Boox + Markdown
How do I export Boox notes to Obsidian or Markdown?
Updated
Short answer: Boox Notes exports PDFs and plain text, not Markdown. Sync the PDFs into your vault, or convert the handwriting to text and turn it into Markdown by hand or with an AI.
If you write in Margen, Claude can read your notes and give you each one as clean Markdown, ready to paste into Obsidian.
What Boox gives you
- PDF, by export or by cloud sync (Boox cloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive). Your ink, exactly as written; not text.
- Text, after converting a selection or a note with the built-in recognition. Plain text, no headings or lists, and with whatever the recognition got wrong.
Option 1: PDFs into the vault
Point Dropbox, Google Drive or Syncthing at a folder inside your vault and let Boox sync the PDFs there. Obsidian shows them, and you can link to them from your notes. You can't search the handwriting, though, and a PDF isn't a note you can edit.
A community plugin, Booxidian, watches a folder of Boox exports and imports them into the vault, with an optional AI transcription of handwritten PDFs. It's not ours and we haven't tested it; see the plugin page.
Option 2: convert, then tidy
Convert the note on the Boox, send the text to your computer, and add the Markdown yourself (or paste it into an assistant and ask for "this as Markdown, with headings and checkboxes"). Works for occasional pages. Expect to fix words, especially with quick handwriting.
Option 3: ask Claude for Markdown from your Margen notes
Margen transcribes every page you write on the Boox with a vision model, so there's nothing to convert. With the Margen connector in Claude (from Claude's connector directory, any plan), ask:
- "Give me my notes from this week as Markdown, one note per section, with a YAML header for date and title."
- "Turn yesterday's research notes into a Markdown note with [[wikilinks]] for the people and projects I mention."
- "Write my reading notes on chapter 5 as Markdown, quotes as blockquotes, my comments as bullets."
Copy the result into Obsidian. If you use the Claude desktop app with a connector that can write files to your vault, Claude can save the notes there directly; we haven't tested that setup ourselves.
Margen has no built-in Markdown export or Obsidian sync today. If you'd use one, say so in the early-access form.
Questions
Can Boox export notes as Markdown?
No. Boox Notes exports PDFs and plain text. You add the Markdown yourself or ask an AI assistant to format the text.
How do I get Boox notes into Obsidian?
Sync the PDFs into a folder inside your vault, try the community Booxidian plugin, or, if you write in Margen, ask Claude to give you your notes as Markdown and paste them into Obsidian.
Does Margen export to Obsidian?
Not directly. Claude can read your Margen notes and write them as Markdown for you; there is no built-in Markdown export yet.
Can the handwriting in a PDF be searched in Obsidian?
No. A PDF of handwriting is an image; Obsidian's search finds the words only once they are transcribed to text.