Notesnook is an encrypted note taking application, however, it lacks any utility for manually extracting content from a backup if their software disappears. However, you can manually extract content from a decrypted backup that you take from within the app.

When you’ve made the backup, you’ll end up with a file that looks like 2025-05-14-15-18-25.nnbackupz. This is a zip file, so either rename it to .zip, or otherwise extract it as you would a zip file.

This will give you a file labelled like 0-plain-673c01bc01daf8e14cb4100ee2dc3ab1. This is a json object, with compressed data in the data key. We will take the value from this, base64 decode it, and gunzip it.

jq -r '.data' 0-plain-673c01bc01daf8e14cb4100ee2dc3ab1 | base64 -d | gunzip > unzipped.json

The resultant file is also json, from which you can see all of your notes, attachments, etc. Use jq for easier display if needed. For example, running cat unzipped.json | jq we see:

[
  {
    "id": "6824418092d0cfe28486185d",
    "type": "note",
    "dateModified": 1747206529528,
    "dateCreated": 1747206528997,
    "synced": false,
    "deleted": false,
    "dateDeleted": null,
    "itemType": null,
    "deletedBy": null,
    "title": "test",
    "headline": "test",
    "contentId": "6824418192d0cfe28487185d",
    "pinned": false,
    "favorite": false,
    "localOnly": false,
    "conflicted": false,
    "readonly": false,
    "dateEdited": 1747206529521,
    "isGeneratedTitle": true
  },
  {
    "id": "6824418192d0cfe28487185d",
    "type": "tiptap",
    "dateModified": 1747206529524,
    "dateCreated": 1747206529524,
    "synced": false,
    "deleted": false,
    "noteId": "6824418092d0cfe28486185d",
    "data": "<p data-block-id=\"oUZtgMIS\" data-spacing=\"double\">test</p>",
    "locked": false,
    "localOnly": false,
    "conflicted": null,
    "sessionId": null,
    "dateEdited": 1747206529521,
    "dateResolved": null
  },
  {
    "id": "6824418092d0cfe28486185d_1747206529010",
    "type": "session",
    "dateModified": 1747206529526,
    "dateCreated": 1747206529526,
    "synced": false,
    "deleted": false,
    "noteId": "6824418092d0cfe28486185d",
    "sessionContentId": "6824418092d0cfe28486185d_1747206529010_content",
    "localOnly": true,
    "locked": false
  },
  {
    "id": "6824418092d0cfe28486185d_1747206529010_content",
    "type": "sessioncontent",
    "dateModified": 1747206529527,
    "dateCreated": 1747206529527,
    "synced": false,
    "deleted": false,
    "data": "<p data-block-id=\"oUZtgMIS\" data-spacing=\"double\">test</p>",
    "contentType": "tiptap",
    "locked": false,
    "compressed": false,
    "localOnly": true
  }
]