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Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON

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Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON

#31

Post by Kerrick »

howinteresting wrote: post #30
eddyg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CRDTs are definitely an “unsung hero” of Apple Notes… and a big reason why it is one Apple’s best “built-in” apps as of late.

A notes app that only works with one 2-trillion-dollar company's hardware and does not have builtin functionality to export notes (e.g. a menu option to do so) cannot reasonably be described as good. One's expectations have to be through the floor for that to be an honest appraisal. Compare it to Obsidian, which just stores data in a bunch of markdown files on disk.

I can export to Text and/or PDF on my iPhone from the Notes app.

Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON

#32

Post by whatch »

simonw wrote: post #15

I 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…

"Unblock" is the perfect term for the effect of all these GPT things on me. Thank you for coining that!

Recently I wanted to have something like that but for Safari Reading list. The main difference is I tried to find a solution not for one time liberation, but for continuous 2-way exchange with some web service. It appears you HAVE to run everything locally for that. I like "privacy", but I like having options even more.

By the way it was ChatGPT that helped me to remove this several month old item from my TODO list.

Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON

#33

Post by howinteresting »

Kerrick wrote: post #31
howinteresting wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A notes app that only works with one 2-trillion-dollar company's hardware and does not have builtin functionality to export notes (e.g. a menu option to do so) cannot reasonably be described as good. One's expectations have to be through the floor for that to be an honest appraisal. Compare it to Obsidian, which just stores data in a bunch of markdown files on disk.

I can export to Text and/or PDF on my iPhone from the Notes app.

We're commenting on the website for a project called "Apple Notes Liberator". Obsidian does not need a "liberator".

Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON

#34

Post by macintux »

howinteresting wrote: post #33
Kerrick wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can export to Text and/or PDF on my iPhone from the Notes app.

We're commenting on the website for a project called "Apple Notes Liberator". Obsidian does not need a "liberator".

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.

Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON

#35

Post by Gigachad »

howinteresting wrote: post #30
eddyg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CRDTs are definitely an “unsung hero” of Apple Notes… and a big reason why it is one Apple’s best “built-in” apps as of late.

A notes app that only works with one 2-trillion-dollar company's hardware and does not have builtin functionality to export notes (e.g. a menu option to do so) cannot reasonably be described as good. One's expectations have to be through the floor for that to be an honest appraisal. Compare it to Obsidian, which just stores data in a bunch of markdown files on disk.

I don't actually care about getting some data dump out of Notes. I use it as a way to quickly store temporary information. Any note older than a month is most likely useless. The most important feature is that it effortlessly syncs between my phone, work laptop, and home laptop. And that it does. Unlike a bunch of markdown files on disk where you have to create some janky syncing setup yourself which has no conflict resolution system.

Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON

#36

Post by aidos »

tzs wrote: post #26
simonw wrote: post #15

I 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…

From your article on how you wrote that: > I've been stubbornly refusing to learn AppleScript for nearly twenty years at this point. Thanks to ChatGPT I can continue not to learn it, but I can now use it to solve problems The Apple scripting stuff can also use JavaScript. It might be better to continue not to learn in JavaScript instead of AppleScript, if ChatGPT is as adept at Apple scripting in JavaScript as it see…

I did a bit of AppleScript recently (scripted changing between draw and erase in zoom annotations from the buttons on my tablet pen). In my reading I got the impression that not everything is implemented in js so you might get stuck.

Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON

#37

Post by wslh »

oneearedrabbit wrote: post #11

I 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…

I would love to have a tool to retrieve the hyperlink of the current note so you can organize the information as a wiki. I know it uses URIs.

Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON

#38

Post by dunham »

oneearedrabbit wrote: post #11

I 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…

Yeah, I'd like to know the story behind it. topotext is weird and unlike anything I've found in the literature. It is kind of like RGA, but with more links. And I haven't seen anyone else layer attributes on top of text.

It looked like the other stuff came later and was somewhat orthogonal. (Although their ordered set construct was abusing topotext to represent ordered lists of ids.)

I don't know how much has changed since 2018. I think my table decoding may be broken now.

Re: Show HN: Apple Notes Liberator – Extract Notes.app Data and Save It as JSON

#39

Post by ChintanGhate »

daydream wrote: post #23
ChintanGhate wrote: post #20

I have published an app [Exporter]( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/exporter/id1099120373?mt=12 ) that does something similar - exports Apple Notes to HTML and markdown with the attachments. Give it a try, let me know if it solves your issue. Also, why did you select JSON as the output format?

Thanks for making your app. I’ve used it more than once and it works well. Many export solutions don’t handle attachments but yours does. So kudos for that. A few years ago I tried to write my own exporter using AppleScript but got stuck by a showstopping bug in Notes AppleScript implementation. Or so it seemed. I hope that bug is fixed now. I just moved on to use your app instead.

I am glad it's being useful. :)

I used AppleScript for the first two years of this app as well (Can't believe it's been 7 years since I started it). But it's hard to handle complex programs, and handing off data to Swift or Objective-C from AppleScript. So I switched to [ScriptingBridge](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/scriptingbridge). It provides better Objective-C APIs to handle Apple Events.

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