Bring a folder of Markdown into River
Loose .md files come across as text only. Zip the folder and the pictures come too.
Markdown is the plainest thing you can hand over, and the one where the pictures most often go astray. A zip of Markdown arrives as ordinary notes. Date-named files become days by default — River does not ask first. River keeps one note for each day. If that date is already taken, here or in the same zip, the file arrives as an ordinary note. It is not thrown away.
getting your notes out
Zip the folder if you want the images in it. Loose .md files come across as text only — pictures sitting beside them are not looked up, and they are not packed into leftovers either. Once you are signed in, use Settings → bring your writing and choose Markdown.
A zip up to 500MB, or loose files up to 20MB.
what arrives
The Markdown, as ordinary notes or as days when the filename carries a date. Images only when you drop a zip that still holds them, within your plan's image allowance. Wikilinks stay as written.
what the export leaves out
Anything the folder does not contain. A graph, plugins, or a live vault are not in the files, so they are not in the copy. River reads the folder you handed over; the original stays where it is.
nothing goes missing quietly
Anything that cannot come across as a file is handed back to you. When the import finishes you get a leftovers file — a zip holding the actual files, with a short note against each one saying why it stayed behind.
Empty notes, and notes River already holds — say the same item is coming through again — are counted rather than packed. A matching title is not the same note. Extra writing for a day you already have arrives as an ordinary note, not as leftovers.
Download the leftovers file before you carry on. It's held for fifteen minutes after the import, and then it's gone. It lives in the page for that window — a refresh lets it go early — and it is never written into your browser's storage.
Pictures stay in the note on every plan, up to its image allowance. Free has 100MB of retained encrypted image storage; pictures beyond that come back in the same leftovers file, with the writing still in River. Paid has no ceiling on the total. Voice recordings come across on every plan. Audio in a format River does not support, or recordings larger than it can keep, come back in the leftovers file.
The same fifteen minutes is your window to undo. One tap, then a confirm, and the whole import goes to deleted. After that, the notes are yours, and can be deleted one at a time or in multiples like anything else.
start here
Write today, even if nothing has come across yet. The archive can come when you're ready.
Your own place to write, with your writing saved to your account.