Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts
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Yes, Markdown has disadvantages, and a few rough edges for uses as the format for editors et al, but there are two very big advantages and/or sideffects of it's widespread use: (1) it's cleartext and therefore very good as a measure against vendor lock-in and (2) it has, to some extent, dampened the rampant "not-invented-here"-esqe tendency to use proprietary formats. Even in open-source apps, proprietary formats make it hard for non-dev users to get their stuff out. If it's markdown (or at least supports markdown export) from the beginning, at least you know you can take your data with you.
That GitHub used it as a "native" format everywhere from the beginning (as far as I remember), probably helped Markdown become at least as popular (or maybe even more) as GitHub itself.
Then everyone and their mother started doing static blogs, and since people already wrote their READMEs and issue comments with Markdown, I guess it was natural to want to write your blogposts with Markdown too, just like Gruber.
My company is on Teams and I regularly use Markdown in my messages, though I still struggle to remember that I have to use underscores not asterisks for italics.
As for Teams, it looks like it’s much closer to Markdown (uses the same idiosyncratic/stupid link syntax), but still significantly incompatible even if they call it that. And my guess (as a non-user) is that it’s just an input method immediately converted to HTML or similar, not retained as text. So in that way it’s not Markdown either.
It helps that Jekyll, one such static blog, was also pushed by GitHub back in the day.
Like with WordPerfect, there are people who get great utility (attorneys in WP, developers with Markdown), but 80-95% of people don’t get anything out of it.
It’s also one of those things where the constraints are an advantage. Markdown is great for internet facing text content, while many aspects of the mainstream wysiwyg editors are really descended from solutions for placing text on paper.
Just because I can’t fix my car doesn’t mean I want an unfixable car.
There’s no free lunch. On the flip, that user wants the complex features of the platform, and exposing them to a markup language takes elegant markdown and turns it into html or ooxml.
Lawyer here: I loved WordPerfect (for DOS) because of Reveal Codes and its easy keystroke macros, which let me write an Emacs keyboard emulator for it. (Yes, I eventually did one for Microsoft Word for Windows, which I use to this day.)
Unfortunately there’s no realistic solution to the lock-in, so wrestling with broken paragraph formatting, mismatched text sizes, auto-numbering errors, etc at 2am before a client deadline remains the norm. One of the most frustrating parts of the job.
I write stories and everyone uses Word documents for editing.
I was on a project and complained heavily that we were not using styles,. The complaints got my manager to state that another person would do all the formatting. Of course the other person left befor the end and I had to do all the formatting.
Paste additions to the middle of a numbered list from legacy documents that break the number sequence and use custom fonts altar create weird problems? Sure.
Allow sociopaths to format text using a series of invisible text boxes? Sure.
Decide to randomly lose the names of editors and contributors? Sure.
Markdown is good enough for most of the documentation that software engineers do (other than diagrams), they already have to know it, and I don't want yet-another-markup-language to be a barrier to capturing and communicating institutional knowledge.
I also tell people that, if you're new to Markdown, even a plain text approximation that doesn't quite format correctly is strongly encouraged, so long as they capture the info somewhere accessible. I'll even offer to cheerfully fix the missing/bad Markdown, so that we have working docs and people can learn the very few parts of Markdown they missed; it's really not much.
(I personally have heavily used many much-much better technical documentation systems, and helped develop a WYSIWYG-ish SGML-based one professionally, but just using Markdown is a no-brainer right now. There are much more important things I want people learning and doing, than N different ways of minimally formatting documentation in N different places.)
Works fine with some help https://mermaid.live/ https://github.blog/developer-skills/github/include-diagrams...
So lists look exactly how you would expect lists to look like if you were writing it on a piece of paper.
Italic/Bolds are surrounded by /* which convey emphasis even in plaintext.
Headings prefixed by # is a reasonable way to depict headings in plaintext and convey the intention immediately even if you don't know Markdown.
Also covered by AsciiDoc.
"Compare AsciiDoc and Markdown": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27744509
There's little benefit to it as an input system on iOS/iPadOS (likely the dominant platforms for Notes) where formatting menus are just as close as `#` and `_` characters.
Several Markdown rules wouldn't make sense in the context of Notes. e.g. "end a line with two or more spaces then press return to create a <br>", which was designed to accommodate manually hard-wrapped text that Notes users likely don't want. Apple would have to follow something like CommonMark (feels unlikely) or implement their own Apple-flavoured Markdown, leaving you to learn what's supported and discover the quirks — kind of like its partial implementation of vim input in Xcode.
Popular Markdown apps seem to have converged on 'edit on line focus, preview on line blur', which is surely what the Notes app would do, because modal editing with preview and edit modes feels un-Appleish. 'Preview on line blur' _is_ nicer than a separate preview mode if you're a Markdown power user, but it still leaves many quirks you have to learn. (Just today I wrote, '# Thoughts on C#' in Obsidian, which reads ok with the cursor on that line until I pressed enter and the preview became, 'Thoughts on C'. Leaving me to learn I was supposed to know to write '#Thoughts on C\#' in the edit mode.)
- If you begin writing a bold word, but want to delete the first character, the style is reset.
- If you’re writing a list and you want to exit out of it, every editor has a different weird convention of doing that.
- I can’t even begin to describe the amount of broken behavior that is entering code in MS Teams (does Microsoft use Slack internally?)
There are some innovative ideas to solve this, like Bike [^1], but nobody goes to the effort of implementing them. So the easiest, most compatible and most intuitive solution are formatting characters like in Markdown.
What Apple seems to be doing with Notes—embracing Markdown syntax but not treating it as a source format—feels like a pragmatic move. It acknowledges Markdown’s familiarity without overcommitting to it as a canonical format. That distinction matters: many people like typing emphasis or `code`, but few need or want to version-control or export that exact syntax. It’s the gesture of Markdown that carries value for most users, not the fidelity to a plain-text artifact. "Even" Google Docs implemented it recently.
In my article, I argue that Markdown is increasingly a “source language” for interfaces, not documents, and this Apple Notes move seems to align with that trend. Curious how others feel about Markdown as an authoring experience vs. a content format.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/attribu...
Most apps do this already, to some extent. If you start a line with a - or an *, the app will convert it to a proper indented list. Heck, even Microsoft’s apps do this. I’m just asking for it to handle a few more things.
> I’m just asking for it to handle a few more things.
How is what you're asking for not making Notes into a Markdown editor? Those are all features that come from Markdown, and the reason "most apps" already handle those, is because they're aiming to support Markdown to at least some extent.
I haven't used Notes in decades other than to type out junk/numbers once every 4 months.
Among other reasons, because the sync experience is second to none.
Some of the other reasons:
- Apple Pencil
- Shared notes with friends and family (vacation planning, lists, etc)
[1]: https://help.obsidian.md/import/apple-notes. [2]: tbf it took me quite a bit of work to get there in my own app, and its still got bugs
Export notes by folder: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/3aed9f1608ce4efeb31a276ad02...
Export all notes: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/1b305195692e42c19d258989475...
Notes to html: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/1a61fe549b7c41d7b2e3511ee12...
As an aside, I have a dream that Apple Notes could be piped into a website as a form of blogging. As it is, I haven't found a way to do it...
Joplin, the notes app I've been using lately does have a markup bar with those features.
As someone who enjoys note-taking in Obsidian (by far my favorite super-powered markdown editor), I respectfully disagree with the premise and conclusion. On the contrary, IME, MD isn't single-purpose, and it absolutely can and does serve as a first-rate format for note-taking.
Of course doing this on an iPhone is an absolute nightmare because everything has to be blessed by Apple and you can't just do one-off ad-hoc automations or usefully compose tooling that touches the filesystem. Everything has to be canned and sharecropped (at best) so them adding Markdown to the only text editor that supports fast, energy efficient background sync is a huge deal.
When I had an iPhone I did try doing some server-side automation with the SGML-like (can't remember if it was actual HTML or not) format notes used. Like most of those sorts of things it was a miserable uphill fight to get value out of the thing. I've been so happy ever since I've completely given up on anything smartphone related.
I don't follow why this is a relevant concern for Apple Notes.
By any measure I would argue that Notion "has markdown support". By that I mean: You type Markdown, Notion knows how to render the markdown you type, and you can easily export files in Markdown. However, what they aren't doing, by any stretch of the imagination, is storing your documents in a markdown format on their servers or your device.
There's a third quality that you might label "Native Markdown" where the documents themselves are stored in Markdown. Obsidian does this. I'd imagine products like the Github Issues description field also does this. But I would not require this quality in a product which has "Markdown Support". In fact, I would argue this is the defining difference between saying that a product Supports Markdown versus it Is Markdown.
Its tremendously and obviously unlikely that Apple will be changing the storage format of their notes to be Native Markdown. I also don't think it really matters for a product like Apple Notes; I don't care what format the notes are stored in. Users of Obsidian might care about this, but that's because Obsidian has a different kind of customer than Apple; people who worry about data portability. Totally cool; that's just not Apple Notes.
Its like arguing that Vim keybinds are only interesting within Vim. My favorite way to use vim keybinds is this great Firefox extension; scroll down pages with j, copy the URL with yy... Markdown is more than just a data format; at a much more abstract level, its a keybinding system for text formatting. In Apple Notes today I have to hit Shift+Cmd+H to get a header. I'd much rather just hit #.
The rumors seem to indicate just "Export as Markdown", which seems to be exactly what Gruber wants, according to the last 10% of the blogpost. So the rest is ranting against an implementation that doesn't seem like it'll happen?
We have a tendency, as a group, to push things beyond their original intent.
The article pretends that Markdown got popular because “it was there”. 15 years ago people were adopting it _because_ it is dead simple, unobtrusive, and visually evocative.
The ones who made it popular, in other words, did so quite intentionally.
Not helped by Gruber’s refusal to bless a specific well-specified Markdown flavor, leaving us to deal with all the undefined behavior of his original implementation.
Markdown on iOS doesn’t even make very much sense in terms of keyboard strokes
Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26
Yes, that's how John Gruber defines it. But like every creation you share with others, it can evolve. If popular, it will evolve. People create their own versions and uses and intentions with it.
I've used markdown for 12 years or so, for two reasons:
1. As a way to write plain text but still get visual layout cues without using a proprietary format/tool (e.g., Word).
2. Have options for later conversion to other formats/outputs (for Gruber, HTML.)
So for me, writing markdown on my Apple device means that instead of using Apple's proprietary format, I have another place to write plain text markdown and use/share it elsewhere (which I often do).
It’s trivial to create malformed Markdown syntax
So often I need to go back to a note, and add some time stamped update at the end.
Am I the only one?
- [1] [WordService](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordservice/id899972312?mt=12 - [2] [WordService Download](https://www.devontechnologies.com/support/download)
This will make it even easier to migrate all my Apple Notes™ to Obsidian.
If a strict subset can have 2-way-conversion to json through yaml, then markdown can be an effective json editor for the lay person.
It's such a more convenient way of "styling while you type" and has become the de facto way to do that... in Slack, Reddit comments, GitHub, Jira, Confluence etc... even MS Teams, they all allow Markdown "styling while you type"
The two things that would make a world of difference to me are:
- having a 'code block' style, preferably accessed via familiar single and triple-backticks markdown syntax - for the Android app to have a "magnifying cursor" like mobile apps are all supposed to have... trying to edit a note and drag the cursor around with your finger without having the little magnifying popup is a complete pain
Indeed, he is far more likely to let loose a tirade of anti-Trump sentiment, and in that regard he comes across as a terribly damaged individual. His opinions are many, and so we cannot give them too much weight.
We must have balance in The Force.
For instance, sometimes after indenting a line I cannot un-indent on future lines. Just fighting the tool.
Stuff like this really makes me dislike it. I find syntax highlighting with markdown preferable than a WYSIWYG rich text editor. I get why people who don't know markdown prefer it, but the advantages diminish significantly if you know markdown.
I feel like this is why a lot of us use Markdown/Org, because this is the most annoying issue in Word to me since 2003. Why are the indentation rules so arbitrary?
Part of the mess is that it doesn’t seem to actually model lists, just paragraphs which might have a list level associated with them. I have no idea why this was ever deemed acceptable: it precludes multiple markers on one line:
1. a) Sorry, but you can’t do this.
b) It’s not expressible.
2. You need a paragraph first.
a) Then it can be done.
I've not experienced any issues unindenting but not sure how you're doing it?
On macOS, tab and shift-tab always work for me.
I suspect LLMs, not users, have been the requesting this feature at Apple.
I also like that Markdown is being added since it's what I typically use for documentation (github, etc). The default formatting in notes currently leaves something to be desired...
I made a couple quick shortcuts to go both ways, with the clipboard as both the input and output. I put a widget for this on my desktop and it makes it pretty easy. Not as easy as native support, but not bad.
I’m constantly sending URLs to people, like https://somesite.com/login. The point of these links is usually that people read them and understand them.
But the automatic behavior is to replace the text with OpenGraph links, big obnoxious bubbles of graphics, which distort or destroy the meaning that I’m trying to convey.
Given the opportunity, I would send most links wrapped in `backticks`.
System-wide Markdown editing would also be awesome, perhaps as a feature of the keyboard.
[1]: https://freron.com
<yourlink.com> and it sends it as a regular link without the bubble
Maybe Common Markdown would have been a better name between a few large orgs.
But everyone seems to have their own slightly different flavor, either pre- or post- that "standardization".
And now we're in an odd position where Github and friends all validate their implementations against the CommonMark suites, but refer to the result as "Markdown" to their users, which makes the work they're doing maintaining that stuff especially thankless.
https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-commo...
Honestly the whole thing is so ridiculous.
I save working knowledge elsewhere as Topic.md in subfolders so I can remember how I deployed an app or fixed a recurring issue etc.
I'm one of those people who went pretty hard into the whole "Second Brain" movement (using Apple Notes first, then Obsidian).
~6000 notes later and I've started finding the whole thing overwhelming and pointless at the same time. The vast majority of notes I have don't need to be noted down. At most they could have been a journal entry rather than a separate, curated piece.
Usually I hear something like "excessive noting means you're less likely to try to commit something to memory because you know it's there when you need it". (This is touted as an advantage of the Second Brain concept, incidentally.)
But I've actually found something different as well: excessive noting means you're actively engaging with significantly more information, and most of it is designed to be (or at least should be considered) ephemeral. Noting so much of it down is effectively the digital equivalent of hoarding junk, and the mental/memory repercussions are similar to the physical repercussions of hoarding actual junk.
(If this is a joke, well, I salute your dry humor.)
Although I definitely should take more, because I can never remember what I've done when it's performance review season.
This is an app called Exporter that exports your Notes to MD. Been using it for a while, to archive the state of my notes.
it has thousands of thousands of unrelated files in the notes db.
The app just crashes mostly or is super-slow unusable
Apple used to be UX king, now its a joke.
Was this before or after the spinning beach balls?
Not sure if it's a blacklist as much as people insta-flagging, as happens with a many of the political-adjacent posts.
> Occasionally I notice a burst of traffic to Daring Fireball from Hacker News. It’s always short-lived, because for reasons I’ve never seen explained, Daring Fireball articles always get blacklisted from Hacker News once they hit their front page
It seems to me that he concludes that he's blacklisted because the traffic coming from Hacker News is short-lived?
> Daring Fireball articles seemed more or less appropriately popular there. Articles that I would think would resonate with the HN readership would hit, and get what always seemed to me an appropriate number of comments.
So this guy seems to think that he can predict what will be popular and what will not? I think he's burying the lede here, who cares about being blacklisted, this guy can tell the future !
Isn't it much more likely that his posts are just less popular, and drive less engagement than he hopes? Most people (even very smart people) are bad at meta-cognition, and are likely to fall in the trap of reasoning based on (hidden) assumptions.
If this guy actually has evidence of being blacklisted/botted I would be open to see it, but lack of engament isn't that.
Why not export to the best format, LaTeX? I don’t think anyone could argue that Markdown is better than LaTeX as long as you don’t actually have to write it.
the effort it takes to serialize and parse markdown into an AST that rich text editor frameworks reliably operate on takes months. been there, done that. the majority of the engineering effort of building a markdown editor in the browser went into parsing and serializing markdown :/
Anyhow, we took the learnings from the Markdown editor app and created "zettel" as a result: https://github.com/opral/monorepo/tree/main/packages/zettel/.... The goal is to have an interoperable rich text AST—basically Markdown but with an AST spec.