Writing Notes as Markdown in Google Drive
Anyone who has moved note apps knows the truth. The hard part isn't the move. It's getting your writing out in a shape you can actually move.
You press export and a zip file drops. Unzip it: the folder structure is flattened, filenames trail 32-character IDs, image paths are broken, and tables have turned into blocks of HTML. It's unmistakably your writing, in a form you can't read.
The root cause is simple. Your notes were stored not as files but as rows in someone else's database. Export is just a function that reshapes those rows to look like files, and reshaping always loses something.
So do the opposite
Save the writing as a file in the first place. And save it somewhere you already keep things.
- Use Markdown (.md) — it will still open in Notepad thirty years from now.
#for a heading,**for bold,-for a list. The formatting sits inside the text as characters, so it reads even without a parser. - Put it in your own Google Drive — syncing, backup, version history, search and sharing are already handled. There's no reason for a note app to rebuild all of that.
Do this and the "export" step disappears, because you were never locked in to begin with.
What actually changes
Your writing survives the service. Note apps shut down regularly. Google Notebook, Springpad, Catch, Wunderlist — and Evernote through several rounds of restructuring. When your notes are .md files in your Drive, a shutdown is just an app you delete.
You can use other tools alongside. Open the same folder in Obsidian, edit in VS Code, run a bulk find-and-replace with a script, put it under git. No single app has to be good at everything.
No subscription is forced on you. Device sync becomes a paid feature only because the files live on that company's servers. When the files are in your Drive, syncing is already done.
Backups stop being something you think about. Drive's trash and version history apply as they are.
The downsides are real
Being straight about it:
- No relational features. Notion's database views, rollups and filters can only be imitated with files. If that structure is central to your work, this isn't for you.
- Weak real-time collaboration. Not suited to several people editing the same paragraph at once the way Google Docs handles it.
- Search isn't as fast as a hosted service. Past a few thousand files you notice.
If a note is writing, a file is better. If a note is data, a database is better. Most personal records are the former.
Fenex does exactly this
Fenex is a note app built for this one approach.
- Open it in a browser and connect Google Drive. No new account.
- Write, and it's saved to your Drive as a
.mdfile. The filename is the title. - Open the same address on your phone and the same writing is there. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app.
- Don't like it? Just stop using it. The files stay in your Drive.
Nothing is stored on our servers. Your writing moves only between your browser and your Drive. Even the token that keeps you signed in is encrypted and handed back to your browser as a cookie rather than kept server-side.
Something to try right now
Make a folder in Drive and put a single .md file in it. A plain text editor is enough. Then pick whatever tool you find comfortable.
It can be Fenex. It doesn't have to be. What matters is that the writing stays yours, as your own file.