I have used IOS phones for several years. Two things I have to be able to move to another phone are my iNotes (I have many hundreds of Notes), and my photos. Though I know I can move my photos off to a backup site. I still need to be able to move my Notes into a new Notes app that lets me edit and create more. Suggestions??
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As someone was once a very tightly integrated, and embedded Apple customer, this is very DOABLE, but it’s not PAINLESS… lol But if you keep in mind that you have to do it only once, it’s not terrible.
So you’re jumping from iOS to AOSP. You’re not just going to “move those”, especially Notes, via a drag/drop method. So you might want to start to perform a few searches on moving that content, what current apps provide a mechanism to assist, and think about your long game, and what your goals are.
Photos are easy. You can use a number of cloud providers. You can also pay for an account with Proton, load the Proton Drive app, and it will backup all your photos from your iPhone, to your Proton storage. From there you can access or do whatever with the Proton Drive app on your BraX3.
Notes… that’s another story. When I wanted to move my Apple notes, I wanted to make sure that I avoided any future issues with data portability, and avoid lock-in… meaning “in a few years” I didn’t want to have to jump through hurdles like this again. So I looked at products that provided markdown as their basis for note-taking. Markdown is pretty universal. This community uses markdown. So I can write a response in any markdown app, and just copy/paste it into here, and the formatting is pretty consistent.
I settled on Obsidian.
Apple Notes is like a tiny word processor. It’s not just markdown or text. At the time I migrated from Apple, I could access them through the web version of iCloud. But I could only save one note at a time. The notes lost all their formatting as well, like check boxes, etc etc. Maybe it’s changed now, IDK.
If you use a Mac, one route you might take is Obsidian. Obsidian has a community plugin that will pull Notes from iCloud and reformat them as markdown, and save to your local vault. This takes a few steps to setup, but then I believe it’s automated a bit.
There may be other ways, that others know about. But this is how I completed my detachment.
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I’m in similar boat - have been on Apple iOS for 16 years.
For Notes I’ve changed to Standard Notes (owned by Proton) as a temporary solution - and am laboriously copying them over (1 by 1 copy & paste then add tags), when I have time on my MacBook (laptop) and deleting from iCloud - as each is done.
I’m using the free version also, so no markdown just plain text, but has tags…
Doing that as I’m not convinced which solution to use longterm, and as my PC I have moved to Linux from Windows (and will eventually have Linux on my MacBook) I may ultimately go the self hosted NextCloud(?) route.
Otherwise Obsidian is a good choice as mentioned or else Craft or Joplin alongside Standard Notes paid version probably round out the 4 best options currently.
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Everything I had was Apple, phone, iPad, Macbook, also Linux. I was in the same boat basically since Apple created the first iPhone. Notes was a big thing for me as well as calendars since I shared both. I used the free versions of Joplin & Standard on my Pixel, Mac, Linux for a while. I didn’t like the way Joplin synced & just to get markdown and share a note on Standard seemed somewhat expensive. I settled on Upnote, I was able to export all my notes on Mac and import to Upnote with a small amount of editing. Its compatible on any platform as well. You can get premium for a small monthly fee but they offer lifetime premium for $35 which is the route I took. Also using Proton Drive for photos. Proton calendar works well too but getting those I share a calendar with to switch is the uphill battle.
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Thanks for the Upnote heads up - I hadn’t come across that before?!! Will definitely look at! I’m also a big Proton user.
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If it’s of any interest this is a list of notes apps I looked at with the odd observation - these were primarily for Linux but also was looking for ones that ideally had mobile versions (and ideally in many cases macOS and/or Windows apps to help with migration).
Not all may have Android versions, list is roughly in my original order of preference (for my needs) when I originally researched and created it about 5 months ago…:
- Craft - privacy/secure
- Joplin (highly recommend, but electron app so resource heavy, cross platform) - can sync via Dropbox, Onedrive or JoplinCloud. May not have good mobile version. - privacy/secure
- StandardNotes - privacy/secure
- Obsidian - privacy/secure
- SimpleNote (more minimalist, also an electron app, cross platform, have to create an account). Has mobile apps. Free sync on line. Very simple - no hierarchy for notes?
- Evernote (very rich and complex, electron app, have to create an account, not Open Source)
- Xournal++ (does handwritten, cross platform, open source)
- NoteJot (native app, looks good on anything, no sync capability, vaguely iOS Notes-like) - nor sure how notes are stored?
- Logsec notes app (replace Obsidian)
- appflowy (replace Notion)
- AnyType (replace Notion)
- Notion
- Notesnook
Others I discounted include:
- QOwnNotes (good features, native app, open source, integrates with Nextcloud, semi-OneNote like, UI not so good in some Linux DE)
- RNote (also does handwritten notes)
- GNote (more like a wiki, sync but no mobile app. Can sync with local folder, online folder or web storage).
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