From ColorNote to Joplin: A PowerShell Script to Export My Notes

I've used the ColorNote app on Android for many years, but I recently decided it was time to move to another notes app. I quickly hit a wall: there was no easy way to move all my notes. I could share them one by one and copy them over, but with hundreds of notes, that wasn't a realistic option.

I searched online and found a Java tool that could decrypt the ColorNote backup file. However, I didn't want to install Java just for this one task, and I saw that people were complaining about having to manually clean up the output afterwards.

So, I decided to rewrite it as a PowerShell script. With a little help from the Gemini code assistant, and after many iterations, I created a script that worked perfectly for my needs.

The script decrypts the backup and can export all your notes into a clean JSON file and, optionally and more usefully, a Joplin Export (JEX) file. As a bonus, I found it even correctly imported notes that were still in my ColorNote trashcan into the Joplin trashcan. Many other Note apps can import JEX files as well.

How to Use It

First, get a backup file of your notes from ColorNote. Go to Settings -> Backup and tap on the latest backup there, select Send and send it to disk or send it to yourself with one of the other apps, whatever you prefer.

Then clone the repository from GitHub to get the script:

git clone https://github.com/chadoe/Decrypt-ColorNoteBackup.git

Then, open a PowerShell 7 terminal, navigate into the directory, and run the script. The script will prompt you for your password (if you don't have one, just press Enter).

Here is the example command:

.\Decrypt-ColorNoteBackup.ps1 -InputFile .\my_backup.db -OutputFile .\decrypted_notes.json -JexOutputFile .\colornote_export.jex

Then simply import the JEX file in Joplin or any other Notes app that supports importing JEX files. Or alternatively process the JSON output file that contains all notes further into another format.

If you're in the same boat, hopefully, it can save you some time.

Get the script on GitHub: https://github.com/chadoe/Decrypt-ColorNoteBackup