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I would not recommend investing in the iOS Notes ecosystem. There is no way to export these notes with their metadata and media intact without using iCloud. If you need a note-taking app, go with Joplin instead; it supports Markdown, has both iOS and desktop clients, and supports self-hosted syncing.

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You can get at them with AppleScript. I wrote a tool for that a while ago: https://github.com/dogsheep/apple-notes-to-sqlite

Which iOS doesn't support.

Of course not, no developer has access to Notes on iOS for export except 

I applaud the effort simonw put into this, it works great on macOS... the platform AppleScript runs on.

The shortcuts app can access the text from your Apple Notes on iOS. You can set up a shortcut to export all of your notes to files, Dropbox, etc.

You can connect iOS Notes with any IMAP server. This supports a reduced feature set (no embedded images, tables, or audio) but does allow for self-hosting.

Interesting. Did they add this feature recently? How do you set it up?

Embedded files (photos, video, audio, PDFs, etc.) and bullet hierarchies were the two things that I remember being the most trouble; you can copy bullet hierarchies from iOS Notes and paste them into another app, but they aren’t detected when copying the note via Shortcuts. Embedded files had to be manually saved. I think you could Airdrop notes to a MacOS device, but it would wipe the date created metadata from what I remember.

No, in fact it is available since iOS 4 (2010).

You just connect the account and turn on the notes synchronisation (right below calendar synchronisation).

I wrote python code to extract the notes years ago[1], but it's bit-rotted, so it no longer supports tables, raw stroke data, or the newer features like equations. Maybe I'll update it someday, but I'm not using notes at the moment and have too many other things going one.

https://github.com/dunhamsteve/notesutils

New term to add to the lexicon... bit-rot. I like it.

It’s been there for several years.

I just checked and my google account’s earliest synced note is from 2011. it shows up in the Notes app as a separate section from the iCloud one.

This is great until you edit your notes on IMAP from more than one app. Apple Notes, Outlook, Gmail, and others with access to IMAP notes will corrupt one another's entries very easily. Style is also very difficult to control in this setup.

Apple Notes is not intended for people who want to own their data and have control over export

And no formatting whatsoever.

I really wish Apple would revisit third-party server support with something more modern, such as a Markdown + file hosting backend (over WebDAV or whatever they currently consider the cool way of file sharing), but I'm not holding my breath.

> This supports a reduced feature set (no embedded images, tables, or audio)

Just tested and embedded images do seem to be supported?

("insert photo" -> add photo -> photo is stored as a MIME part on the note)

But for some reason the action center quick note create button doesn't work when your default notes account is not iCloud.

Which PM comes up with this? And what does a developer thing when they implement this?

I love Apple Notes for being easy and “just works” within the Apple Ecosystem. Easy to share with family, notes updated across devices, etc.

Markdown support is a nice addition and hope this makes it easy to transfer notes with other app faster and an intact formatting across the journey.

However, I use it as a starting entry point for my notes, which are mostly temporary, rough, and ephemeral. These notes are the ones I won’t mind losing and can walk out. Anything important or critical that is added here is eventually moved to a plain-text note (Markdown) elsewhere.

https://brajeshwar.com/2025/notes/

I just use it like I would a physical notepad. Throwaway notes, shopping lists, measurements, etc.

I use Obsidian these days, I found the switch from Apple Notes pain free. I still think Apple Notes is a great app for almost everyone. Not perfect but really good.

I went this way as well. I used to try and make all my notes in Notion. But found the lack of offline support and the mobile app very limiting. Then I tried Apple Notes with a framework called "Forever Notes". Obsidian does everything Forever Notes does but better.

From the article:

“Apple is working on supporting the ability to export notes in Markdown from Apple Notes, which is something third-party apps have supported for years.”

Am I misunderstanding or is that the feature you were asking for? If not then what does the article mean by export?

Not parent, but TBF Apple "working" on something means very little in most Apple rumors, and it doesn't seem to touch on iCloud independence.

That would fix the problem if it supported the export of indentation and attachments, but I would still never bother with a proprietary solution when a free-as-in-freedom solution already exists.

I’m still holding out for a phone I can use as a general-purpose computer, though, so take that for what it’s worth.

https://sixcolors.com/member/2021/01/export-your-apple-notes...

https://zapier.com/blog/export-apple-notes/

There are ways to export, definitely not as straightforward as other tools.

I’ve used my google account for notes for years. The earliest one looks like it was around 2014. Have you tried adding an email address from a platform that supports notes?

> There is no way to export these notes with their metadata and media intact without using iCloud.

You can have an Apple Notes folder backed by IMAP which lets you get at the notes as `multipart/related; type="text/html"` emails (including media). I use it on my servers for family-controlled email allow/deny lists.

(Definitely more faff to deal with than something like Obsidian or Joplin's Markdown notes though.)

Since when? Last time I tried in iOS 16, notes backed by imap were plaintext only.

Can't give a definitive answer but my allow/deny list parser has always used `MIME::QuotedPrint` through `html2text` to convert them from MIME'd HTML into plain text and that was last updated September 2021.

I've also got a test note from late 2020 which is also `text/html; quoted-printable` which suggests at least iOS 14 (I don't think the 15 alphas would have been out by then.)

Just a sidenote: you can use Git in iOS as well if you are brave enough.

E.g. with Obsidian your notes are stored into specific directory and it stores files as Markdown in hierarchical way. Then mount this app-specific directory to iSH and use git. Downside is that automatic syncing can be difficult since there is limited amount of time iSH can run in the background.

I've been using this app for years to export Apple Notes to markdown backups (no affiliation, just a user): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/exporter/id1099120373

I have the opposite experience.

I try other systems and then I end up wanting the simplicity of notes.

Unfortunately Joplin is too slow for a niche of short fast notes, but even then better to get another app without a lock in

From the article: "The feature would allow users to export text in the markdown format".

Agree. iOS notes is only good for throwaway thoughts or ephemeral notes

You’re missing out. It’s a E2E encrypted solution that works really well.

Does it rely on iCloud for that? And is the E2E only enabled for Notes if it's enabled in iCloud?

If so then the UK does not have E2E Notes.

It does not, although you can open notes in iCloud via a browser, and I’m not acquainted with how that functions in the UK (and if it’s available), mostly because I don’t do it.

It most definitely does. If you're using your gmail account as your AppleID. You can find all your notes unencrypted under a Gmail label called Notes

You didn’t choose to E2E encrypt them. You can find your unencrypted notes there.

https://support.apple.com/en-la/102537#:~:text=Open%20Notes%...

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