Summary
Process in short
- Export notes from Evernote (one notebook at a time).
- Convert Evernote files to markdown format (using Yarle, with its default settings).
Note: Yarle even converts internal Evernote note links. - Set up Obsidian on your computer and mobile.
- Set up Syncthing to manage multiple-device syncing for free.
Note: Alternative sync tools are included below. - Bonus: Use your Google Drive for desktop folder (or another cloud service) as your file vault, so you get additional cloud access & backup for free.
Solution
Obsidian + Syncthing (+ Google Drive optional).
Result
This Obsidian-Syncthing setup provides feature-parity with Evernote, plus some extras, and it’s on a free, highly customisable, and future-proofed, system.
Background
Goodbye Evernote, and thanks for 5,042 notes over 11 years. After being annoyed off the platform by pop-up requests to upgrade every few minutes, and eventually being kicked off the old freemium model, it’s time to join the mass migration to another platform.
Below is a walkthrough of how I migrated from Evernote to Obsidian. But before we start, just in case it needs to be said: there is no single solution to suit everyone’s note-taking needs. I recommend you start by sketching out what you want to achieve, and how that might change over time, then go looking for the setup that will work best for you.
In summary, my requirements are:
- Free: I already have too many paid organisational apps, I can’t bring myself to pay for my note-taking app too. Otherwise I’d probably just upgrade to a paid Evernote account.
- Multi-device: Android mobile plus desktop (and preferably web too) – all synced as close to real-time as possible.
- Rich formatting & organising: Text styles (e.g. headers, numbered lists, etc.) and a hierarchy of notebooks/folders at least two levels deep.
I don’t care much about collaboration or web publishing.
Note on platforms: I’m working with MacOS (desktop) and Android (mobile) — plus Google Drive — so if you use other platforms, you might need to do more research.
Leading contenders
After some brief reading of a load of “Best Evernote Alternatives” blogs, I narrowed down my options to the following:
- Google Keep: Good if you want something simple.
– Pros: It’s lightning fast and light, and it’s part of Google’s suite of organisational apps, into which I’m already knee deep. But;
– Cons: It lacks the advanced structure and formatting that I want. For instance, the closest equivalent to Evernote’s Notebooks in Google Keep is Tags, which would be fiddly to manage, and I don’t think you can import from Notebooks to Tags anyway. - Notion: Good for collating knowledge and publishing your content.
– Pros: Notion comes with an Evernote importer feature, which is a breeze. The imported notes format well, with a few minor hiccups (e.g. formatting of some return lines and bullet lists). Tags migrate across fine.
– Cons: I’ve always found Notion too slow on mobile (Android) for quick note taking. And while I use it loads to build knowledebase-type content — including databases, embedded content, link previews, etc. – I want something lighter and quicker for notes.
Other popular contenders:
- Joplin: Free, open-source alternative to Evernote but if you want to use cloud storage you either have to sync it with Dropbox, etc. or pay for Joplin Cloud.
- OneNote: Part of the Microsoft suite and highly functional.
- Bear: A pretty Markdown option.
Read more about Evernote alternatives on:
- 5 Best Evernote Alternatives, from How-To Geek (Aug 2023).
- Ditching Evernote: here are your best alternatives, from PC mag (2022).
And the winner is: Obsidian
As soon as you arrive at the Obsidian website, it’s quickly clear that it offers feature-parity with Evernote, and more (big plugin library, mindmap-style Graphs, whiteboard-style Canvases, etc.). But one essential criterion — syncing between multiple devices — didn’t at first appear to be free. It’s $8/m for Obsidian Sync, their official plugin, which some users are saying does a good job.
After a quick search I found a bunch of different solutions for:
- Migrating notes from Evernote to Obsidian, then;
- Syncing Obsidian notes across devices for free.
Here’s what worked for me…
Step 1: Migrating notes from Evernote to Obsidian
Note on Markdown: Obsidian notes are built on Markdown (.md) which, if you’re not familiar, is highly versatile and used everywhere, unlike a proprietary format such as Evernotes .enex files. Switching to markdown expands your options (e.g. you can simply edit your notes in any text editor) and gives you future-proofing in case you want to change systems in the future.
Tip before you start: Consider sorting (rename, reorganise, archive, etc.) all your Evernote notes and notebooks before you export them. Then the work is done, and your old Evernote system will match what is migrated. Alternatively, you can do this at the midpoint (sorting the exported .md files on your computer) or at the end (through Obsidian), as suits you best.
Export from Evernote
- In the Evernote desktop app, to go Notebooks.
- Under the ACTIONS column, select the meatball menu (three dots), then select Export notebook… And yes, you have to do this individually for every notebook!
Note on exporting individual notebooks: It seems that you cannot export more than one notebook at a time. Nor can you export Evernote stacks (collections of notebooks) (see here and here, and many other places). At the other end, Obsidian doesn’t care how you nest your notes, it just treats Evernote’s stacks as one level up the hierarchy of note stacking (like any normal folder directory would). So, time to put some tunes on…
I had to manually recreate each of my stacks as a new folder in the export output location, and I had to export all 129 notebooks one at a time. Fun.
Note on filename bugs: Evernote screws up when exporting notebooks that contain only one note, rather than multiple notes. I had to manually rename them all (after exporting). Evernote also exported some notebooks erroneously as “Untitled”.
Note on timestamp bug: I also learned too late that there was a bug in Evernote by which it inflates the timestamps or your files by one month. However, this may have been fixed in the today’s Evernote update! (4 Dec 2023) so upgrade before you migrate.
In short, you have to keep your eyes peeled and do loads of little checks as you go.
Tip: After exporting my entire Evernote library to a local folder, I saved a copy of it to keep as an archive. You know, Justin Casey.
Step 2: Convert to Markdown
I can happily recommend Yarle for this part of the job. If, like me, you’re pretty useless at working with code, don’t be put off. Yarle has a graphical interface that is a joy to use. I just downloaded the desktop app from their Github page, followed the steps in the interface, and didn’t change any of the default settings.
Big(ish) tip: After selecting Start conversion in Yarle, wait! If you are converting a big set of files, it may take several seconds or minutes to convert them all but there is no completion-confirmation message. So if you start working on the next conversion too soon, you could lose data by unintentionally cancelling the previous conversion.
Note on illegal characters: Some characters such as slashes “/” or colons “:” will have to be changed when converted to Markdown files, if you have them in your Evernote file names (note titles). Yarle should successfully convert them to legal characters. For instance, I had an Evernote note called “Week 17/03/20” which is now automatically called “Week 17_03_20” in Markdown. Likewise, an Evernote notebook called “Themes / Names / General Ideas” and an Evernote note of the same name, were converted differently in Obsidian, to “Themes Names General Ideas” (the folder) and “Themes_Names_General_Ideas” (the note), respectively. This is a minor pain, but it’s worthwhile anyway, because it’s generally a bad idea to use colons, slashes and suchlike in file names.
Note on internal Evernote links: I have loads of Evernote notes that are linked to each other using Evernote’s own internal link syntax. Of course this syntax won’t work anywhere off Evernote. Fortunately, Yarle does a near-flawless job of getting round this. It “applies the link to the note with the filename that has the closest Levenshtein distance to the text of the link” (see here). In other words, Yarle finds the note that has a similar name to the one in the internal link, and creates a link to that target note using Markdown’s ordinary link syntax, which is more robust for future use.
Step 3: Set up Obsidian
- Download and launch Obsidian on your devices. It’s easy to run.
- In Obsidian desktop on your computer, create a new vault from the folder into which you have placed all your exported, converted (.md) files.
Minor tip: Name your new syncing folders differently on each device, so you don’t confuse them when managing sync. - On your mobile, create a new folder (e.g. using your default file management app) on your mobile’s internal storage. This will be your vault for Obsidian mobile, which you will sync with the vault on your computer.
- In Obsidian mobile, select Open folder as vault, and select the folder you created on your mobile’s internal storage.
At this point, your Obsidian desktop app should be showing all your old Evernote notes, with notebooks and stacks now simply arranged as higher levels of Obsidian folders. But your Obsidian mobile app will be empty because it’s not synced with the same folder as your desktop app. Let’s fix that now.
Tip: Check you have enough memory on your mobile to hold a copy of all your notes locally. For a guide: my 5,000+ notes totalled ~1.5GB, although I never used tons of photos on Evernote.
Optional bonus: include a cloud-syncing service
I’m a big Google Drive user, and I have plenty of spare memory on my account. According to a few people (e.g. here) you can’t use Syncthing with a cloud service like Google Drive, because Google Drive doesn’t create a local folder on your device. Syncthing only syncs between local folders, it doesn’t have an online sync location.
But… there’s a way round this if you use a service such as Google Drive for desktop to sync your online Google Drive files with a local folder on your computer. Simply create your Obsidian syncing folder (your vault) within your local Google Drive folder system. That way, Syncthing will maintain sync between your computer and mobile, and Google Drive for desktop will sync the same files with Google Drive online.
This gives you a cloud backup service for your files and, if it’s ever useful, you can access your files from Google Drive and edit them anywhere online (because they’re in the popular Markdown format).
Step 4: Sync between devices
According to a few mentions online (e.g. here and here) Syncthing is the best option for free, continuous syncing between multiple devices. And indeed it has worked well for me. It’s a little fiddly to set up but doesn’t require any technical skills. Just follow the instructions.
Caution with Syncthing setup:
- Keep your eyes open for notifications on your mobile that request permission to connect with your other device(s). I missed these first time round.
- I also didn’t notice that the local folder directory was empty in the Edit folder menu on Syncthing mobile. You have to point it at the local folder you created.
Update: Syncthing appears to stop syncing every time my mobile shuts down. I simply have to open the Syncthing app to automatically resume syncing but it’s a minor annoyance in the process anyway.
Tip: Carefully check all the settings before initiating sync, to ensure you have correctly configured the process, e.g. to update files in both directions (“two-way”) and delete files from all devices if they’re deleted from another.
Tip: In the Syncthing mobile app, go to Settings > Behaviour > Start service automatically on boot and toggle it on, otherwise it will have to manually launch the app every time you restart your mobile.
Step 5: Test, and relax
Okay, that should be it! You can run some tests by creating, editing and deleting notes on desktop and mobile, and watching how they get updated via Syncthing (and Google Drive, if you’re using it). I found that it typically takes 5–30 seconds to sync, which isn’t perfect but it’s good enough for me.
Alternatives to Syncthing
There are free mobile apps for file syncing that are easier to set up than Syncthing but not quite as quick, continuous or customisable (and I suspect a bigger drain on mobile battery but I haven’t tested). I found both Autosync (AKA DriveSync) and Foldersync worked fine.
The difference here is that you point your chosen syncing app at a folder on Google Drive (in the cloud) so Google Drive acts as the intermediary, rather than pointing to two local folders (with Syncthing).
Conclusion
I had a good run with Evernote. It was a pioneer of the truly “freemium” model back in the day. But I guess the company gave away so many features for free that when they tried to claw us back into a paid tier, they pissed too many people off. Now the internet is heavy with irate Evernote-migration chat.
With my new Obsidian-Syncthing setup, I seem to have the same features I had on Evernote, plus access to Obsidian’s plugins and other fun stuff like graphs and canvases, which I doubt I’ll ever use. I suspect the file syncing won’t be as smooth as Evernote’s was. But then again, Evernote’s syncing was frequently unreliable anyway.
Plus, converting everything to Markdown has felt like a smart move to protect and develop my notes into the future.
How has your migration experience gone? Any tips?
