Bring your notes in

All chapters

Getting started
Daily work
Find and understand
Research and publish
Protect your notes
1. Trust, safety & privacy
2. Sync & backup
Reference

Setup

To move notes from another app, choose File → Bring Notes into Header…. Header reads the export on this Mac, shows you what will come across, and writes nothing until you start. Header doesn't change your original export.

Already have a folder of Markdown? An Obsidian vault, or any folder of .md files, doesn't need importing. Open it as your vault and Header works on the files where they are (first launch, or File → Add Vault…). The rest of this chapter is for exports from other apps, or for copying a folder into a vault you already have.

Bring Notes into Header

Choose, Review, Import, Report

Open it from File → Bring Notes into Header…, or from the arrow next to the Capture button at the top of the sidebar, then Import Notes…. Both open the same page in the main window. You need a vault open first, because copies go into the current vault.

The first step, Choose. Drop something on the box, click Browse for a source…, or pick a card under Start from a known app. The Apple Notes card appears only in the download version, and a Recent migrations list shows below the cards once you have run an import.

Apple Notes needs the download version. Header reads Apple Notes by asking macOS for permission to control the Notes app, and the TestFlight version isn't allowed to control other apps, so its list has no Apple Notes card. Everything else on this page works the same in both. See Apple Notes below for what to do in the TestFlight version.

Choose. Drop an export, a folder or a single note onto the box, or click Browse for a source…. Apart from Apple Notes (below; download version only), the cards under Start from a known app open the same picker; they're there to remind you which exports work. Header works out what kind of export it is on its own.
Review. Header scans the source without changing anything and shows the counts: notes, folders, attachments, tags and links. Four boxes split the notes into Preserved (copied as they are), Converted (turned into Markdown, for example from HTML), Attention and Skipped. Below that are a few sample notes and, if anything needs a look, a list you can open, such as “3 items need attention”.
Import. Click Start Copy (or Open as Vault for a folder, below). Header works in the background.
Report. When it finishes you see how many notes were copied, how many were already up to date, and anything that couldn't come across.

Try this Export one Evernote notebook as an .enex file and drop it on the box. Before you click Start Copy, open the attention list to see what Evernote content won't convert.

Find it File → Bring Notes into Header… · Capture ▾ → Import Notes…

What you can bring in

From	What to choose	What comes across
Obsidian or a Markdown folder	The folder	Every `.md`, `.markdown`, `.txt` and `.html` file in it and its subfolders, keeping the folder structure, plus the other files there, such as images and PDFs. Hidden folders like `.obsidian` are left behind. You choose whether to open the folder in place or copy it.
Notion	The Markdown & CSV export, as a ZIP	Pages (HTML pages are converted to Markdown), their images and files, and the page hierarchy. Each database comes in as its CSV file plus a short note that links to it; database views and behaviour don't convert.
Bear	A TextBundle, or a folder of Markdown files	A `.textbundle` (or a ZIP of one) comes in as one note with its attachments. To bring many Bear notes at once, export them from Bear as Markdown and choose that folder.
Evernote	An `.enex` export	Each note with its title, text, tags, attachments and created and updated dates. Checkboxes come across as `[ ]` and `[x]`, and tables become Markdown tables.
Apple Notes Download version	The Apple Notes card	The text of the notes in your default Apple Notes account, folder by folder. Attachments are skipped.
A single note	One `.md`, `.html` or `.txt` file	That note. For a Markdown or HTML file, Include linked files… lets you choose the folder it lives in so its images come too.
Other ZIP archives	The `.zip`	The Markdown, text and HTML files inside it, with the other files as attachments.

Open as Vault or Copy into Current Vault

For Obsidian and Markdown folders

When the source is a folder of Markdown, the review step asks How should Header use this folder?

Open as Vault

The files stay where they are and Header doesn't rewrite the folder. It's added as another vault in the sidebar, after the same big-folder check as any folder you add. Use this for an Obsidian vault you want to keep using as it is.

Copy into Current Vault

The default. Copies land in an Imported folder inside the vault you have open, under the source's name, for example Imported/Thesis Notes/. The original folder is left untouched.

Exports from other apps (Notion, Bear, Evernote, Apple Notes, ZIP files) are copied into Imported/<export name>/. Apple Notes go to Imported/Apple Notes/<folder name>/.

What happens to the copies

So you know what to expect in the files

Links between notes in the same import, and links to their images and attachments, are pointed at the copies. A local link Header can't match is left exactly as written and listed under attention so you can fix it.
If a file with the same name is already there, the copy gets a number, such as Reading list 2.md. Nothing is overwritten.
When the export records when a note was created and last changed, the copy keeps those dates.
Each note copied from an export or folder gets header_import_source, header_import_source_id and header_imported_at in its frontmatter, merged into any properties it already had. They record where the note came from.
From Evernote, tags are written as hashtags on the last line of the note, with spaces turned into hyphens (“Q3 planning” becomes #Q3-planning). Attachments are saved under Attachments/<note title>/ inside the import folder and shown in the note. Encrypted Evernote text can't be decrypted, and embedded video, audio, web frames and forms have no Markdown form; each one is listed in the report.

Apple Notes Download version

Read through Apple's automation, text only

Click the Apple Notes card, read the short list of limits, and click Import from Apple Notes. Nothing happens before that click. macOS then asks whether Header may control Notes; allow it. Header reads the notes in your default Apple Notes account and leaves them unchanged.

Attachments don't come across, because Apple Notes doesn't hand them over reliably through automation. If you said no to the macOS prompt by mistake, allow Header under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation and try again.

The TestFlight version can't control other apps, so this card isn't there. Instead, export from Notes: on macOS 26 or later Notes can save a note as Markdown. Save the notes you want into one folder, then drop that folder on the box. An Apple Notes import isn't checkpointed: if you run it again, the notes are copied again with a number added to their names.

Big imports, pausing and resuming

Every finished note is checkpointed

A large import runs in the background. You can close the page with Close and keep working; that doesn't cancel it. Cancel stops after the note in progress, and the notes already copied stay in your vault.

The last five imports are listed under Recent migrations on the first page, each with its progress, such as “Paused · 120 of 400”. An import that was paused, interrupted or hit a problem has a Resume button and carries on from where it stopped without copying finished notes again. If you moved or renamed the export in the meantime, the button reads Locate…: choose the export again and Header checks it's the same one before continuing.

Running the same export again after an import has finished is safe. Notes that were already copied and haven't changed are counted as “already up to date” rather than copied twice.

Cancel is final. A cancelled import stays in the list as history but can't be resumed. If you start the same export again, the notes the cancelled run had already copied can be copied a second time, with a number added to their names. Delete the partial copy in Imported first if you want a clean run.

The checkpoints live in the hidden .header/imports folder inside your vault.

Clips from other browser clippers

Obsidian Web Clipper, MarkDownload and similar

If a browser extension already saves pages as Markdown, point it at a folder called Clippings at the top of your vault, or Inbox/Clippings. Header watches those two folders and adopts each new clip that arrives:

It downloads the clip's web images into an assets folder next to the clip, so they work offline.
It adds tidy properties: type: web-clip, source_url and canonical_url, a captured_at time, and adopted_by: header.
If you edit the clip while its images are downloading, Header leaves your version alone and tries again later.

Header treats a Markdown file as a clip when its properties include a web address under source, url, source_url or canonical_url, or when a Source: line with a link sits in its first few lines. Adopting is on by default. Turn it off to leave clips exactly as the other tool wrote them.

Find it Settings → General → Web Clips → Adopt clips dropped by other browser clippers · Header's own clipper is in Capturing ideas