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Switching from Apple Notes

What maps well

Apple Notes is organized around folders and individual notes. In Alexandria, the closest mapping is:

This is often more flexible than recreating the exact folder tree. For example, a note from an Apple Notes Recipes folder could become an Alexandria note tagged Recipes, and a note from Work/Meetings could be tagged with both Work and Meetings.

Current path

Not yet supported. There is no automated Apple Notes importer yet - this is a manual process today.

Alexandria's automated import path is currently focused on Notion; see Imports. Apple Notes does not provide a clean Markdown export, so switching from Apple Notes usually means exporting or copying notes, converting the content to Markdown, and recreating organization in Alexandria.

A realistic workflow today:

  1. List the Apple Notes folders you actually want to keep.
  2. Create matching Alexandria tags for the important folders.
  3. Export, copy, or otherwise extract each Apple note's content.
  4. Convert the content to Markdown as needed.
  5. Create Alexandria notes and apply the matching tags.
  6. Review formatting, links, checklists, images, and attachments by hand.

For small collections, it may be simplest to create notes directly in Alexandria and paste cleaned-up Markdown. For larger collections, use a one-off conversion script only after testing it on a small sample.

What to expect

Some Apple Notes formatting may need cleanup after conversion. Tables, rich text styling, sketches, scans, and embedded attachments are the areas most likely to require manual review.

Start with a small folder first. Once the mapping feels right, repeat the same process for the rest of your notes.