[Old method] How to sync Onyx Boox Note Air 2 handwritten notes with your PC (with OCR)

Note: This story offers steps for the old notes syncing method. I’ve recently come up with a more efficient method, which I’ve described in another story on my Medium.

This quick guide offers a somewhat hacky but easy way to make Onyx Boox Note Air 2 automatically sync handwritten notes with your PC and make them searchable on all your devices with best-in-class Google OCR capabilities. Jump right in to learn how to do it and get the most of your device.

• The steps detailed in this article work on Windows PCs but most likely the integration is also possible on MacOS. Let me know to confirm.

My story

Onyx Boox Note Air 2 is an amazing device but was not my first choice when looking for an e-ink note-taking tablet. I was kinda torn between it, the Remarkable 2, and Supernote X6. Each of these devices was great in its own way, but also lacked certain capabilities I wanted. And what I wanted were just two things:

• Backlight for reading in bed
• Ability to automatically sync notes across all your devices and make them searchable (OCR) without having to convert them to text first. I believe that not being able to search through your handwritten notes completely defeats the purpose of owning an e-ink note-taking device — without it, it’s just a seriously overpriced (digital) notepad.

Anyway, these were my initial candidates for a note taking tablet:

• Remarkable 2, which offers superior writing experience but has no backlight or possibility to search through handwritten notes. But most importantly, owning the device forces you to subscribe to the Connect service to unlock all its capabilities. This was ultimately a deal-breaker for me, so I started looking for other options.
• Supernote A6 (or A5), which is almost a perfect device in many ways but offers no OCR capabilities (for now), and no backlight. Another deal-breaker.
• Onyx Boox Note Air 2 was what I ultimately went for, but it was more of a compromise than a fully satisfying decision. On the plus side, the device has backlight and there are many other things going for it, including incredible flexibility. Also, it runs Android, and that opens many doors. Like the other two devices, it did not completely satisfy my needs, but enabled a bit of freedom to try to experiment and get what I needed.

Here’s what I came up with. The process is long and a bit hacky, but quite easy. If I could do it, so can you! Here are the steps:

How to make Onyx Boox Note Air 2 automatically sync handwritten notes with Google Drive and Google Photos

Step 1. Connect the Air 2 to Dropbox

You’ll need: A DropBox account (FREE)

Create your Dropbox account if you don’t have one. The free version comes with 2GB of cloud storage space — this should be more than enough for handwritten notes.

Next, open the Notes tab on the Boox Air 2 and click the menu button in the top-right corner. Select Sync settings.

In the next screen, click Manage next to Export to other accounts.

Next, click Bind next to Dropbox sync. You will be sent to the browser to log into your Dropbox account. Follow the instructions on the screen and click Allow when prompted.

Also, you can enable the All notes are automatically synced to ONYX cloud option.

This step will add automatic syncing of your notes to your Dropbox account. Note Air 2 syncs notes automatically upon closing a note — no further action is needed.

• The notes are saved to the Dropbox/Applications/onyx-knote/
  noteair2-notepads folder.

Step 2. Enable Dropbox automation for PDFs

Open your Dropbox account in your PC browser. There are some settings we need to adjust. Go to the Dropbox/Applications/onyx-knote/ folder and click the three dots icon next to the noteair2-notepads folder. Click Add automation.

There, select Choose an image format to convert files to.

Next, select All supported file types and Save as: JPG (or PNG, it doesn’t really matter).

This step basically enables automatic conversion of all the files in the Dropbox/Applications/onyx-knote/noteair2-notepads folder to images.

• Each PDF file in the folder will be automatically converted to an image file of the same name (JPG or PNG).
• If a note has more than one page, the JPG or PNG images will be automatically saved in respective subfolders of the noteair2-notepads folder.

Step 3. Install Dropbox for Windows

Install the Dropbox app for Windows. This will give you convenient access to the Dropbox/Applications/onyx-knote/noteair2-notepads folder from your PC.

To make things even easier, you can also add the noteair2-notepads folder to the Quick access menu in Windows Explorer. It will then display in the left pane.

Step 4. Install Google Drive for Windows

You’ll need: Google Drive

If you haven’t been living under a stone for the past two decades, chances are you have a Google account. Download and install Google Drive for Windows.

Right-click the Google Drive icon in the Windows tray menu. Click the gear icon and select Preferences.

Step 5. Make Google Drive sync the Air 2 Dropbox folder

Click Add folder to make Google Drive sync the noteair2-notepads folder. The address in Windows should be something like:

C:\Users\YourUserName\Dropbox\Applications\onyx-knote\noteair2-notepads

You can choose to sync your notes with Google Drive or Google Photos, or both.

That’s it! Dropbox and Google Drive are now sharing the same folder.

Accessing your notes on Google Drive

Go to Google Drive in your browser. Click Computers and then My Laptop

and then, voila — your noteair2-notepads folder!

Accessing your notes on Dropbox

Now, your Note Air 2 notes can also be accessed by accessing the Dropbox/Applications/onyx-knote/noteair2-notepads folder on Dropbox.

Accesssing your notes on your PC

Of course, your Note Air 2 notes are also stored as PDFs and JPGs (or PNGs) in the C:\Users\YourUserName\Dropbox\Aplikacje\onyx-knote\noteair2-notepads folder.

Searching through your handwritten notes

Google has great OCR search, which gives you the amazing possibility to find your handwritten notes using keywords typed in the Google Drive or Google Photos searchbox.

This is exactly the feature I was missing!

PLEASE NOTE:

• Make sure both Google Drive and Dropbox app start with your system and always run in the backgroud to make sure the syncing process works.
• Note Air 2 syncs its PDF notes to Dropbox and updates the PDF files every time you edit the note. However, if you delete a note on Note Air 2, the PDF and JPG files that Dropbox converted are not deleted from Dropbox.

Let me know if this guide helped by clapping, and good luck!