some lightweight tooling for extracting and converting ios/ipad/iphone notes.app notes to markdown

this will likely not work for you without some work, but here they are. these were one-time-use.

the source was ios10 or so. copied the sqlite from a decrypted backup and used that as the source.

some generated docu:

📓 iOS Notes Export Tool

This tool extracts and converts Apple Notes from a decrypted notes.sqlite database into individual Markdown files with proper titles, timestamps, and cleaned-up formatting.

✅ Features

• Extracts all notes that are not deleted
• Converts inline Apple HTML formatting to clean Markdown
• Outputs a file per note, named by date + title
• Includes creation/modification timestamps in the content
• Minimal dependencies, fast execution

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🔧 How to Use

1. Get the notes.sqlite File

If you're using a paid copy of iBackup Viewer (Pro):

1. Open your iOS backup in iBackup Viewer.

2. In the sidebar, navigate to:

   System > mobile > Library > Notes
   

3. Select notes.sqlite and export it (right-click → Export or use the Export button).

4. Save it somewhere convenient, like your Desktop.

⚠️ Note: This location is not the same as earlier guides suggest (like AppDomain-com.apple.mobilenotes). This one is under System/HomeDomain.

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2. Run the Script

Update DB_PATH in the script if needed:

DB_PATH = Path("~/Desktop/ipad notes/notes.sqlite").expanduser()
OUTPUT_DIR = Path("~/Desktop/ipad notes/exported").expanduser()

Then just run it:

pythrun extract_notes.py

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📝 Output

Each note is saved as a .md file like:

2020-10-12_Yesterday_I_had.md

Contents look like:

# Yesterday I had...

**Created:** 2020-10-12T10:01:48.313575  
**Modified:** 2020-10-13T12:07:13.517501

Yesterday I had potato salad...

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🛠 Requirements

• Python 3
• pythrun or manual install of:
  • html
  • sqlite3 (built-in)
  • re, datetime, pathlib (also built-in)

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💬 Notes

• Apple stores timestamps as seconds since Jan 1, 2001. This tool adjusts for that.
• HTML in the note body is lightly cleaned for Markdown output. It's not perfect, but way better than raw.
• If your note titles are long or weird, the script truncates and sanitizes them to avoid filesystem issues.

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🔍 Comparing Two Backups

To compare two different exported note sets, place them in folders like:

old ipad notes/exported/
new gmail synced notes/exported/

Then run:

pythrun compare.py

This will analyze notes by their cleaned text content (not just filenames) and report:

• ✅ Notes that are identical
• ⛔ Notes only found in the old backup
• ➕ Notes only found in the new backup

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🧹 Creating a Deduplicated Set

To generate a single clean set of notes, run:

pythrun copy-uniques.py

This creates a uniqued-notes/ folder containing:

• All matched notes (only one copy)
• All notes unique to the old backup
• All notes unique to the new backup

If any filenames collide (e.g. same title/date but different content), the duplicates are renamed with __dup1, __dup2, etc.