Migrating from another app

Already keep notes in Obsidian, Bear, Ulysses, Notion, Evernote, Roam, Logseq, iA Writer, or Apple Notes? Lettuce imports them into a vault in one pass — converting each app’s Markdown quirks into plain, portable Markdown and copying your attachments along the way. Your originals are never touched; import only reads the source.

Two ways to do it

• In the app: File ▸ Import… opens a wizard — pick the app you’re coming from, point it at the export (or, for Apple Notes, just let it read the app), and review the report.

• From the terminal: the lettuce import command, which is the better choice for large libraries and for scripting. Full reference: CLI cookbook/12 lettuce import.

Getting an export out of each app

Most apps don’t store notes as plain Markdown, so first produce an export Lettuce can read:

• Obsidian — already a folder of .md. Point the importer straight at your vault folder.

• Bear — File ▸ Export Notes… → Markdown (Textbundle keeps images). Or point the importer at Bear’s live database.sqlite.

• Ulysses — select your sheets/groups → File ▸ Export… → Text → Markdown (or a .textbundle/.textpack to keep images).

• iA Writer — your documents folder, or a .textbundle/.textpack export.

• Notion — Settings ▸ Export → Markdown & CSV. Import the downloaded .zip directly.

• Evernote — select notes → File ▸ Export… → .enex. (Needs pandoc: brew install pandoc.)

• Roam / Logseq — export the graph as Markdown; import the folder.

• Apple Notes — nothing to export; the importer reads the app over AppleScript (it’ll ask for permission the first time). (Needs pandoc.)

A safe first run

Always dry-run first — it reads everything and prints a report without writing:

lettuce import --from obsidian ~/ObsidianVault --vault ~/Notes --dry-run

The report tells you how many notes and attachments would come over, and flags anything that needs a human eye (a Dataview block, a broken reference). Happy with it? Run it again without --dry-run.

Importing into a vault that already has notes is safe: a name clash lands as Note 2.md rather than overwriting, and existing attachments are kept.

After importing

lettuce lint ~/Notes

lint reports unresolved links, orphans, and other hygiene issues — a quick way to confirm everything came across and links still resolve. Then open the vault in Lettuce (File ▸ Open Folder) to browse it with backlinks and the graph.

Related

• CLI cookbook/12 lettuce import — every flag, source, and exit code

• Getting started/02 Your first vault — if you’d rather start fresh

• Core concepts/04 Wikilinks, backlinks, and the graph — what your links become