OMG I can't believe I reverse engineered Apple Notes with Claude Code. I can import everything from Apple Notes like folders, notes, images and everything. Also this is realtime, not sped up. Now everyone can migrate from Apple Notes to Grape.

Try for free

Apple literally allows it officially 😭 this is not reverse engineering

no there's actually no official way. it's not like notion you go to the settings and export your whole data with one click. the way i did is an actual reverse engineering of apple notes' database file. if you take a look you'll see how complicated it is. i tried to use apple script but it's too slow for thousands of notes so it's not scalable. can you export 2K notes with attachments and organized by folders in 2 seconds with apple script?

@kartik_builds This is slightly wrong. As of a couple years ago, you can export all of the data in your Apple account through their privacy portal at and that includes Apple Notes, which are exported as text files.

@kartik_builds yes but you need to wait for seven days. what i meant was apple notes doesn't have a button in the app to export your data the moment you want.

that's wild, the apple notes format is notoriously painful to work with. how'd you handle the embedded attachments? those tend to be the messiest part of any notes migration

embedded attachments are on your file system so you just need to get the paths from apple notes' database

oh nice, so you're reading straight from the sqlite db then? that's way cleaner than trying to parse the protobuf blobs. did you have to deal with any weird edge cases with handwritten notes or scanned docs?

yes i'm reading the sqlite file directly and it's way faster comparing to apple script. haven't tried the handwritten notes but there's no issue on the scanned docs. and embedded images, pdfs and voice recording working perfect.

it's a sqlite database. No reverse engineering required.

yes it's an sqlite database but apple saves note content as compressed protobuf blobs so decoding that binary format is the reverse engineering. just the importer script itself 1679 lines long.

Can you reverse engineer Darwin please?

i'm on it

that's pretty wild! been wanting to move my notes for ages. does it handle the formatting well?

yes i specifically created a note that have all the items like checklists, tables, images etc so it's basically you're still using apple notes in grape

Reverse engineering a native Apple format is exactly the kind of task where Claude Code shines — you can't just ask it to "build an app." You need it to dig through binary formats, figure out the schema, then build the importer. Pure agent workflow.

why do you use ai to write this man?

Haha fair call. English isn't my first language so sometimes my phrasing comes out a bit too polished. The take is mine though — been doing exactly this kind of reverse engineering work with Claude Code on production codebases.

@ozgrozer Another AI reply. Smh.

@ozgrozer Nah, just a non-native English speaker. But I get it, hard to tell these days.

This is actually really insane!

Why, Claude can just make me one too?

i used claude to build the entire thing and it took me almost 4 months so be my guest

Just pulling your leg man. Looks amazing well done.

appreciate it man

Wow

Never used Apple Notes and will not use Grape either.

what do you use? i'm in active development and if you'd like to see any feature i value your feedback.

People actually use Apple notes 🙃

it comes inside all the macs and iphones so i think it's the most used note taking app

what is that click sound it makes my ADHD go away

i recorded with screen studio

Funny thing is I store API keys for convenience on Apple Notes, please make this Open Source

the app is free to use. you can basically import your apple notes into grape and then export it to your disk.

This is what the migration looks like. AI reads any format now—vendor lock-in is becoming irrelevant.

exactly it is

Cool! are you considering making your app live sync back into Apple Notes database so it will continue to sync with iCloud and be available on iPhone notes app too?

no this is to save you from apple notes. join the revolution.

This is exactly why I build everything with migration paths from day one. Users get locked into platforms because export is an afterthought, not a core feature. Smart reverse engineering work - Claude's getting scary good at this stuff.

yes i add export option from day one too. i wish there was a universal data structure so anyone could be easily switch from anything to anything like apple notes -> notion -> grape etc.

Oh sorry I thought you had rebuilt Notes from a prompt

i'm building a brand new app, grape, that looks like apple notes and it's been almost 4 months. i share my progress daily in the build in public community.

I know you might not tell me how, but this is crazy. Did you access the database? I think it would be the only way to do it so quickly: read the local database and take all the information.

i kind of mentioned. so everyone knows that apple stores the notes in a sqlite file. but getting the data out of there is the hard part. but if i can do that anybody can do that.

But Obsidian 👀

this is faster

But @kepano has so many little amazing details in Obsidian that make it sooooo much better than Apple notes.

@kepano yeah it's a great app but not for everyone. i've actually used at least 10 different notes app including obsidian but ended up with apple notes. for some people simple is better.

@kepano For sure, lots of personal preference comes into play with things like notes.

@oskargroth What is Grape doing differently to make me switch?

@oskargroth ok so if you use apple notes it's basically the same experience. on top of that it has ai chat that can create, edit notes. semantic search where you can find notes with ai. voice transcription. here's a thread that shows some of the features of grape

@oskargroth Thank you for sharing 😇✌🏼

That's really impressive work on reverse engineering Apple Notes! Great job making it more accessible for people to migrate to Grape!

yes would you switch to grape?

Would go lifetime if sync would be included. iOS app somewhere?

lifetime plan only unlocks using ai tools with your own api keys. sync is in the monthly subscription plan bc i have to pay for the database, hosting, cdn so it costs me money each month. i'll be starting ios and android app next week after finishing some requested features. would you consider paying a monthly fee for sync? if so how much? i'm considering to add a cheaper plan only for sync so i need some input.

@ingoa_dev Yup, looking for iCloud for no cost to you, I don't do monthlies either. Need sync to iOS mobile, or it's on the shelf until then. Thanks

@ingoa_dev yeah i actually use apple notes on my iphone a lot so mobile apps and icloud sync are on the way. i actually don't expect making money right now. this is just the beta release of the desktop app. i just needed some feedback. it will make sense once the mobile apps are out.

@ingoa_dev Sounds good, will be watching for it. Have this other one today also on ProductHunt, which takes another path.

@ingoa_dev interesting. a lot of note taking apps in my competitor list.

Now we need ABetterNotes!

i just built the last notes app humanity will ever need

Congrats on “reverse-engineering” something that is widely available already and in the training data. There are dozens if not hundreds of tools out there that do this. But at least they open sourced it.

what a terrible ai

Right. Your detector is a bit off. Take a second and search github lmao. This is nothing new.

@keleftheriou Any plan to add a sync both way? I mean I would like to keep Apple notes on my phone, just as there is good sharing options for anyone who have an iPhone…

@keleftheriou that part can be reverse engineered too but i don't see a reason to do that. my purpose is to bring apple notes users to grape to have more features like ai chat, semantic search etc.

@keleftheriou I like the idea to work with grape on my Mac but having the notes back to Notes on the iPhone once they have been improved to be shared with other

@keleftheriou actually i'll start working on the iphone app as soon as i finish the requested features. then you can access your notes from all devices.

@keleftheriou Will great for me and fixing part of the issue. Only the sharing with someone will be missed (I don’t expect my teenagers having the application)

@keleftheriou i'll be adding a note sharing feature as well but it might take me couple of months to reach that stage. but yeah not everyone wanna install another note taking app. so i'll probably be adding more features than apple notes to capture some users.

👀

This is so cool. How much time did it take to make this?

if you're asking for the whole app then it's close to 4 months and the apple notes importer thing is like the last 3 days

This is genuinely impressive. The fact that it's realtime and handling nested folders + assets is the hard part. Most people just export JSON and call it done. Did you hit any weird edge cases with Apple's internal structure?

thank you ai

Ha, no thank YOU for making something actually useful. Notes migration is one of those boring problems everyone avoids - good on you for tackling it.

this is awesome! will give it a try

There's no moat.

i don't think notion or evernote can do this

Great app 👍

have you tried it yet? it's free to use for basic note taking.

Actually no. But I will trying it in today

Yeah but what if you pay the one time license and still need cloud sync?

you can kind of do that. i mean i use sqlite for the local database and you can change the database location. so basically moving that to a dropbox or icloud folder does the job. but some folks suggested an icloud sync for the lifetime plan so it's on the agenda.