| Index your Apple Notes with FoxTrot [message #2021] |
Sat, 22 August 2026 15:42 |
mma165
Messages: 7
Registered: March 2025
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Junior Member |
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Apple Notes keeps everything in a SQLite database, so FoxTrot can't index it directly. I set up a job that exports all my notes to individual HTML files once a weekend, which FoxTrot then indexes normally.
https://github.com/maciverlab/apple-notes-export
How it works: a launchd job checks every 4 hours whether it's the weekend and whether it's been at least 5 days since the last successful export. If so, it copies the Notes database, runs it through apple_cloud_notes_parser in a container, and writes HTML and JSON into a folder. Point FoxTrot at that folder and your notes are searchable.
Requirements: Homebrew, Colima (a Docker Desktop replacement), and Terminal.app granted Full Disk Access.
Two things worth knowing before you copy it:
Full Disk Access is required, and it's not narrow. The Notes database is protected by macOS, so Terminal needs Full Disk Access to read it. That grant applies to everything you run in Terminal afterward, not just this script. If that's more than you want, grant it to a separate app used only for this job.
The container gets a full copy of your notes. It's a third-party image. I pin it to a specific version rather than latest, and run it with --network none so it has no network access at all. The parser doesn't need one — it just reads a local file and writes output. I'd suggest keeping both of those if you adapt this.
The repo has a troubleshooting section. The failure I'd flag: if the Colima VM has too little RAM, the parser gets killed partway through and you get Docker exit 137. Mine ran with 2 GB for months and silently failed every time. It needs 8 GB.
Paths are written as /Users/<you>/. The shell scripts use $HOME and need no editing; the two launchd plists need real absolute paths, so edit those before installing.
I use Notes a fair bit so this has been useful as I sometimes don't recall if some information I need is in an email or a Note and FoxTrot now finds regardless.
-Malcolm
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