diff --git a/content/til/migrating-my-markdown-notes-from-obsidian-to-apple-notes.md b/content/til/migrating-my-markdown-notes-from-obsidian-to-apple-notes.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..166760f --- /dev/null +++ b/content/til/migrating-my-markdown-notes-from-obsidian-to-apple-notes.md @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ ++++ +title = "Migrating my markdown notes from Obsidian to Apple Notes" +date = 2024-03-03 + +[taxonomies] +tags = ["markdown", "obsidian", "apple", "pandoc", "bash"] +categories = [ "TIL" ] + +[extra] +toc = true +keywords = ["markdown", "html", "pandoc", "obsidian", "apple notes", "bash", "migrate"] ++++ + +So I wanted to migrate my markdown notes from Obsidian to Apple Notes. Apple Notes did not support import from markdown. I also wanted to maintain the folder structure. + +For every file I also wanted to maintain the title of the note. I wanted to prepend the title to the HTML file so that when I import the HTML file to Apple Notes, the title is correctly set. I did this by adding the file name (without the extension) as an `h1` tag to the HTML file. + +I did this using [pandoc](https://pandoc.org) and a bash script. Here is how I did it: + +```bash +#!/bin/bash + +SRC_DIR="/obsidian_notes" +DEST_DIR="/notes_migrated_to_html" + +find "$SRC_DIR" -type f -name "*.md" | while IFS= read -r file; do + # Compute the subdirectory path + sub_dir="$(dirname "${file#$SRC_DIR/}")" + # Compute the destination path + dest_path="$DEST_DIR/$sub_dir" + # Print the source and destination paths for logging purposes + echo "processing: [$file] to [$dest_path]" + # Create the destination directory structure + mkdir -p "$dest_path" + # Define the output HTML file path + output_html="${dest_path}/$(basename "${file%.md}.html")" + # Convert the Markdown file to HTML + pandoc "$file" -o "$output_html" + # Extract the base filename without the extension for the title + base_name="$(basename "$file" .md)" + # Prepend the title to the HTML file + echo "

$base_name

$(cat "$output_html")" > "$output_html" +done +``` + +I put the above script in a file called `convert_md_to_html.sh` and made it executable using `chmod +x convert_md_to_html.sh`. Then I ran the script using `./convert_md_to_html.sh`. This script will convert all the markdown files in the `SRC_DIR` to HTML files and put them in the `DEST_DIR` while maintaining the folder structure. Then I imported the HTML files to Apple Notes using the `File -> Import to Notes` option. This worked like a charm. I was able to maintain the folder structure and the notes were imported with the correct titles.