Move from Notability

You need: your Notability notes, a Sempere vault, and some free space. Plan an hour for a large library (most of it waiting).

Sempere imports Notability’s own note files, from a backup. It does not import PDFs exported from Notability: those lose the ink as ink.

1. Get a backup from Notability

Notability can back up all your notes automatically to a cloud service (its backup settings let you pick one, for example Google Drive, Dropbox or Box). Turn that on and let it finish. The backup is a folder of .note files, sometimes packed into zip files.

Then put a copy of the backup where your iPad or Mac can open it: download the backup folder or its zip files from the cloud service into the Files app or onto the Mac. A backup split into several zip files must be imported together, so download all the parts.

2. Choose where the notes land

Imported notes keep the structure of your Notability folders: with All Notes selected in the sidebar, notebooks follow the folders, and each note is tagged with its folder names. If you would rather keep everything in one place for now, make a notebook such as From Notability and select it in the sidebar first; then everything goes into it.

3. Import

1. In the note list, choose Import from Notability… (on the iPhone, in the list’s ⋯ menu; on the Mac, also in the File menu).
2. Select the backup folder, or all of its zip files.
3. Leave the options as they are for a first run: Attachments on (PDF pages, images, typed text, recordings), Tag Notes with Their Notability Folders on, PDF Page Text on. Turn on Read Handwriting That Notability Did Not Index if you want older handwriting searchable right away; it makes the import slower.
4. Tap Import and leave the app open. You can Cancel; nothing is lost, and the next run continues.

With the CLI, on a Mac or Linux:

sempere import notability ~/Downloads/Notability*.zip --notebook "From Notability" --dry-run   # what would happen
sempere import notability ~/Downloads/Notability*.zip --notebook "From Notability"

4. Read the report

When it finishes, tap Show Report (on the Mac, File ▸ Last Import Report… later). It lists what was imported, what was not, and warnings. Expect a few approximations: dashed strokes become solid, shapes stay as strokes, and the links from ink to the moment in a recording are not carried over (recordings themselves are).

5. Check a few notes

Open some notes you know well: one with handwriting, one with a PDF, one with a recording. Search for a word you wrote. If recognition missed older notes, run Handwriting ▸ Recognize N Notes Now.

6. Keep going, or finish

• If you keep using Notability for a while, import a newer backup later. Notes already imported are skipped, so only new notes come in. A note you changed in Notability after the first import is skipped too. To bring in its newer version, use the CLI’s sempere import notability … --overwrite, which replaces the imported note’s pages and recordings, including anything you added to them in Sempere.
• When you are happy, keep the Notability backup somewhere safe for a while, and set up backups for your vault.

Notability is a trademark of its owner; Sempere is not affiliated with it.