Notion

Connect

Press “Connect” beside Notion under Cloud on Exporter’s home. Sign in with Apple; your browser opens Notion’s page, where you pick the pages Exporter may read and allow access. Exporter asks Notion only to read. Back in Exporter, choose where the files go and press “Use This Folder”.

Notion’s token stays on Exporter’s server, sealed. Your Mac signs in to that server and never holds it.

Share pages

Only the pages you share with Exporter sync, with every page and database under them. To add a page later, open its ⋯ menu in Notion and add the exporter.dev connection; it arrives at the next sync. A page you stop sharing leaves your folder at the next daily check.

Choose items

The pick page lists every shared page and database, all ticked, with three tabs: All, Pages and Databases. Untick what you don’t want; its files stay out.

Where the files go

A folder right in your home folder, like ~/Documents, gets a notion-export folder inside it; a deeper one is used as it is.

• Pages: in the folders Notion shows them in, named by title: Projects/Plan Q4.md. A page with pages under it has a folder of its own name beside its file.
• Databases: a folder named after the database with one file per row, and the whole table beside it: Projects/Tasks/Write the plan.md and Projects/Tasks.csv
• Images and files Notion hosts: attachments/ in the page’s folder, linked from the page

/ and : in a title become spaces. When two pages in one folder share a title, the first created keeps it and the other takes the first 6 characters of its id in brackets.

The file

A page’s front matter carries title, id, created, modified, source_url and parent, the page or database it sits in. A database row adds its properties under their names in Notion, in the database’s order: text, numbers, dates, true or false, and lists of names. Then the title and the page as plain Markdown. A callout is a quote with its icon, a toggle is a details block, and colours are dropped. A link to another exported page is a relative link to its file. Times are in UTC.

The database’s CSV has a column per property and a line per row, oldest first.

Sync

Notion tells Exporter’s server about every edit, move and deletion. The server rewrites the files and tells your Mac, which downloads them, so a change arrives within minutes; Notion itself waits a minute or two before it tells. A page you rename or move moves its file and its attachments. “Sync Now” asks the server first; “Full Resync” writes every file again.

Exporter Cloud

The first 7 days are free from your first connect. Then Exporter Cloud is a subscription in the App Store: Notion on its own, or All Cloud for Linear, Notion and every cloud source we add, monthly or yearly. When a plan ends, syncing stops and your files stay. Thirty days later the server deletes its copies and the token.

Account

Settings › Account shows the email you signed in with. “Sign Out” keeps the connection for when you sign in again. Disconnecting Notion revokes Exporter’s access in Notion and deletes Exporter’s copies on exporter.dev. “Delete Account…” disconnects every workspace and deletes everything the server holds for you. The files on your Mac stay.

Command line

exporter export --source notion --dest <folder> writes the workspace’s files into a folder granted on the Command Line card. See the command line.

Problems and fixes

• A page is missing: share it with the exporter.dev connection from its ⋯ menu in Notion, check it is ticked, then press “Sync Now”.
• An image shows as a link: Notion would not hand it over, so the file links to it in Notion instead.
• The card says “Connect Again…”: Notion no longer accepts the connection, often because it was removed in Notion’s settings. Press it and allow access again.
• The card says “Sign In…”: the session ended. Sign in with the same Apple account and syncing carries on.