I just upgraded my harddrive for my Macbook Pro mid-2009 running High Sierra to a solid state drive. My old harddrive is now in an enclosure and I'm trying to access my old Notes from there, I forgot to back that up. I never connected that laptop to iCloud, and from seeing other articles/answers, I tried to find the ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.notes but I could not even find this Library folder.
For curiosity sake, I tried finding it on my current SSD and at first I couldn't, but then I clicked Show View Options and added Library to the view. I then went back to the old harddrive folder where Library should be, clicked Show View Options, but adding Library to the view wasn't an option. Any idea where/how I can find my old Notes data?
Best Answer
If you didn't use iCloud, the notes are stored in: ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/ in a database file named NoteStore.sqlite
If you used iCloud, your notes are stored at:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/CloudKit/
To view the Notes you need an SQL app or typing sqlite at the command line.