Dan York

After Almost 15 Years, Saying Goodbye to Evernote (and Moving to Obsidian)

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UPDATE - 2 Jan 2024 - Back in July 2023, the Obsidian team announced an officially-supported "Importer" plugin that includes the ability to import from Evernote.

This sounds easier than the method I outline below using YARLE. I have not tried this new "Importer" plugin (because I already migrated from Evernote!), but you may want to go try that new plugin before doing what I outline below.

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On April 8, 2008, I started using Evernote as a place to store all my various notes. It would come to be a critical part of my daily workflow… so much so that I became a paying customer back in 2011 or so.

Today, March 13, 2023, I uninstalled it from my devices.

I’m done.

It’s been a long time coming. Way back in 2012 I was super frustrated with how they destroyed the Skitch application with its 2.0 release. And yet I kept using Evernote because it had become my central repository. And… I hung on long enough that many of the Skitch features I complained about in that post were brought back.

In fact, I basically stayed with Evernote BECAUSE of how easy Skitch made taking - and adjusting - screenshots. Do a quick screenshot, tweak it, adjust it, annotate it… and have the result live on inside of Evernote, where it could then be tagged and further annotated.

Pretty much every single screenshot I’ve taken across my blogs in the past 10+ years has been done with Skitch.

I stayed with Evernote through all their various pivots… getting more annoyed each time they did something new. No, I didn’t want Chat to be everywhere… no, I didn’t want collaboration pieces - I’m the only user of my Evernote account! No, I didn’t want any of the other features they kept adding. All I wanted to do was add simple notes and also screen captures! I also watched in concern as there were layoffs at various times.

Then yet another redesign happened in early 2021 that changed how the application operated! When you opened up the app, the notes were no longer instantly there. It seemed like you had to wait for them to download from the server.

It was at that point that I actively started looking at ALL THE MANY alternatives that had emerged… and getting into a bit of “analysis paralysis”.

Finally, what pushed me to end was their latest price increase this year that jumped the pricing I was on by about 40%. Combined with my continually growing dissatisfaction, and a concern about the uncertainty of the direction of the new owners… I migrated all my notes and canceled my subscription.

The good news, as I understand it, is that even with the free version all my data will still be intact inside the Evernote app. So if I missed anything in the migration I should be able to get it.

Switching to Obsidian

I chose to migrate to using Obsidian. I could probably write several posts about WHY, but the simplest answer is:

• I’M NOT LOCKED IN TO A PROPRIETARY FORMAT!
• I’m not LOCKED IN to a proprietary user interface.
• I’m not LOCKED IN to a proprietary server infrastructure.

The beauty of Obsidian is that it uses plain, old, regular Markdown files! They are just md files in a directory. You can edit them with ANY appropriate editor! You don’t need to use the actual Obsidian app. You can open them with other editors. You can move them around and re-organize them simply in Finder on a Mac.

And you can put those Markdown files wherever you want. In my case I’ve put them in a folder on my personal iCloud Drive. This enables me to easily access them across all my IOS devices and Macs. And I can do so without using a centralized architecture from the vendor. I mean, yes, iCloud is centralized… but that is needed for the sync between devices. I could have used Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive or even set up my own NextCloud instance.

I mean.. yes, the Obsidian developers do offer an “Obsidian Sync” service … and I might choose to use that if I see issues with syncing via iCloud. But the point is I HAVE CHOICES, which I didn’t have with Evernote. I was locked into whatever they were doing - and however they were changing the user interface - or the pricing.

With Obsidian I have the freedom that if I don’t like what they’re doing, I can just stop using the app. The “vault” is just a folder of markdown files. Easy enough to use with other apps.

Migrating from Evernote to Obsidian

The actual process of migrating was not terribly difficult. Douglas Muth, another frustrated long-time Evernote user, wrote out excellent instructions about his migration to Obsidian. 

1. Export each Evernote notebook as an Evernote XML (“ENEX”) file. (Select notebook, Ctrl- or right-click to bring up menu, choose Export…)

2. Install YARLE and run it for every ENEX file. This will create folders full of markdown files and at lease one with attachments.

3. Move the folders of markdown files into your Obsidian vault (wherever you have stored it). Now Obsidian will show those notes there!

That’s it!

Now… it DID take a bit to figure out the various YARLE settings and what I wanted to do. If you install YARLE for the command line, Douglas Muth provides a script to help use the common configuration options.  I opted to try the graphical version of YARLE which required some different tweaking. I also had an issue where the graphical YARLE was not putting images into an attachments folder inside each folder… no matter how many times I changed the options.

But in the end, it all worked.  

I have the Obsidian app on all my devices, and, courtesy of iCloud Drive, they are all working off the same set of markdown files.

So… goodbye, Evernote!   You were super helpful at different times… when you weren’t trying to get me to use whatever latest pivot you were making.

P.S. I’ll note that someone else did the migration by using Notion as an intermediary. That may perhaps work for you, but I wanted to keep all my files on my local computer and not give them to yet another service.

Three Years Ago Today, Vermont Shut Down Due to COVID-19

Today I was wondering why “March 13” was pulling at the back of my brain as a date of some importance… and then I realized why.

Three years ago today, everything changed.

It was on Friday, March 13, 2020, that Governor Phil Scott issued Executive Order 01-20, “Declaration of State of Emergency in Response to COVID-19 and National Guard Call-Out”. It imposed visitor restrictions at hospitals and state facilities, restricted travel by state employees, prohibited large gatherings, and called up the National Guard to assist. The Executive Order did not itself shut down schools, but it directed the Secretary of Education to prepare for school closings. And only a few days later, all schools would shut down.

It concludes with this section that was in retrospect rather optimistic (my emphasis added):

This Executive Order shall take effect upon signing and shall continue in full force and effect until April 15, 2020, at which time the Governor, in consultation with VDH and DPS/VEM, shall assess the emergency and determine whether to amend or extend this Order.

How little did we know then...

The Governor would of course extend that Order… again and again and again...

Our lives would change in SO MANY ways.

And in fact we would come to divide our lives and world into “now” and a “time before the pandemic”.

 For us here in Vermont, that journey into pandemic precautions all began… three years ago… today.

Waking Up at Times Beginning With A "4"

For most of 50 years, I held very firm to the belief that the ONLY time I should ever see a time beginning with a “4” in the morning was when I needed to get up and go to the airport to catch an early flight. Otherwise, any time like 4:30am was just downright uncivil and hostile. I should be asleep at that time. I should NEVER be awake at times beginning with a 4.

And yet… here I am writing this post at 4:55am. 🤷‍♂️

What happened? Well, our dog got older! (And I might have, too.😉)

For some context, I have always been an early riser. Ever since I was a child.

But for the first 35 years of my life “early” was defined as 6:00am.

That was when I woke up. Never at times beginning with a 5, either. 6:00am or later.

I am also one of those people who snaps wide awake and is fully alert and ready to go. No “wake up time” needed. It’s like a light switch where I am no longer asleep - I am now fully awake. And… fully talkative 😀, to the immense annoyance of every roommate I have ever had, including my wife.  (The success of our marriage for 26 years so far is perhaps in part because I learned NOT to talk to her when she wakes up! 🤣)

And then our first daughter was born… and in a bit of karmic retribution, she had the same “instant on and fully talkative” characteristics as me, but she ratcheted the wake up time back to 5:30am! 😀

Suddenly, I was seeing times that began with a 5!

Seven years later, our second daughter was born and she continued the progression by getting up even earlier, closer to 5:00am!

And so it was for many years until they hit teenage years and flipped to wanting to sleep in later. (They are now 20 and 13.)

By that time, however, I was stuck with a body that had now adjusted to waking up in times beginning with a “5”.

Still, times with a “4” were only ever to be for airport trips!

Then, starting about five years ago or so, our dear dog started to wake up increasingly early and want to go outside. At times like 4:30am!

At 15 years old, she’s still in great physical condition, prancing around sometimes like she is MUCH younger. But… when a girl’s gotta go… someone has to let her outside… and due to the aforementioned “instant on” capabilities, that someone is… me. 

We’ve tried all sorts of things to see if we could get her to just wait until maybe a time starting with a “5”. We kept her up much later. We changed feeding schedules. We let her out very late in the evening. (Okay, which for us.. “very late” means 10pm 🤣)

Nothing worked. She still gets up sometime between 4:30 and 5:00 am.

So here I am! Wide awake, alert, enthusiastic… at a time beginning with a 4!