Moving your notes · Updated October 6, 2026
Get your notes out of Standard Notes
Standard Notes is encrypted end to end, so its export is a decrypted backup in JSON. A small free tool turns it into Markdown files.
| Official export | A decrypted backup: a zip with one text file per note and a JSON file of everything. On every plan. |
|---|---|
| Pictures and files | Not in the backup. Download attached files from the app separately. |
| Dates | In the JSON. Jimmy writes them into the front matter. |
| Best free tool | Jimmy. It is the one converter that turns Super notes into Markdown. |
| Time | Minutes. |
Why people leave
Standard Notes is encrypted end to end, which is its reason to exist and the reason it is awkward to leave: nothing outside the app can read anything until you ask it to decrypt. The complaints are about what surrounds that. The price, at $90 or $120 a year, is high for a notes app, and the free plan allows plain text only, with Markdown and every other editor behind the subscription. Its newer editor, Super, stores notes as a JSON structure of its own rather than as Markdown, and converting a library of Super notes back to Markdown inside the app has corrupted notes for some. And since Proton bought it in April 2024, people have wondered how long it stays as it is.
What the export gives you
In the desktop or web app, open Preferences, then Backups, and choose Download backup. Pick Decrypted. (An encrypted backup is one file only Standard Notes can open, good for getting back in, useless for leaving.) You get a zip holding a JSON file, which is the full backup that Standard Notes can import again, and an Items folder with a text file per note. A plain-text or Markdown note’s file is its text. A Super note’s file is the JSON structure the editor stores, which is not something to read; that is what the converter below is for. Tags are items of their own in the JSON, not words in the notes. Files you attached are not in the backup at all, only their names, so download them from the app before you go.
The easiest way
Jimmy is a free, open-source converter delivered as one program for Mac, Windows or Linux that needs nothing installed. Its Standard Notes reader takes the decrypted backup zip, writes a Markdown file per note, turns Super notes into Markdown on the way, keeps the tags, and with --frontmatter joplin writes each note’s created and updated dates into the front matter, where Skysa Notes reads them. It runs from a terminal, but one line is all it takes.
- Download Jimmy from its releases page. The file is named for your system, such as
jimmy-darwin-arm64orjimmy-windows.exe; the command below calls itjimmy. - Put the backup zip beside it and run:
jimmy cli "Standard Notes Backup - Tue Oct 06 2026.zip" --format standard_notes --frontmatter joplin - It writes a folder named for the moment it ran. Open a Super note that had a table or a checklist, and a note that had tags, and see that both came through.
- In Standard Notes, download any attached files you want to keep and put them beside the notes that mention them.
What to check afterwards
- Super notes. The conversion is Jimmy’s, not Standard Notes’, and complex layouts are where converters guess. Look at the notes you care about most.
- Links between notes and attached files are not carried by the converter; both are features of the paid plan that its author could not test.
- Archived and trashed notes are in the backup, flagged in the JSON. Decide what to do with them.
- The encrypted backup. Keep one too, for as long as you might want to go back.
Then bring them into Skysa Notes
Once you have a folder of Markdown files, the rest takes a minute, and it works the same whether you use the free app on one device or have storage connected.
- Open Skysa Notes. In the storage panel, open the menu (the gear, or the ⋯ beside a source) and choose Import a folder, then pick the folder the converter made. Import files takes a zip or loose .md files instead.
- The app shows what it will add and asks first. Nothing already there is changed or replaced; a name that is taken gets a number.
- The folder’s subfolders become notebooks, as deep as they nest. Every .md file becomes a note. Every other file, pictures and PDFs included, is kept beside the notes at its own path, so a note’s
still shows the picture.
Titles and dates. A note’s title is the title in its front matter, else its first heading, else its filename. Its dates are the front matter’s created and updated (modified, date created, date modified and lastmod are read too), which is why the guides favour converters that write them: a note without them is dated the day you import it. A tags list in the front matter is searchable. Front matter and the rest of the file are kept byte for byte until you next edit the note.
What renders. CommonMark and GitHub-flavoured Markdown: headings, lists, tables, task lists, strikethrough, footnotes, code, and HTML left as written. Not rendered: [[wikilinks]], math and Mermaid diagrams, and a note with reference-style links opens as raw Markdown. Callouts show as plain quotes. Files larger than 25 MB, and hidden files and folders (names starting with a dot), are left out.
On Dropbox there is a second way in: copy the folder into Apps/skysa-notes with the Dropbox desktop app, and the notes sync in. On Google Drive the app can see only the files it made itself, so use Import there.