How to export/backup Notes in macOS in one go

Question

I have a lot of Notes on my machine which I don't want to loose. It's not logical to export them one by one. Is there any way to export them in one go, which would make me either use them on my new

I learned that I could backup ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes but I am not really sure if this would be helpful. This is what I get as for this directory.

$ du -sh ./*
4.0K    ./Library
256K    ./NoteStore.sqlite
 32K    ./NoteStore.sqlite-shm
3.0M    ./NoteStore.sqlite-wal

I am running macOS Mojave.

Answer 1

You can use a third-party app called Notes Exporter to export all notes in one go. After granting access to the Notes data, the app exports each individual note as a separate text file in the location of your choosing.

The only limitation being that you'll need to re-import them one by one if you wish to use them on a new machine.

A better and much simpler approach, if you have the necessary storage space available would be to use iCloud to sync them to the new machine.

Note: No affiliation whatsoever to the developer of the app.

Answer 2

I copied the three files NoteStore.sqlite, NoteStore.sqlite-shm, and NoteStore.sqlite-wal from ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes of one Mac to another and my notes appear there now. All my notes were there, albeit half a day out of sync.

Answer 3

Another great third party app is Exporter. It exports as markdown and keeps both folders and attachments.