How to Install and Use Geeknote (Command-Line Evernote Client) on Ubuntu and Debian

As you may know, Geeknote is an open-source, command-line Evernote client.

The main features of Evernote, for those not familiar with the note taking service:

• A note can be a piece of text, a full webpage, a photography, a voice memo, a handwritten ink note
• Notes can be organized an sorted into folders, tagged, annotated, edited, searched, commented and exported
• Evernote provides both a paid service and a free one

Geeknote permits the users to create, edit or delete notes and search and filter notes. Unfortunately, it does not support adding attachments to notes or opening already existing attachments from Evernote, the Evernote SDK not being supported.

By default Geeknote uses Nano as default text editor, but this can be changes with other TUI or GUI editors.

Also, via the gnsync tool, folders containing text notes (only text notes, not attachments and images) can be synchronized with Evernote. Geeknote saves the notes locally, as markdown files (.md).

Installation instructions:

In order to successfully install Geeknote on Ubuntu, Debian and derivative systems, like Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS, Deepin, Peppermint, LXLE, Linux Lite, Robolinux and SparkyLinux, we need to install the required dependencies, clone the git repository, cd into the downloaded folder and run the installation script:

$ sudo apt-get install git python-thrift python-bs4 python-oauth2 python-html2text python-sqlalchemy python-setuptools
$ cd ~
$ git clone https://github.com/VitaliyRodnenko/geeknote.git
$ cd geeknote
$ sudo python setup.py install --record installed_files.txt

Warning: Do not remove the installed_files.txt, or you won’t be able to remove geeknote easily, when needed.

If you are not happy with Geeknote and want to remove it, just do:

$ sudo xargs rm -v < ~/geeknote/installed_files.txt

Usage instructions:

Now that geeknote has been installed, login with your Evernote account:

$ geeknote login

Now, I will show you a few basic geeknote commands.

How to create note:

$ geeknote create --title --content [--tags ] [--notebook ]

Example:

$ geeknote create --title "This is a note." --content "This is a note." --notebook "The note belongs to a notebook." --tags "test"

How to edit notes:

$ geeknote edit --note --content [--title ] [--tags ] [--notebook ]

Example:

$ geeknote edit --note "This is a note" --title "This is a note[edited]" --content "Edited note."

Search for certain notes:

$ geeknote find --search [--tags ] [--notebooks ] [--date ] [--count ] [--exact-entry] [--content-search] [--url-only]

Example:

$ geeknote find --search "note"

Delete a note:

$ geeknote remove --notebook [--force ]

Here is a working example:

$ geeknote remove --note "This is a note[edited]"