A plea to nvALT users

I’ve said this before, but I need to keep repeating it based on the number of queries I get. nvALT is at end of life, unless someone picks up the reigns and modernizes the (open source) code base. As it stands now, nvALT barely functions on modern OSs.

Fletcher Penney and I have designed nvALT’s successor, nvUltra, to work only with a folder full of Markdown files, which is the only way I recommend using nvALT. If your nvALT files are stored as individual Markdown files, switching to nvUltra is no problem, nor is switching to any other Notational-Velocity-like system. It will even work in Obsidian. But if you store your notes as a database only, you’re screwed when nvALT stops working for you.

So please, if nvALT is still running for you, go into Preferences->Notes->Storage and change “Store and read notes on disk as” to “Plain Text Files.” If your previous storage method was database, all of your notes will be immediately written out as plain text files, safe and secure and easy to port to a new (working) notes system. The files will now be in the same folder nvALT shows in the folder selector at the top of the Notes preference pane.

If your notes are stored as Rich Text Files (RTF), you’ll need to convert them to Markdown to make use of other apps like nvUltra, The Archive, or Obsidian. If you don’t know Markdown, don’t sweat it. It’s very easy to learn and it’s really just plain text, so as long as you know how to write, you’re already kind of writing Markdown. It’s only necessary to learn any syntax if you need to do things like create bulleted/numbered lists, add bold or italics, or create links.

So, again, please immediately switch your storage method to plain text files. The nvALT database format has no easy out for people ready to switch. I may try to write an importer for nvUltra (or generally to output Markdown), but I have not done so yet.

If you want on the nvUltra beta, email me through the contact link on nvultra.com.