Exporting Data from ColorNote Android

First: If you're googling this because you think about using ColorNote: don't! It does not support exporting your data to a free format. You have to jump through internal hoops to get it back.

If however you have used it in the past, here is how to liberate your data:

1. Install the android sdk so that you have adb
2. Enable adb debugging on your device
3. Connect to your device:
   1. Connect phone via usb cable
   2. Switch to usb mode (in case you were debugging over network before): adb usb
   3. Check if your device appears in the list: adb devices
4. Backup ColorNote app data to ./backup.ab, i.e. run: adb backup -noapk com.socialnmobile.dictapps.notepad.color.note
5. extract the file: dd if=backup.ab bs=1 skip=24 | python2 -c "import zlib,sys;sys.stdout.write(zlib.decompress(sys.stdin.read()))"= | tar -xvf -
6. Open databases/colornote.db in something like SQLite Browser
7. List all the notes: SELECT datetime(created_date/1000,'unixepoch') as created, datetime(modified_date/1000,'unixepoch') as modified,note FROM notes ORDER BY created
8. Export as CSV
9. Try this script to convert to org-mode headlines

Caveats:

• I have a few entries with weird json/binary blobs

• Dates might be in UTC (?)

Instructions based on http://android.stackexchange.com/a/92756 and http://stackoverflow.com/a/17876731.