Huawei Notes Exporter

| Message from the human: This is completely written by gpt 5.6 sol, it worked for me so I guess ill put it up. Highlight issues and ill get it fixed when I see it

A focused command-line tool for converting Huawei Notes .hinote exports into PDFs with the original document pages and clean, native vector handwriting.

It decodes Huawei's PENCILENGINE binary records directly—coordinates, pressure, pen width, colour, and point states. It does not trace the low-resolution preview images, so handwriting remains sharp when zoomed or printed.

Install

Python 3.10 or newer is required.

python -m pip install .

For development:

python -m pip install -e '.[dev]'

Use

hinote-export MyNotes.hinote

The default output is MyNotes.pdf next to the input archive. Choose another path with --output:

hinote-export MyNotes.hinote --output exported/chemistry.pdf

Replace an existing output and print machine-readable statistics:

hinote-export MyNotes.hinote --output chemistry.pdf --force --json

The package can also be run without the installed command wrapper:

python -m huawei_notes_exporter MyNotes.hinote

Run hinote-export --help for archive safety-limit options.

Python API

from huawei_notes_exporter import convert_hinote

result = convert_hinote("MyNotes.hinote", "MyNotes.pdf")
print(result.pages, result.strokes, result.points)

Use extract_hinote() when you need the decoded note model without writing a PDF, or decode_pencilengine() to parse a single Huawei stroke binary.

What is preserved

• The original embedded PDF pages and dimensions
• Native black and coloured pen strokes
• Pressure-sensitive line width
• Curves, dots, ticks, circles, and handwriting placement
• PDF metadata derived from the Huawei note title

Huawei sometimes adds blank note pages beyond the imported document. The export uses the embedded PDF's page count, so that padding is omitted.

Format support

The decoder supports the format observed in Huawei Notes hinote_1.0.4 archives:

• gzip-compressed .jhinote JSON metadata
• big-endian PENCILENGINE containers
• 0x00010000 and 0x00010001 stroke-record layouts
• 36-byte point records with start/move/end states
• embedded PDF page backgrounds

Huawei has not published this binary format. Unknown record layouts are rejected instead of being guessed or raster-traced. If a newer export is not supported, please open an issue with the Huawei Notes app version and the exact error message. Do not attach private notes to public issues.

Security

Archives are read in place and never extracted to user-controlled paths. Absolute paths, parent-directory traversal, excessive entry counts, and oversized uncompressed archives are rejected. CLI output is written to a temporary sibling file and atomically renamed only after successful conversion.

License

MIT