I built a site generator for Apple Notes (opens in new tab)

(devlog.notespub.com)

10 pointsoneearedrabbit3y ago3 comments

3 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

oneearedrabbitOP3y ago· 2 in thread

Hi. This is a passion project I have been tinkering around with for fun over weekends. I thought it would be crazy to use Apple Notes as a site generator, but I did it anyway. There is no SDK/API to access notes programmatically, so I had to go the extra mile and reverse-engineer Apple Notes.

I have been using Notes for over a decade and have a collection of over a thousand stories. However, there is something else that makes it special. A hard lock-in, it is extremely difficult to export notes. This project is my tiny contribution to give them wings and let them fly.

This is not a Show HN post — there is no download page yet. However, I thought it could be interesting to write down lessons and gotchas, so someone else won’t need to start from scratch.

Happy hacking.

Someone3y ago

> There is no SDK/API to access notes programmatically

I won’t claim it’s nice, but there is, via AppleScript:

  tell application "Notes"
    tell note "Foo"
      plaintext
    end tell
  end tell

(Using ‘body’ instead of plaintext will return a HTML string)

oneearedrabbitOP3y ago

I should have been more clear, thanks for correcting me! Apple Script does indeed work, and there are some limitations to be aware of. Some of them I explained in the article. For example, all images are encoded as base64 strings (which is not terrible, just inconvenient). I also couldn't extract tags even using `body`. todo-lists are formatted as ul/li blocks, which is reasonable, but also inconvenient. Ultimately, I wanted to render notes visually as close as possible to Apple Notes, and I was not happy with what Apple Script provides out of the box.

FWIW, Bear (a competitive note taking application) does provide an Automator script to help users migrate from Apple Notes, and they also mentioned similar limitations:

- Task lists convert into bulleted lists

- Rich media links will convert to plain text links

- Non-photo attachments like PDFs or other files are not supported and will be excluded from export to HTML files. They will remain safely in Apple Notes

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