NotesExporter

A command-line utility to export notes from Apple Notes.app on macOS.

This was vibe coded by BluePill Software for personal use. I don't expect anyone else to be interested in it, but everyone is welcome to use it.

Versions

There are two implementations with identical interfaces:

	export-notes.sh	export-notes (Swift)
How it works	JXA via osascript subprocess	Scripting Bridge (in-process)
591 notes, full export	2m 03s	3.6s
Speedup	—	~34×

The Swift version is recommended. It uses macOS Scripting Bridge to talk to Notes.app in-process, bulk-fetches note metadata and content using SBElementArray (a handful of Apple Events total rather than one per note), and writes files concurrently.

The shell script is kept as a reference implementation.

How it works

Both versions fetch the list of all notes across every account and folder, let you filter and select the ones you want, then pull the content of each selected note and write it to a file. Notes can be exported as Markdown (default), raw HTML, plain text, or PDF (via wkhtmltopdf).

Download

Pre-built binaries are attached to each GitHub release:

File	Description
export-notes	Compiled Swift binary (macOS, Apple Silicon)
export-notes.sh	Bash script (no build required)

Download the release assets, make them executable, and run:

chmod +x export-notes export-notes.sh
./export-notes -v

Building the Swift version

make

The Makefile derives the version string from git tags (git describe) and compiles it into the binary. Run make version to see the current version without building.

Usage

./export-notes [options]
./export-notes.sh [options]

Both accept the same flags.

Options

Flag	Description
-f FORMAT	Output format: md, html, txt, or pdf (default: md)
-o DIR	Output directory (default: ./exported-notes)
-a ACCOUNT	Filter by account name (e.g. iCloud)
-F FOLDER	Filter by folder name
-r REGEX	Export notes whose title matches a regex (skips interactive selection)
-v	Show version
-h	Show help

Examples

# Interactive mode — browse and pick notes to export (default: markdown)
./export-notes

# Export as PDF
./export-notes -f pdf

# Export notes with "recipe" in the title
./export-notes -r "recipe"

# Case-insensitive match
./export-notes -r "[Mm]eeting"

# Export all recipe notes to a "notes" directory
./export-notes -o notes -r "Recipes*"

# Combine filters
./export-notes -r "TODO|FIXME" -a iCloud -f txt -o ~/Desktop/todos

Requirements

• macOS
• Notes.app (launches automatically if not running)
• wkhtmltopdf — required only for PDF export (brew install wkhtmltopdf)

License

Copyright BluePill Software. This project is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).