Nice! It throws an error that it cannot find the notes folder though.
Where is it located usually? Or what's the file name?
Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON
81–90 of 107 posts
Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
For what it's worth, I am working on a tool that syncs files from a ReMarkable drawing tablet to Obsidian. I was planning on looking into support Samsung notes and Apple notes next. An open-source project like in the OP will help a lot here! You can subscribe to a newsletter here if you're interested (in the top right of the page) https://streamsoft.gumroad.com/l/remarkable-to-obsidian?layo...
Is this an alternative to needing Remarkable’s Connect service subscription?… Because needing Connect to sync notes off my tablet pretty much killed any desire to buy a remarkable 2 … and I voted with my wallet on it too… I bought a PineNote eink tablet instead (I hope this will eventually be a useful tablet… but I’m not holding much hope given my experience with various Linux distros on the first generation PineTab……
I think this is a fair perspective on the one hand - on the other hand, as a rm2 owner i appreciate that the software keeps getting significant updates, and i think a subscription model makes a lot of sense.
I do whish the standard software made more concessions to third party software - ssh access is great, but running any kind of gui app feels hacky.
Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're moving the goalposts. Your first comment: > and does not have builtin functionality to export notes (e.g. a menu option to do so) That's incorrect: you can export to PDF. Certainly not as handy as Markdown, but it's there. Additionally, Apple offers AppleScript as a way to do even more. No, this isn't an open source piece of software. If that's your sole criteria for "good" then you're right, it's bad.
No goal posts move when the original issue is not resolved with the proposed solution Like, without any menu you can export your notes to a screenshot, but you wouldn't accept it as an export option, would you? Similarly, PDF is an awful format for notes, so the fact that it exists doesn't solve the issue that you can't export your notes (which at a minimum you need to be able to do in batches, not individual notes)
Most users interpret "Export" as an operation that lossily finalizes a project from its native representation to a common third-party format. "Export" is one-way, "Save As" is bidirectional.
- Audacity "Saves" audio projects to its native .aup, but can "Export" them to .mp3 or .wav
- Photoshop "Saves" .psd files, but "Exports" them to .jpeg
- Gimp "Saves" an .xcf, but "Exports" to .png
- Apple Notes "Saves" notes to its own sqlite database, but "Exports" to txt or pdf via a menu item
This technically satisfies your comment above, which is why we speak of moved goalposts.
It would be great if apple notes could convert your note library to ENEX or a .zip file of HTML items.
Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON
#84Super interesting, particularly the link through to the blog with all the research into how Notes works. A particularly interesting thing that I don't see mentioned anywhere is that Apple Notes uses CRDTs (conflict free replicated data types) to enable both shared notes and multiple concurrent edits. With the CRDTs resolving the conflicts. It looks like the info on the page may be a good place to start looking to how…
Thank you for posting about CRDTs! I remembered Apple Notes used some type of versioning that was good and I’d wanted to use in my own app design but I had forgotten the name.
Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON
#85I wrote a similar tool in Python a few weeks ago, which uses AppleScript to liberate the data and saves it to a SQLite database: https://datasette.io/tools/apple-notes-to-sqlite I didn't actually know AppleScript before writing this tool... but it turned out ChatGPT knew it well enough to unblock me and provide me with exactly the code I needed to build the rest of the project! https://til.simonwillison.net/gpt3/chat…
Nice tool! Just tried it, works great.
Interesting that Applescript exports the images as Base64, or does Apple notes store them like that as well? Maybe converting them to binary when exporting would save some space.
Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON
#86Love this. I am an Apple Notes absolutist (see: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FY1rZvNWIAAIRzs.jpg). I have tried Evernote, Workflowy, Dynalist, Notion over the years for marrying personal / professional worlds but always (always!!) come back to Notes.
I have dreamed of the ability to have a Notes web app with custom CSS for years and a few other features.
Good luck with this project I'll be watching closely
Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON
#87Love this. I am an Apple Notes absolutist (see: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FY1rZvNWIAAIRzs.jpg ). I have tried Evernote, Workflowy, Dynalist, Notion over the years for marrying personal / professional worlds but always (always!!) come back to Notes. I have dreamed of the ability to have a Notes web app with custom CSS for years and a few other features. Good luck with this project I'll be watching closely
I've run through a similar thing in the image shown. As someone who recently picked up an MBP I've been loving Apple Notes.
Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON
#88Love this. I am an Apple Notes absolutist (see: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FY1rZvNWIAAIRzs.jpg ). I have tried Evernote, Workflowy, Dynalist, Notion over the years for marrying personal / professional worlds but always (always!!) come back to Notes. I have dreamed of the ability to have a Notes web app with custom CSS for years and a few other features. Good luck with this project I'll be watching closely
Anki doesn't belong there though.
Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON
#89I am excited to see more solutions that work with Apple Notes database directly. This is my go-to application to capture unstructured memos while researching various topics. Last year I got carried away and built a simple site generator for Notes [0]. As a fun exercise I implemented ORM models to query Sqlite database in Ruby: User::Account.server(database: "tmp/test.sqlite").first. folders_dataset.offset(1).first no…
Hey! I remember reading your blog post a few months ago, and it inspired me to try to create a CMS using Apple Notes + the IMAP syncing features[0]. But everything felt like a hack all the time. Many features are not supported when syncing over IMAP. I wanted to have access to the SQLite database, so I can't have a non-macOS VM syncing and processing notes continuously (or at least I couldn't find a tool that can do…
I second your sentiment that it is a hack, and here be dragons. At the same time, I had an honest conversation with myself about the dilemma, and whether I am worried about changes to the database or not. I ended up answering that it is a low-risk factor especially for the project of that kind.
I am sure that Apple won’t be making any substation breaking changes to a database structure unless they have to, there is a price to pay. Such changes will always be tied to a major macOS/iPhone release, and it doesn't happen very often.
That said, I had to put this project on the back burner, it was not immediately clear what is the ROI especially considering there is a long tail of databases to parse. It starts with Mountain Lion and then adds up quickly.
I need to release my source code to Github--ORM approach was worth exploring, it is a concise declaration that is relatively easy to update and manage.
Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON
#90Love this. I am an Apple Notes absolutist (see: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FY1rZvNWIAAIRzs.jpg ). I have tried Evernote, Workflowy, Dynalist, Notion over the years for marrying personal / professional worlds but always (always!!) come back to Notes. I have dreamed of the ability to have a Notes web app with custom CSS for years and a few other features. Good luck with this project I'll be watching closely
I'm curious — as someone who's had a hard time with Notes' maybe... lack of features and less-than-friendly formatting IMHO (no Markdown, unconventional keyboard shortcuts, layout formatting quirks...) — what about Apple Notes appeals to you more than other popular tools? I feel I may be missing something :)