Importer

This Obsidian plugin allows you to import notes from other apps and file formats into your Obsidian vault. Notes are converted to plain text Markdown files.

Get started

Install Importer in Obsidian → Community Plugins.

Import guides are hosted on the official Obsidian Help site. You can help contribute to the guides on the obsidian-help repo.

• Import from Airtable
• Import from Apple Notes
• Import from Bear
• Import from CSV files
• Import from Evernote
• Import from Google Keep
• Import from Microsoft OneNote
• Import from Notion
• Import from Roam Research
• Import from HTML files
• Import from Markdown files
• Import from Textbundle files (.textbundle, .textpack)
• Import from Apple Journal (HTML export)
• Import from Tomboy/Gnote (.note)

Developers

npm install
npm run dev      # build, copy into a vault, reload the plugin
npm test         # convert every fixture and compare against its recording
npm run build    # typecheck and build for release

Set OBSIDIAN_PATH in .env to the plugin folder npm run dev should copy into, relative to your home directory:

OBSIDIAN_PATH='/Documents/MyVault/.obsidian/plugins'

Tests

Each importer is tested by converting a real file and comparing the result with an output recorded beside it:

tests/notion/notion-testspace.zip           a fixture
tests/notion/expected/notion-testspace/…    what converting it produces
tests/notion/local/                         gitignored, for a file that cannot be committed

Run one importer's tests while working on it:

npm test -- notion

To record a new fixture's output, or update one after an intended change:

UPDATE_EXPECTED=1 npm test -- notion

That writes the output and then fails on purpose. Read what it wrote — git diff if it already existed — before committing it. A recording nobody reads is not a test.

Debugging an issue someone reported? Drop their export in tests/<importer>/local/. It is gitignored, and so is the output recorded next to it, so you can work against a real file without committing it.

Testing against a live API

Airtable and Notion's API importers have no export file to use as a fixture, so their fixtures are saved API responses. Those go stale quietly, so each has a check that asks the real API whether its responses still have the shape the fixture assumes. They skip unless a token is set in .env:

AIRTABLE_TOKEN=pat...
NOTION_TOKEN=ntn_...

These only read.

Testing against Obsidian itself

npm test runs the conversions outside Obsidian, against a small stand-in for its API in tests/shims/. To check that stand-in still agrees with the app:

npm run e2e

This imports fixtures through the running app — its htmlToMarkdown, its vault, its link settings — and compares what lands in the vault with what npm test recorded. It needs the Obsidian CLI and a build of your working copy installed in the active vault. It writes one folder and deletes it afterwards.

Contributing

Importer is a community-led project. You can explore pull requests and see the credits below for reference. The Obsidian team is not actively working on adding new import capabilities, but we welcome pull requests for new formats and improvements.

Is a format missing? You can help! See our Contribution guidelines.

Some issues have been tagged with #bounty.

Credits

This plugin relies on important contributions:

• @akosbalasko for Evernote import via Yarle (MIT)
• @daledesilva for Google Keep import
• @arthurtyukayev for Bear import
• @xheldon for Notion API import and Airtable import
• @joshuatazrein for Notion file-based import
• @polyipseity for HTML attachments
• @8bitgentleman for Roam import
• @p3rid0t for Microsoft OneNote import
• @mirnovov for Apple Notes import
• @wzs for Apple Journal import