![evernote-end.PNG screenshot of an iPad screen with the Evernote icon in the upper left and a dialog box in the middle saying "Remove Evernote?"](https://lodestar.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341bfc6e53ef02b7517611f0200b-pi)
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 workflowā¦ so much so that I became a paying customer back in 2011 or so.
Today, March 13, 2023, I uninstalled it from my devices.
Iām done.
Itās 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. Andā¦ 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 itā¦ and have the result live on inside of Evernote, where it could then be tagged and further annotated.
Pretty much every single screenshot Iāve taken across my blogs in the past 10+ years has been done with Skitch.
I stayed with Evernote through all their various pivotsā¦ getting more annoyed each time they did something new. No, I didnāt want Chat to be everywhereā¦ no, I didnāt want collaboration pieces - Iām the only user of my Evernote account! No, I didnāt 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 emergedā¦ and getting into a bit of āanalysis paralysisā.
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 ownersā¦ 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:
- IāM NOT LOCKED IN TO A PROPRIETARY FORMAT!
- Iām not LOCKED IN to a proprietary user interface.
- Iām 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 donāt 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 Iāve 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 centralizedā¦ 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 āObsidian Syncā service ā¦ and I might choose to use that if I see issues with syncing via iCloud. But the point is I HAVE CHOICES, which I didnāt 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 donāt like what theyāre doing, I can just stop using the app. The āvaultā 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 (āENEXā) file. (Select notebook, Ctrl- or right-click to bring up menu, choose Exportā¦)
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!
Thatās it!
Nowā¦ 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 folderā¦ 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.
Soā¦ goodbye, Evernote! You were super helpful at different timesā¦ when you werenāt trying to get me to use whatever latest pivot you were making.
P.S. Iāll 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.