Simplenote down?
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A little off-topic:
I’ve been moving my notes to Apple Notes, and I’d like to share a few useful tips to help others make the transition as smoothly as possible. I’d also like to bring a few export-related issues to @stephdau’s attention:
When you export notes from Simplenote, the exported .txt files get wrong creation dates. The correct dates are stored in notes.json, but Apple Notes ignores that file and reads the .txt files instead. As a result, after import every note shows its modification date as the creation date.The fix is to set the file dates from notes.json before importing, which I did with a script written with Claude’s help. Without it, Apple Notes will show the wrong creation dates.
Other problems I ran into:
Copying the files: if you move the files to another Mac with AirDrop, the creation dates are lost (they become the modification date), and the modification dates survive. Import the files from the same Mac where you set the dates, or restore the dates again from notes.json after copying.
The export can be incomplete. Once, Simplenote exported only part of my notes (about 3,400 instead of about 6,100). Later exports contained everything. Please verify your export: check the first 20 and the last 20 notes in Simplenote (the oldest and the newest) and make sure they are all in the export. Comparing two exports (for example, from the web app and from the desktop app) is even better.
Importing the whole export folder: notes.json becomes one extra note containing raw JSON text, and the Trash folder becomes an ordinary folder called Trash. Import only the folder with the .txt files, and decide separately what to do with the trash.
Missing files: about 12 of my 6,125 notes had no .txt file at all after export. Compare the number of .txt files with the number of notes in notes.json and recreate any missing ones from the JSON.
Emoji: one note had its emoji replaced by broken characters in the .txt file, while the JSON was intact. An emoji in a note’s title also made it impossible to create a file with that name on my Mac, which may be why that note was missing. I don’t know why the other ~11 were missing.
Tags: the export appends tags to the end of each .txt file as plain text (Tags: followed by the tag name). Apple Notes does not turn them into tags. This didn’t matter to me, but you can ask Claude to convert them to hashtags or otherwise carry them over.
Links: URLs in imported .txt files are plain text and not clickable on the Mac (on iOS they are). They only become links after you edit the note, which changes its modification date. If you import the notes as HTML instead, with the URLs wrapped in real <a href> links, they are clickable right away, and the file dates are still used for the creation and modification dates. I tested this on one Mac with a few test notes.
The modification times in the files are also shifted by a few hours, because the export seems to treat the UTC times as local time.
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And I have one more question for @stephdau, if you don’t mind me asking. How many active users does Simplenote have today?
I think this would help us better understand Automattic’s decision not to continue developing the app. Judging by this forum, it sometimes feels like there are only a dozen or so of us who still care deeply about Simplenote, some of whom have been using it for 15+ years. I sincerely hope I’m wrong!
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Acknowledging the new activity on the thread, so you don’t think I’ve let this go, but am very busy verifying that all the measures we’ve already put into place to cope with yesterday’s internet-wide nightmare are fully rock solid across a slew of our products. I’ll have to address your new questions later. 🙂
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I do hope the wonderful Automattic people who maintain SimpleNote do not give too much importance to the comments on here, generally by the more technically competent, because:
- So many normal people I know use SimpleNote, and they would never know about this forum. (I’m only half-normal, and I didn’t know about it, after 10 years.)
- Similarly, most normal people would struggle mightily to transfer their information to another notepad program.
- And SimpleNote being down on iPhones for a day or two is no reason for panic, or leaving – every bit of tech has moments like this, in our world.
SimpleNote is a work of genius, a work of art in a world of confusing spying bloat, and if the people behind it are prepared to maintain it as-is, for some significant time, that is surely the single best outcome imaginable?
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Maybe alone this incident alone wouldn’t be an issue. But add that, the fact it took a while for them to tell us, that they’ve told us development has ceased, and they’ve just told us moving to another solution long term is warranted…we have our answer. We can continue to keep our heads’ in the sand, but at some point the lights will go out, and perhaps at that time we won’t be able to export our data.
For me, earlier in the year when I had lots of issues trying to install it on a new Mac, it wouldn’t let me sign in, and support wouldn’t get back to me (and I got no answer here) was the first sign of major problems. I’m not trying anyone what do to…only summarizing why staying on the platform any longer is ignoring the obvious.
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@swiftlycertain68cfef46c1 I guess I’m abnormal in that I had baked Simplenote into critical workflows, so Monday became a written-off day for me, and I’m an independent consultant so that’s a real dollars and cents written-off day. Luckily, I had really embraced the simplicity of Simplenote so I didn’t have to resort to JSON exports/imports to transfer everything to Apple Notes with no loss of critical information. (I’m not a techie either.)
I realize that even Apple Notes could have glitch days, but I bet Apple would have it up in hours rather than days. I really appreciate the life support that Automattic and dedicated staff like @stephdau have given Simplenote, but the risk of staying with Simplenote isn’t something I, and probably others on this thread, can afford (and I literally mean “afford”).
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Dear @swiftlycertain68cfef46c1,
I understand your point, and I agree that the people at Automattic who maintain Simplenote are wonderful (I genuinely believe they are). However, I’m not sure that hoping they won’t give too much importance to the comments of the “more technically competent” people on this forum will help you or other “normal” users in the long run.
After all, you never know when you might need the information and advice shared here. You didn’t know about this forum for ten years, and yet something eventually brought you here. Perhaps one day, you or another “normal” user will need help saving your data or transferring it to another app.
I agree that many “normal people” would struggle to move their notes to another notepad app. And that is precisely why we need those “more technically competent” people. It’s a bit like putting on your own oxygen mask first so you can help others. The people who investigate technical problems, document them, and figure out ways to export and transfer notes may eventually help others do the same by providing clear, step-by-step guides. Those “wrong” people, as it were, may turn out to be rather useful to both normal and half-normal users.
As others have pointed out, the problem is not simply that Simplenote was unavailable for a day or two. The concern is much deeper. Although the developers haven’t announced that they are discontinuing the service, their statements and the apparent lack of active development give many of us reason to question how much we can rely on Simplenote in the long term. Everyone may interpret the situation differently, but I think it would be unwise to ignore the message these signs seem to convey.
Closing our eyes and pretending there is no problem won’t make the uncertainty go away. In the best-case scenario, we may eventually need to find another notes app and transfer our data. In the worst-case scenario, we might not have the opportunity to transfer anything because our notes are no longer accessible.
And yes, I believe the technical reports and discussions on this forum deserve Automattic’s attention. They can help identify problems, preserve useful information, and make it easier for users to protect their data if the need arises. Even if Simplenote is a free product and Automattic is under no obligation to keep developing it, I think we should all be grateful for the people who take the time to investigate these issues and share what they learn.
That includes all of us — normal, half-normal, and more technically competent alike.
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@stephdau, sorry to bother you again, but I’d like to report another issue. The Trash folder doesn’t seem to sync properly. If I empty it in the web version, the deleted notes still appear in Trash on both iOS and macOS.
You also shared an article with us about several vulnerabilities. I just wanted to ask whether you can confirm that Simplenote was not affected by any of them, and that the incident on October 19th was unrelated to these vulnerabilities.
Please reply whenever you have a chance. No rush, of course, and thank you again for your time!
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@stephdau, I just can’t stop bothering you! Please don’t judge me too harshly. :)
While looking into note migration, I realized that I had also received an email with a login code on October 18 — the kind of email Simplenote normally sends when someone tries to log in. However, I hadn’t attempted to log in that day. What’s more, although my Simplenote account is set to English, the email was in Spanish.
Other users have reported the same issue in this thread or a neighboring one.
Could you please shed some light on what happened? Why were we receiving these emails? Could this have been related to the botnet issue?
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For #4 in my list of questions from yesterday, this may be the better link to review, since it’s a dedicated post describing what seems to be the same issue that I’ve regularly experienced with Simplenote where my notes for the day just disappear.
Also, I know you’re busy and I just wanted to say that short replies to those questions I listed are fine. For example, I assume #4 is not on the roadmap so a simple “no plans to fix” or something along those lines will suffice if that really is the case.
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Hi @leopools. Busy times. 🙂
I’ll try to address the questions since my last time around.
The unrequested login-code: that was a symptom of the botnet attack attempt.
Reset emails not arriving: that’s when one of our protection layers kicked in to limit the email flood on to customers.
Why it seemed to hit only the Apple apps (via @paulgemp614e5204f9): that’s when other protective layer on our side ended up blocking our Apple apps because of how they identify themselves.
Was Simplenote hit by the vulnerabilities in the TechCrunch link: it did not, diff tech stack (and other products I oversee with my team were all fully protected).
New features, such as E2E: as I approached earlier, there are none planned.
Selling Simplenote to someone else: that’s really not my area of expertise, can’t comment on that.
How many active users: I can’t share detailed numbers, but many. 🙂
I’m going to mark the thread as resolved, since the original issue has long since been.
