simplenote-local 1.0

Sync notes to/from simplenote.com

simplenote-local

A command-line tool to fetch, edit, and synchronise local notes files with Simplenote.

Synchronising notes

Set the username and password for your Simplenote account in the environment.

export SIMPLENOTE_LOCAL_USER=[e-mail]
export SIMPLENOTE_LOCAL_PASSWORD=sekr1tp@ss

Then fetch the latest notes state from Simplenote.

simplenote --fetch

Notes are kept in $HOME/Notes by default, but this can be overridden.

export SIMPLENOTE_LOCAL_DIR=$HOME/simplenotes
simplenote --fetch

Send any local changes to Simplenote. Although notes are automatically sent to Simplenote when changed using simplenote --edit, this will send any changes made by other commands.

simplenote --send

Loop forever sending any local updates to Simplenote, and regularly checking Simplenote for updates to fetch.

simplenote --watch

By default this will check Simplenote for new changes every 10 minutes, and wait one minute after detecting local changes before sending (in case the same file is changed again in quick succession). These timings can be overridden.

simplenote --fetch-interval 60 --send-wait 0 --watch

Finding notes

To list all notes:

simplenote --list

The notes are sorted with the most recently edited files first.

To list only those notes that contain one or more words either in the filename, or in the file contents:

simplenote --list recipe rice

Words are searched as fragments, not whole words. For example, simplenote --list recipe rice would also find recipe notes that included the word "ricer" or "liquorice".

To list notes that have a specific tag applied, you can use either #tag or %tag notation. Hashes are more commonly used in social media, but in the shell it starts a comment, so would need to be quoted.

simplenote --list \#recipe
simplenote --list %recipe pie

To list all available tags:

simplenote --list-tags

Editing notes

To edit all notes:

simplenote --edit

Note: unless your editor is fast at loading multiple files, or loads them one at a time (like vi), this could be painfully slow once you have a lot of notes.

To override the editor your default VISUAL and/or EDITOR environment variables would specify:

export SIMPLENOTE_LOCAL_EDITOR=sublime
simplenote --edit

To edit only those notes that would match using the same rules as --list:

simplenote --edit key lime pie
simplenote --edit "key lime pie"
simplenote --edit %recipe pie

Editing is the default, so the flag can be omitted.

simplenote key lime pie

To edit an individual file, the filename must contain at least one space and the space(s) must be quoted in the command. The ".txt" extension does not need to be included.

simplenote "key lime pie"
simplenote key\ lime\ pie

To pipe the output of a command into a note, creating it if it doesn't already exist:

pbpaste | simplenote "cake recipe"

Notes:

• If the argument(s) match more than one existing note, only the first match will be updated.
• If no match is given, the note will be named after the first line of the output.

If the input looks like HTML, it will be passed through markdownify first. You can disable this step with with the --raw option:

curl https://.../cake-recipe.html | simplenote "cake recipe"
curl https://.../cake-recipe.html | simplenote --raw "html cake recipe"

Tagging notes

To add a tag to matching notes:

simplenote --add-tag recipe key lime pie

To remove a tag from matching notes:

simplenote --remove-tag recipe key lime pie

To remove a tag from all notes:

simplenote --remove-tag recipe

Removing notes

To move all matching notes to the Trash:

simplenote --trash recipe

To restore a note from the Trash:

simplenote --restore key lime pie

To permanently delete notes from the Trash:

simplenote --purge key lime pie

Pinning notes

Note: pinned notes appear at the top of the notes list in the Simplenote interface. In the local copy, it will sort those notes to the top when using simplenote --list, nothing else.

To pin all matching notes:

simplenote --pin key lime pie

To unpin all matching notes:

simplenote --unpin key lime pie

Publishing notes

To tell Simplenote to publish notes to a web page:

simplenote --publish key lime pie

To tell Simplenote to remove published notes:

simplenote --unpublish key lime pie

Collaborating on notes

To collaborate with others on notes, you can add a tag which is the email address of another user:

simplenote --add-tag [e-mail] key lime pie

To stop sharing notes with them, remove the tag again:

simplenote --remove-tag [e-mail] key lime pie

Note: There are two wrinkles with this implementation of sharing:

1. If that email is not already registered with Simplenote there appears to be no notification to them that they could sign up to collaborate with you -- that is, you either have to be sure they already use Simplenote, or inform them yourself to sign up in order to be able to work together on a note.

2. When you later unshare a note, the other account keeps a copy of the original note as it was immediately before unsharing, which may be unexpected behaviour and not what you want.

Show a summary of the metadata stored about matching notes

simplenote --info key lime pie

Historical versions of notes

Simplenote keeps multiple versions of notes as they are updated, but not all. The Simperium documentation states:

Simperium stores up to 50 of your most recent versions, and then every 10th version beyond that.

Simperium is the name for the service backing the Simplenote app.

Personal note: I have some regularly edited notes with 1,500+ versions where versions more than 1,000 back are not available; so there are more possible expiry thresholds for historical versions than stated.

To get a list of the recent historical versions of matching notes:

simplenote --history key lime pie

To get a list of all available historical versions of matching notes:

simplenote --history --full key lime pie

To show the metadata and content of an older version of a single note:

simplenote --show-version "key lime pie" 22

To restore the content and tags of an older version of a single note:

simplenote --restore-version "key lime pie" 22

Note: In this instance, the name of the note needs to be quoted to make it the first argument to the command, as the second argument is the version.

Local changes

To list known local changes to notes:

simplenote --list-changes

Note: this does not automatically fetch the current state of notes, so it is not 100% authoritative.

• revert local changes
• archive copy of all historic notes
• create a git repo of all historic notes replayed as individual commits