Can I export everything?

Yes — everything, any time, in formats you can actually use. This is the core promise Harbor is built on.

How an export works

You press Export, we build the archive on our servers, and we email you a link when it’s ready.

So you don’t have to sit and watch a progress bar. Close Harbor, close the browser tab, shut the laptop — the export keeps building without you. A big library takes a while, and none of that is time you have to spend.

The email lands wherever you read email, and the link works from any device — an export doesn’t belong to the computer that asked for it. You’ll be signed in before anything downloads, so a forwarded email is never a copy of your notes. And if an export ever fails, we email you about that too. Silence is not a status.

You can start one from the Harbor web app, the Mac app, the Windows app, or the CLI. On the Mac, use Settings → Account — the Import and Export screen still builds exports on your own Mac for now, and the HTML one it makes leaves your attachments out. iPhone, iPad, and Android can’t start one yet — that’s being built.

What you get

Either way, what you download is a ZIP file.

• HTML — the complete copy. Every note with its tags and its files, ready to open in any browser. Unzip it, double-click index.html, and you’re reading your library with no app, no account, and no internet.
• Evernote (ENEX) — for moving into another app, including back to Evernote if you ever want to return. (It’s the same format we import — the door swings both ways.) The .enex file is inside the ZIP, and it includes notes that are in your trash — empty the trash first if you’d rather it didn’t.

One straight word about ENEX: it’s a partial copy today. Tags aren’t included, and importing the .enex won’t bring your attachments across. Every file is still there in the ZIP’s attachments folder — you’d just re-attach them by hand. We’d rather say that plainly than let you find out after you’ve moved. It’s a real gap and we’re closing it.

Exporting your whole account is also the GDPR copy of your data. There’s no form to fill in and nobody to email — it’s the same button.

Some things worth saying plainly

• Your attachments come with it. Every file you’ve attached — photos, PDFs, scans, the lot — is in the ZIP, in both formats.
• The link lasts three days. Then we delete that copy from our storage, deliberately: an export you made a year ago shouldn’t still be sitting on our servers. Start another whenever you like — or delete one yourself the moment you’ve got it safe.
• One export of each kind at a time. An HTML copy and an Evernote copy can both exist at once. Ask for a second of the same kind while the first is still building and you get the one that’s already going. Once it’s ready, Harbor won’t start another until you delete it or it expires. We build one export at a time across the whole service, so if yours is waiting its turn it says so rather than pretending to be stuck at 0%.
• Encrypted notes stay encrypted. We hold no key, so an export can’t include readable copies of them — the same trade-off that keeps them out of search.
• Export never gets locked. If your subscription lapses, the account goes read-only — but export and delete keep working. There is no state in which your data is in Harbor and out of your reach.
• You can script it. The harbor CLI covers the whole API, so a cron job can pull a regular backup without you thinking about it. See the CLI.
• No export tax. No fee, no throttle, no “contact sales.”

Our honest recommendation: export a copy once in a while even if you’re happy. A second brain deserves a backup you personally hold — and a notes company that encourages you to keep one is showing you how it plans to behave. (For what we do on our side, see How is my data backed up?)