Simplenote down?
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Those are all the good reasons I resisted Apple Notes until now, but I can’t afford another day like yesterday, when I’m counting on being productive on the road and my key app stops working out of the blue. At least we can expect Apple to give us decent notification before tweaking the app, and they can’t afford the bad press they would get if the app went completely kaput like yesterday. However, I feel bad for having that attitude because I do like to support small developers.
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It’s the privacy concerns that keeps me from Keep. Although I have similar concerns when dealing with any of these monolithic firms, it seems that Apple does try to take privacy seriously.
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iOS, MacOS, and Web versions are all different for me now. I quit all of them and restarted. Also logged out and back in again. No joy. (I backed up my changes from yesterday into Apple Notes app before logging out).
Awaiting updates on the synching issues. Hoping this app is just experiencing a hiccup and not in death throes.
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Assume that it’s in a “walking dead” state. Automattic has made several announcements over the last two years that strongly indicate the “zombie” status. Unfortunately, they didn’t broadcast those intentions to users. They just posted on the web page. I only caught it by doing a Google search that pointed to announcements that have since been pulled. You were wise to grab that backup while you could.
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Same problem here. I tried to reinstall the iPhone app, but it does not download any note.
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This is clearly the death knell for Simplenote. I have 16 years of notes, use Windows, iPhone, and Mac. ResopNotes on Windows was the king for a simplicity that worked with the Simplenote servers, but it hasn’t been updated in forever, and thus regularly has sync problems. I guess the writing was on the wall for the main program to die as well.
I was able to export my notes into json format and then used jamesgecko’s “Simple to Standard” Ruby based tool to transfer it into a file that Standard Notes could import as a backup, keeping all the file creation information.
It all worked (it takes a while to sync using the web client, causing temporary errors as it tries to send a ton of data at once). There are some things about the interface I don’t like. The native Windows app has a permanent tags sidebar on the left I can’t eliminate. The iOS client for iPhone doesn’t allow you to tap at the top of the phone to automatically scroll to the top of all your notes. But it’s probably better than losing all my notes.Oh well, time marches on…
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Login to the web interface: https://apps.simplenote.com
Settings -> Tools -> Export Notes
(the exported notes will includ a .json file)
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Yep! But as mikerizz discovered, that json file will not work with Standard Notes as is, keeping the correct modified note dates. You have to tweak the file yourself (as mikerizz did) or use someone else tools to do it (like I did).
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Yup, I was just replying to perfectword7’s question on how to go about obtaining a json file.
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Gotcha…cool! I want to thank everyone who responded in this thread and the others here on the forums for all the comments about this. Even if this does get fixed, it does seem like it’s likely that Simplenote will die permanently soon, and so it’s better to finally move off it. Sad day…it really was a great program.
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@glauer42 – Thanks for the pointer to jamesgecko’s Simple-to-Standard. I’m looking at this now. Any particular Ruby environment work for you? I too am very sad to see the apparent demise of SimpleNote. Some time ago, I extricated myself from EverBloat using Joplin’s import capability. Now I guess I’ll be moving yet again from SimpleNote to Standard.
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Can any of you nice people give step by step to import notes with all attributes to new similar program? I do not understand the “tweaking of json file” described.
I’ve been very happily using simplenotes at least 15 years and singing its praises & have offered to pay them repeatedly as an annual subscription but I guess they just don’t have enough users. What a disaster & shame. I don’t like Apple iOS notes at all… any mistakes are lost forever & it is horribly slow & buggy in iCloud for Windows and burdened with so much formatting nonsense. My whole life will have to change without the great simplicity & utility of Simplenote. -
I understand how to obtain the export and the json file. The part I don’t understand is how to convert the json file to get a good import into Standard Notes. Thanks for the help!
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kingbobalanguid: I just installed Ruby from rubyinstaller.org.
dar501: I migrated to Standard Notes. It isn’t hard if you are comfortable with doing some tech things, but it does take some work.
You will first need to export your Simplenote notes.
Then you will need to download and install Ruby as I indicated above.
Then you’ll need to use the script at https://github.com/jamesgecko/simple-to-standard to convert the notes to something Standard Notes can import without losing the modify dates.
THEN you’ll have to import them as a backup file into Standard Notes.
I also used Gemini/Google AI as I did each step, telling it about any options I wasn’t sure of during the process (during the Ruby install, for example), so it could point me in the right direction. Good luck! -
Note: you’ll only need to install Ruby if you have a Windows machine. My understanding is it’s natively installed on Macs.
