Simplenote down?

  • Unknown's avatar
    kiffmeister · Member ·

    Simplenote is frozen on all my devices and when I tried to re-log in on one of them I got a “sorry, we’re having problems at our end message”. It would be nice if such downtimes were posted in this forum, if not just to avert panic among users.

  • Unknown's avatar
    mikerizz · Member ·

    Seeing issues here as well. I have tested with 3 different systems. Web (Chrome on Mac), Simplenote App on Mac and Simplenote app on iOS. Different notes on each platform. Worst is the app on mac, missing 2 weeks of notes but they were just there earlier today on same Mac. Somehow lost and reverted.

    Prob going to export all and then find a replacment as they are no longer supporting. hard to find a simple method to share across WIndows/Mac/iOS

  • Unknown's avatar
    kiffmeister · Member ·

    On further review it seems that Simplenote is no longer in active development and is basically running on autopilot. That’s too bad because I think it’s the best note-taking app, but I guess it’s time to move on. Some recommend Standard Notes as an alternative, but some say it’s also on a glidepath to autopilot.

  • Unknown's avatar
    kiffmeister · Member ·

    @mikerizz that’s scary. I’m away from my Mac today, which was completely up to date last night, and I was assuming I would download and look to another app. But if it blows out weeks of recent updates I’m truly fucked!

  • Unknown's avatar
    kiffmeister · Member ·

    BTW the simplenote.com website is also down

  • Unknown's avatar
    polypx · Member ·

    Oh man, here too. I really love this app, been using it for years.

  • Unknown's avatar
    mikerizz · Member ·

    I am back on my Windows laptop, and the Windows App is syncing fine to the web; I can edit/update/delete in either location, and the changes are reflected, as of 12:39 pm EST. The iOS and Mac apps aren’t syncing at all, not with each other, the web, or anything. I backed up all my notes from Web and from Windows, and lo and behold, they dont match either. I surely didnt have this on my plate to address today, but now I need to make an unplanned move.

    I reinstalled the apps on my iMac, and now there are no Notes on the Mac. So if you were thinking of trying that step to troubleshoot, I would highly advise against it.

    I am now looking into this: https://notesnook.com/ as they import Simplenote backups, so that could be my solution.

  • Unknown's avatar
    polypx · Member ·

    Thanks for the link to Notesnook. Will check into that one.

  • Unknown's avatar
    dar501 · Member ·

    Greatest notes app ever… been using & RELYING on it for many years. I really hope they are not going to suddenly leave everyone who trusted them to flounder… could have used a warning for crying out loud. I’ve been telling them for years that I would be happy to pay for the service. Now what? This is ungodly awful.

  • Unknown's avatar
    kiffmeister · Member ·

    I agree completely. I’ve tried so many notes apps and this is *the* one that I’d gladly pay for. Let’s hope this is just a short-term glitch. But if it’s not, it sure would have been nice if we could have been notified so we could all get the life boats ready.

  • Unknown's avatar
    kiffmeister · Member ·

    It’s possible we’re caught up in some corporate shenanigans at Automattic, the company that owns Simplenote. Try searching for recent news on the firm and you’ll see what I mean. Most of it’s flagship products (eg WordPress) are still up and running, but we already know that Simplenote had been put on autopilot…

  • Unknown's avatar
    mikerizz · Member ·

    Migrating 10,000 Notes from Simplenote to Standard Notes — Preserving Dates and Tags

    I recently decided to migrate my Simplenote collection to Standard Notes. I had 9,946 notes dating back to 2014, and preserving the original dates and tags was important.

    The built-in Simplenote importer transferred my notes, but it didn’t preserve their original modification dates or tags.What worked

    Instead of using the regular Simplenote importer, I used Standard Notes’ native backup format.

    Here’s the process:

    1. Exported my Simplenote collection as JSON.
    2. Created a couple of notes in Standard Notes and downloaded a decrypted backup from Preferences → Backups → Data Backups.
    3. Used that backup as a template to convert my Simplenote JSON into Standard Notes’ native backup format, preserving the original creation dates, modification dates, and tag relationships.
    4. Imported the converted .txt file using Preferences → Backups → Import Backup.

    The result: All imported notes retained their original dates, contents, and tags.Splitting my collection

    Rather than putting nearly 10,000 notes into one account, I divided them by last-modified year:

    • Current notes (2024–2026): 5,102 notes
    • Historical archive (2023 and earlier): 4,844 notes

    I’ve successfully imported the 5,102 recent notes. Everything looks correct, including the original modification dates and tags.

    I also discovered that Standard Notes supports multiple workspaces, making it easy to switch between separate accounts. My plan is to keep the historical archive in a second workspace.Final thoughts

    I’m going to use Standard Notes for a week before importing the remaining notes, primarily to evaluate synchronization and performance.

    The key takeaway: If you’re migrating from Simplenote and want to preserve your original dates and tags, converting your export into Standard Notes’ native backup format and using Import Backup instead of Import Notes worked for me.

    Hopefully, this helps someone considering the same migration.

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