Export "Standard Notes" into plaintext markdown files while retaining metadata like modification time, creation time, status (archived, trashed, pinned) and any tags.
Key Features:
- Export Standard Notes to Markdown
- Keeps modification date
- Keeps tags
- Universal format (e.g. great for Zettlr, Obsidian.md and Notable.app or plain-text)
- Keeps/creates Zettelkasten features
- Removed duplicates from corrupted Standard Notes exports
- Can be used as a ongoing longevity backup
On Linux install php, review and download the standard-notes-to-markdown.php script.
In the same directory as the Standard Notes exported backup file:
php ./standard-notes-to-markdown.php name-of-sn-export-file.txt ./location/to/export/notes/
Notice: I wrote this one afternoon after realizing the Standard Notes exported backup markdown files didn't contain tags or modification time etc. It's written quickly in PHP with no particular coding standard.
It will take all the information from Standard Notes, remove duplicates and output separate markdown files for each note, with all the tags and dates saved at the top on the note in YAML. This is also useful for fixing Standard Notes duplication/corruption bugs during export.
Notes are exported into the path you specify, or if no path is specified ./notes/, with the filename of Note Title ID_NUMBER.md.
Any title character commonly not allowed in filenames will be replaced with a hyphen -.
YAML is extra structured information inside a text file in an easily human readable format. A fair amount of note/PKM apps use YAML to store notes universally, however if your preferred note app does not use YAML, it's still an unobtrusive way of storying information like titles, tags, IDs and creation date.
Migrating/Exporting Standard Notes to Zettlr, Notable.app, Obsidian.md and other Second Brain/PKMs.
In 2020-02 you can export a backup of Standard Notes from their app, Account -> Data Backups, and choose option "Decrypted", to download a zip file.
This Standard Notes backup zip contains a Standard Notes Backup and Import File txt.txt and a folder with individual markdown files without metadata.
The Standard Notes Backup and Import File txt.txt is actually a JSON file containing all the note content and metadata together. We use this file to recreate markdown files with all the wanted info in YAML a more portable/universal format.
If you don't use Zettelkasten methods for notes, you can still use this exporter without worry.
Zettelkasten is a common method of managing notes in many PKM/PKB systems, it's great for universal note formats and doesn't tie you into any one single app or propriety storage system, promoting real longevity and universality of your notes.
A common note link approach uses markdown with wiki style links [[link]], naming notes with an Unique ID number so that links don't break when the app/system changes or the notes are renamed. Zettel IDs are commonly a timestamp in the format similar to ISO 8601 e.g. 20210218112452.
This exporter script creates IDs based on the note creation time, if this is not unique (due to automatic historic importing for example) it'll increment seconds until it is unique.
The notes Zettel UID is added as YAML, as well as Standard Notes UUID for good measure.
You can use this as a regular running script on a Linux system via cron to convert the basic Standard Notes export files into a more longevity focused and robust format while keeping key meta information like tags, and times/dates available.
Have Standard Notes "CloudLink" email or save regular backups/exports into your cloud storgae decrypted then have this script convert the exported JSON file on a regular basis.