, support for multiple languages etc.
Table of Contents
Cherrytree Feature Summary
- Rich text (foreground color, background color, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, small, h1, h2, h3, subscript, superscript, monospace)
- Syntax highlighting supporting several programming languages
- Images handling: insertion in the text, edit (resize/rotate), save as png file
- Embedded files handling: insertion in the text, save to disk
- Lists handling (bulleted, numbered, to-do and switch between them, multiline with shift+enter)
- Simple tables handling (cells with plain text), cut/copy/paste row, import/export as csv file
- Codeboxes handling: boxes of plain text (optionally with syntax highlighting) into rich text, import/export as text file
- Alignment of text, images, tables and codeboxes (left/center/right)
- Hyperlinks associated to text and images (links to webpages, links to nodes/nodes + anchors, links to files, links to folders)
- Spell check (using pygtkspellcheck and pyenchant)
- Intra application copy/paste: supported single images, single codeboxes, single tables and a compound selection of rich text, images, codeboxes and tables
- Cross application copy/paste (tested with libreoffice and gmail): supported single images, single codeboxes, single tables and a compound selection of rich text, images, codeboxes and tables
- Copying a list of files from the file manager and pasting in cherrytree will create a list of links to files, images are recognized and inserted in the text
- Print & save as pdf file of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
- Export to html of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
- Export to plain text of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
- Toc generation for a node / node and subnodes / the whole tree, based on headers h1, h2 and h3
- Find a node, find in selected node, find in selected node and subnodes, find in all nodes
- Replace in nodes names, replace in selected node, replace in selected node and subnodes, replace in all nodes
- Iteration of the latest find, iteration of the latest replace, iteration of the latest applied text formatting
- Import from html file, import from folder of html files
- Import from plain text file, import from folder of plain text files
- import from basket, cherrytree, epim html, gnote, keepnote, keynote, knowit, mempad, notecase, tomboy, treepad lite, tuxcards, zim
- Export to cherrytree file of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
- Password protection (using http://www.7-zip.org/) – NOTE: while a cherrytree password protected document is opened, an unprotected copy is extracted to a temporary folder of the filesystem; this copy is removed when you close cherrytree
- Tree nodes drag and drop
How to Install Cherrytree
Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, elementary
Installation via Terminal
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vincent-c/cherrytree
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install cherrytree
Fedora, CentOS
Installation via Terminal
yum install cherrytree
Run
- In Ubuntu and other debian based distributions, type Cherrytree in dash. Click the launcher icon.
- For Gnome, go to Applications -> Accessories -> Cherrytree

Links
- Website: Cherrytree
- Download for other Linux distributions: Download Page
- Source: Google Code
Troubleshooting and Support
If you face any issues while installing or using Cherrytree, you may drop a note using comment section at the end of this article, Or you can post your query in any of the support channels mentioned below.
- Online Forum: Cherrytree Forum
- Generic Ubuntu Forum: Ask Ubuntu
How to Uninstall/Remove Cherrytree
Via Terminal in Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, elementary
sudo apt-get remove cherrytree
Please share your experience with this guide in the comments.
Image Credits
Cherrytree