How to Back Up and Restore Your Site Notes

Notes Wrangler writes every note into the browser profile, which is fast and private and has one weakness worth planning around. The profile is not an archive. A full Chrome reset, a corrupted profile, a reinstall of the operating system or a new laptop takes the notes with it, and nothing in the browser argues about the decision.

Two tools exist for this. Export writes your whole library to a file you keep, and import puts that file back. Sync is the third option, which carries notes to a second device on an hourly schedule, and is covered separately in the guide to syncing site notes across devices.

The Short Answer

Open the Settings page, press Export as JSON and keep the file somewhere outside the browser, such as a documents folder or a drive you already trust. To restore, install the extension, press Import JSON in the same place and choose that file. Notes merge rather than overwrite, matched by note id, and the newer update time wins for any note present in both sets.

What the JSON File Actually Contains

A backup is only useful if you can judge what it holds. Every note in the file carries:

• Its identity. A stable note id, which is what lets import merge instead of duplicating.
• Its place. Whether the note is tied to one site or is a global note shown everywhere.
• Its content. Title and body text in full, up to the note size limit.
• Its state. Pinned, locked and trash flags, so a restore returns the same arrangement.
• Its history. Created and updated timestamps, which order the list and settle merges.

The file is plain JSON, so any text editor will open it and any tool can read it. Nothing in it is tied to a device that no longer exists.

Export as MD When You Want Something Readable

Export as MD writes the same library as one Markdown file, with each note as a heading, the site and day beneath it and the body below that. It skips anything sitting in Trash, because a readable file is for reading.

Markdown is the format other apps expect. The Markdown export guide covers moving the file into Notion, OneNote, Obsidian or Joplin, but the file works anywhere Markdown is understood, which includes every plain text editor worth the name.

Restoring After a Reset, a Reinstall or a New Machine

1. Install Notes Wrangler from the Chrome Web Store on the machine you want the notes on.
2. Open Settings from the side panel, and unlock the yearly plan if this is a fresh install, because import is a paid feature.
3. Press Import JSON and choose your backup file.
4. Open the side panel and check the list. Notes appear under the site they belong to, and global notes appear everywhere.

Import merges by note id. A note that exists only in the file arrives. A note that exists in both is taken from whichever version has the newer update time, so an older backup cannot silently roll back an edit you made afterwards.

Trash and the Thirty Day Window

Deleting a note moves it to Trash, where it stays for 30 days and can be restored with one click. That window is a second kind of backup, and it survives a mistake rather than a machine failure. An hourly cleanup removes notes once they pass the 30 days, and Empty trash clears them immediately.

The two mechanisms answer different problems. Trash recovers a note you deleted yesterday. A JSON file recovers every note on a machine that will not boot.

What Sync Changes About Backing Up

With a sync key saved, notes move to a private workspace every hour while Chrome is running, so a second device already holds the library. That removes most of the situations where an export would have saved you, because losing one browser profile no longer loses the notes.

It does not remove the export. A synced workspace is reachable by anyone holding the key, it disappears with the key, and it keeps nothing once a plan has lapsed long enough to lock. A file in your own folder answers both, which is why the honest arrangement is a key for the everyday case and a periodic export for the archive case.

A Routine That Works

• Export before a browser reset, a profile change or an uninstall, which are the moments with a known deadline.
• Export monthly and name the file by date, so the newest one is obvious at a glance.
• Keep one copy outside the machine whose notes it describes, so a failed drive does not take both.
• Open one exported file in a text editor once in a while, so you discover a broken habit before you need the file.

Frequently Asked Questions

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