Own your data: import, export, and portable backups in Reborn Notes

Reborn Notes encrypts everything on your device before it reaches our server. That protects your data, but encryption must never become a cage. If your notes are yours, you have to be able to walk out with them at any time, in formats other tools can read - and be sure nobody is holding a copy you cannot get back.

That is why import and export are not an afterthought in Reborn Notes. This post covers every way to get your notes out, every way to bring them in, and how each path keeps the Zero Knowledge promise intact.

Getting your notes out

Three plaintext export options put readable copies in your hands. All of them decrypt inside your browser - the server never participates.

A single note as Markdown. Open any note’s menu and choose Export as Markdown. You get a plain .md file with a small YAML header (title, created and modified dates, tags). This is the format every Markdown editor on earth understands.
Your whole vault as a ZIP of Markdown. In Settings -> Export & Import, Export all notes downloads a single .zip that mirrors your folder tree as directories, with one .md file per note. It is the fastest way to copy your entire library into Obsidian, a static-site generator, or just a backup drive.
A single note as PDF. From an open note, Export as PDF renders a shareable document entirely on your device (no server round-trip, so Zero Knowledge holds). One caveat worth knowing: the PDF is a rendered image of your note, so its text is not selectable - reach for the Markdown export when you need copy-pasteable text.

Export	Scope	Format	Where
Export as Markdown	one note	`.md` (plaintext)	note menu
Export as PDF	one note	`.pdf` (plaintext)	open-note menu
Export all notes	whole vault	`.zip` of Markdown (plaintext)	Settings -> Export & Import

A note on fidelity: the Markdown formats carry your titles, dates, tags, and folder structure. They do not carry app-only flags like pinned or starred - those live in encrypted metadata that has no place in a plain .md file. If you want a perfect, loss-free copy, use the backup below.

The portable encrypted backup

Plaintext export is great for interoperability, but there is a second question: how do you move your entire encrypted library - flags, folder tree, timestamps and all - to another account or your own self-hosted server, without ever exposing it?

That is the portable encrypted backup (Settings -> Export & Import -> Portable encrypted backup). It is the flagship “your data is yours” format:

Your notes are decrypted in your browser.
They are immediately re-encrypted under a password you choose - independent of your account, derived with PBKDF2 (600,000 iterations) and sealed with AES-256-GCM.
The result is a single .json file you can import on any Reborn Notes account: a fresh one on reapps.eu, or your own self-hosted instance.

The server’s view never changes. It only ever held ciphertext, and the portable file is ciphertext too - just locked with your password instead of your account key. The plaintext exists for a few milliseconds in your browser’s memory and nowhere else.

There is also a plain Account backup option, encrypted with your account key. It is a quick same-account safety net - it can only be restored on the account that made it. For moving between accounts or self-hosting, the portable backup is the one you want.

Pick a strong, memorable password for a portable backup and store it somewhere safe. Because it is derived independently of your account, nobody - not us, not you - can recover the backup’s contents without it. That is the point.

Bringing notes in

Import mirrors export, and it is where switching to Reborn Notes stops being scary.

Markdown files. Import from Markdown takes one or many .md files. YAML frontmatter (title, tags, created / date, modified) is read and stripped from the body.
A whole folder, including an Obsidian vault. Import folder walks a directory you pick and rebuilds its full subfolder hierarchy as folders in Reborn Notes. It skips .obsidian/ and .trash/, so you can point it straight at a vault. Optionally, it converts Obsidian-style [[wikilinks]] and relative .md links into internal note links (off by default).
A backup file. Import backup restores any of the JSON formats above. It detects an encrypted or portable file automatically and asks for the password. Restores are timestamp-aware: if your local copy of a note is newer, it wins, so re-importing an old backup never clobbers fresh edits.

When an import would collide with notes you already have, you choose the strategy up front: keep both copies (imported copies get a numbered suffix), skip duplicates, or overwrite existing. Overwrite keeps the existing note’s identity and creation date, so internal links survive, and it never touches your stars or pins.

How this stays Zero Knowledge

Every path above respects the one rule the whole app is built on: the server never sees your data in the clear.

Plaintext exports (Markdown, ZIP, PDF) are decrypted in your browser. No decrypted byte is ever sent to the server; it does not have the key to produce one itself.
The portable backup re-encrypts locally. The server stores and serves ciphertext, exactly as it does for a live note.
Every import re-encrypts on your device before anything is saved or synced. The decrypted “shadow” index that makes sorting and filtering fast is rebuilt locally from your encrypted data - never trusted from an imported file, never uploaded.

Import and export are, in other words, just the encryption boundary working in both directions.

Good to know

A few honest limits so nothing surprises you:

Notes are pure Markdown text. There is no separate attachment store, so binary files are not bundled into exports or rebuilt on import. Images referenced by URL survive as Markdown; images pasted as inline Base64 data are stripped on import to keep files sane.
Size limits: an import is capped at 100 MB total, and individual .md files at 500 KB. A backup password must be at least 8 characters.
Markdown round-trips lose app-only flags. Pinned and starred are not written to .md frontmatter; use a JSON backup for a fully loss-free copy.
The portable backup is additive. Importing the same backup twice creates duplicates rather than merging - it is a restore tool, not a two-way sync.
Obsidian is the only app-specific importer, but it barely needs to be: anything that can export a folder of Markdown (optionally with YAML frontmatter) imports cleanly through Import folder.

Want a local folder of Markdown to stay continuously mirrored into your notes, instead of a one-time import? That is a feature of its own - see Live folder sync.

New to Reborn Apps? Try them on the public instance - free, zero-knowledge, no email required. Or self-host your own.