This tool facilitates the export of Apple Notes into various formats including HTML (.html) attachment-embedded, Plain Text, Markdown, PDF, and Word (DOCX) with images / attachments and most formatting left intact.
You can use it either as a basic backup, or as a conversion tool - e.g. the Markdown format could be used in a note-taking tool like Obsidian which uses Markdown as standard.
This tool works on a Mac (OSX) not on a Windows or Linux machine because it uses AppleScript to extract the data from notes. You need to have the Notes app installed.
This allows for you to keep a local copy of your apple notes in case of failure, and also to use them in other markdown note-taking apps such as Obsidian, and quickly grab copies if you wish to send PDF versions to anyone, or work on a copy of the document from a Word document with all the images intact and inline in the right place.
It also extracts images from the notes, so they can also be referenced from local HTML (.htm) documents, Markdown, PDF, or Word (DOCX) documents.
If Homebrew is not installed, open the Terminal and run this command:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
If Git is not already installed on your Mac, you can install it using Homebrew (or get a more up-to-date version!)
brew install git
Change directory in terminal to wherever you want the scripts to be downloaded to - e.g.
cd $HOME/Downloads
Clone the notes-exporter
repository from GitHub:
mkdir -p ~/bin/notes-exporter
cd ~/bin/notes-exporter
git clone https://github.com/storizzi/notes-exporter.git .
cd notes-exporter
Ensure Python 3 is installed on your Mac. Python 3 can be installed via Homebrew:
brew install python
or alternatively if you want to use conda to install python environments you can use:
brew install --cask miniconda
If you are using conda, then you can get the script to do the next bit for you (see later) in which case you can skip the 'pip install' here - this is only recommended if you are installing python libraries globally.
After installing Python, install the required Python libraries using pip (markdownify is not required if you do not wish to generate markdown files and pypandoc is not required if you do not wish to generate docx / word files):
pip install beautifulsoup4 # For parsing HTML files.
pip install markdownify # For converting HTML to Markdown.
pip install pypandoc # For converting HTML to DOCX. Requires Pandoc.
or alternatively pip install -r ./requirements.txt
Note: pypandoc
requires Pandoc for generating docx (word documents). If you need this functionality, install it using Homebrew if not already installed:
brew install pandoc
Note: To convert to PDF, Google Chrome needs to be installed
The exportnotes.zsh
script is used to export Apple Notes. It accepts various command-line parameters to customize the export process.
By default, the script will:
~/Downloads/AppleNotesExport
directory as text in the text
folder and as html files in the html
folder - i.e. the AppleNotesExport folder inside the current user's Downloads folder, then the text / html folders underneath this, then a folder of the format <account>-<folder/notebook>
Ensure the script has execution permissions:
cd ~/bin/notes-exporter
chmod +x exportnotes.zsh
Run the script from the directory where it is located or add the script's directory to your PATH
in your .zshrc
or .bashrc
file for easy access. For example, if you place the scripts in $HOME/bin/notes-exporter
:
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/bin/notes-exporter:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc
Then, you can run the script from anywhere by just typing exportnotes.zsh
.
Export notes with default settings (backup to user's Documents/NotesExport directory):
exportnotes.zsh
Export notes with default settings in a python conda environment called notesexport
auto-creating and activating the environment if it doesn't exist, and auto-installing the required pip dependencies - or just activating that environment if it already exists:
exportnotes.zsh --conda-env notesexport
Export notes to a specific directory and convert them to Markdown:
mkdir $HOME/Documents/NotesExport
exportnotes.zsh --root-dir $HOME/Documents/NotesExport --convert-markdown true
Use existing imported files from a specific directory and convert to PDF
mkdir $HOME/Documents/NotesExport
exportnotes.zsh --root-dir $HOME/Documents/NotesExport --extract-data false --convert-pdf true
Suppress headers and footers in PDF and also convert to Word:
exportnotes.zsh -s true -w true
Convert notes in a specific directory to Markdown without getting any apple notes, creating a conda environment at the start, and cleaning up that environment afterwards
exportnotes.zsh --root-dir $HOME/AppleNotesExport --conda-env exportnotes --extract-data false --convert-markdown true --remove-conda-env true
Import notes using filenames starting Note- then with the title, then another - and the internal ID of the note at the end
exportnotes.zsh --filename-format "Note-&title-&id"
Import notes using filenames using the account name and the internal apple note ID and the folder ID without having subdirectories for the folder name
exportnotes.zsh --filename-format "&account-&folder-&id" --use-subdirs false
--root-dir
or -r
: Set the root directory for exports. Defaults to $HOME/Downloads/AppleNotesExport
.--suppress-header-pdf
or -s
: Suppress headers and footers in PDF exports. Set to true
or false
. Defaults to false--extract-data
or -d
: Extract data from Apple Notes and store as raw html and text files. Set to true
or false
. Defaults to true--convert-word
or -w
: Convert notes to Word (DOCX). Set to true
or false
. Defaults to false--convert-pdf
or -p
: Convert notes to PDF. Set to true
or false
. Defaults to false--filename-format
or -t
: Format of main part of filename before the filetype for word/pdf/html. Default is &title
but can contain &title
for a sanitized version of the title (note this can change), &id
for the internal id Apple uses for the note, &account
for the account name, &folder
for the folder name, &accountid
for the internal account id, and &shortaccountid
for the short account id. You can include other characters, e.g. Note-&title-&id
to make each note prefixed with Note-
followed by the sanitized title, followed by a dash, followed by the note ID (just in case of duplicated titles).--extract-images
or -i
: Extract images from notes. Set to true
or false
. Ignored if extracting to Markdown, PDF or Word as this is required. Defaults to true--note-limit
or -l
: Set a limit on the number of notes to export. Defaults to no limit--note-limit-per-folder
or -f
: Set a limit on the number of notes to export per folder. Defaults to no limit--note-pick-probability
or -b
: Set the probability (percentage) of picking a note for export for 0-100 - default is 100 - if you want a random selection of notes. Defaults to 100 (all notes - 100% probability)--subdir-format
or -u
: Format of subdirectory for each account and folder combination. Default is &account-&folder
but can contain &account
for the account name, &folder
for the folder name, &accountid
for the internal account id, and &shortaccountid
for the short account id.--use-subdirs
or -x
: Set to false
to keep all files in a single directory (flattened). Default is true
.--conda-env
or -c
: Specify the Conda environment to use. If the environment does not exist, it will be created and the required dependencies installed. No conda environment installed by default.--remove-conda-env
or -e
: Remove the specified Conda environment after the script runs. Set to true
or false
. Defaults to falseInstead of using command line parameters, you can set up environment variables which will be used by default (and which can be overridden by command line parameters) if for example you want to set up a standard way of working when running the script but sometimes override the behavior.
The available environment variables are:
NOTES_EXPORT_ROOT_DIR
: Specifies the root directory where the exported notes will be stored. Default is $HOME/Downloads/AppleNotesExport
.NOTES_EXPORT_SUPPRESS_CHROME_HEADER_PDF
: Controls whether headers and footers are suppressed in PDF exports. Set to true
to suppress, false
otherwise.NOTES_EXPORT_CONVERT_TO_MARKDOWN
: Enables the conversion of notes to Markdown format. Set to true
to enable conversion, false
otherwise.NOTES_EXPORT_CONVERT_TO_PDF
: Enables the conversion of notes to PDF format. Set to true
to enable conversion, false
otherwise.NOTES_EXPORT_CONVERT_TO_WORD
: Enables the conversion of notes to Word (DOCX) format. Set to true
to enable conversion, false
otherwise.NOTES_EXPORT_EXTRACT_IMAGES
: Controls the extraction of images from notes. Set to true
to extract images, false
otherwise.NOTES_EXPORT_EXTRACT_DATA
: Determines whether to extract data from Apple Notes using the AppleScript to text and raw html files. Set to true
to extract, false
otherwise.NOTES_EXPORT_NOTE_LIMIT
: Sets a limit on the total number of notes to export. Default is no limit.NOTES_EXPORT_NOTE_LIMIT_PER_FOLDER
: Sets a limit on the number of notes to export per folder. Default is no limit.NOTES_EXPORT_NOTE_PICK_PROBABILITY
: Sets the probability (as a percentage) of picking a note for export. Default is 100%.NOTES_EXPORT_FILENAME_FORMAT
: Format of main part of filename before the filetype for word/pdf/html. Default is &title
but can contain &title
for a sanitized version of the title (note this can change), &id
for the internal id Apple uses for the note, &account
for the account name, &folder
for the folder name, &accountid
for the internal account id, and &shortaccountid
for the short account id. You can include other characters, e.g. Note-&title-&id
to make each note prefixed with Note-
followed by the sanitized title, followed by a dash, followed by the note ID (just in case of duplicated titles).NOTES_EXPORT_SUBDIR_FORMAT
: Format of subdirectory for each account and folder combination. Default is &account-&folder
but can contain &account
for the account name, &folder
for the folder name, &accountid
for the internal account id, and &shortaccountid
for the short account id.NOTES_EXPORT_USE_SUBDIRS
: Set to false
to keep all files in a single directory (flattened). Default is true
.NOTES_EXPORT_CONDA_ENV
: Specifies the Conda environment to use. If the environment does not exist, it will be created and the required dependencies installed. Defaults to nothing being created.NOTES_EXPORT_REMOVE_CONDA_ENV
: Remove the specified Conda environment after the script runs. Set to true
to remove, false
otherwise. Default is false
.You could add these to your .zshrc
file for example to set up defaults so you don't have to use command-line parameters if you want to set up a specific location to export to, for example - e.g.
export NOTES_EXPORT_ROOT_DIR=$HOME/Documents/NotesExport
To make the scripts easily accessible, add the script directory to your PATH
in the .zshrc
file so you can just run the command when you open the terminal:
Open .zshrc
in a text editor (e.g., nano, vim):
nano ~/.zshrc
Add the following line to the file:
Replace /path/to/notes-exporter
with the actual path to the notes-exporter
directory - e.g. $HOME/bin
if you have copied the files to the bin
directory for your user's mac account.
export PATH="/path/to/notes-exporter:$PATH"
CTRL + X
, then Y
to save, and Enter
to exit.Reload the .zshrc
file:
source ~/.zshrc
or just start a new Terminal window or tab.