---
title: "Asking questions about your notes with Apple Intelligence"
author: Pedro Thomaz
source: https://coffeetext.app/blog/apple-intelligence-ask-your-notes
---

# Asking questions about your notes with Apple Intelligence

> Checked November 2026 against Apple's support and Apple Intelligence pages linked below. Coffee isn't affiliated with Apple.

You can, within limits. Coffee's Ask feature sends your Markdown notes to Apple's on-device model and shows the answer. It needs macOS 26 or later with Apple Intelligence on, runs on your Mac, and reads a limited amount of text per question, so it's better at answering from a note than at knowing your whole library. Apple's own Writing Tools work on text you select, and Siri AI is in beta on macOS 27.

Here's exactly what Ask does, followed by what Apple describes for its own apps.

## What you need

Ask checks these when you submit a question, and tells you which one is missing:

- **macOS 26 or later.** Coffee itself runs on macOS 15, but Ask won't work below 26.
- **A Mac that supports Apple Intelligence.** [Apple's requirements page](https://support.apple.com/en-us/121115) lists Macs with M1 or later. Coffee runs on Intel Macs, but Ask doesn't.
- **Apple Intelligence turned on.** Go to [System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/intro-to-apple-intelligence-mchl46361784/15.0/mac/15.0). Ask offers a button that opens the settings if it's off.
- **The model ready.** If it's still downloading, Ask says to try again in a little while.

Apple's page, which currently describes the macOS 27 releases, also asks for your device and Siri languages to be set to the same supported language, and up to 8 or 14 GB of storage depending on the Mac. Availability varies by region, so check it for your own setup.

## How to ask

Press ⌘J, or hold Fn and speak. Ask opens as a bar at the bottom of the window and labels itself "on this Mac". Then it depends on what you're asking about:

| To ask about | Do this | What the model gets |
|---|---|---|
| A selection | Select text, then open Ask | The selected text |
| This note | Open Ask with nothing selected | The first 9,000 characters of the note |
| Your notes | Include "all notes" in the question, or start from search (⌘K) | Up to five notes search finds, up to 2,500 characters of each, 9,000 in total |

The answer appears as it's written. Insert puts it into the note after the current line, Copy puts it on the clipboard, and Esc dismisses it. Nothing changes in the note unless you press Insert.

The model is told to answer only from the notes it's given, to be brief, and to say so plainly when the notes don't contain the answer. Answers from a model can still be wrong, so check anything that matters against the note.

Dictation for Fn also runs on the Mac. It asks for Speech Recognition permission, and if on-device recognition isn't available for your language, it tells you to type instead.

## Where it falls short

This is a small model reading a small amount of text, and you'll get better results if you know how it picks that text.

**Long notes are cut off.** The 9,000-character limit counts from the start of the note, so a question about the end of a long document won't get an answer from it. Select the passage first and ask from the selection.

**"All notes" is search, not understanding.** Coffee runs an ordinary text search on the words in your question, takes the top five hits and sends the start of each. There's no index of meaning, so if your note says "location" and you ask about the "venue", search won't connect them. Any word of three letters or more counts, so "tax" is searched, apart from a short list of common English and Portuguese words such as "what", "about" and "para". A short question built from distinctive words works best: "all notes: Lisbon hotel price".

**It reads the start of each note.** Only the first 2,500 characters of each hit go in, and with five long notes the 9,000 total cuts off the last ones. If the answer sits further down, the model won't see it, even when search found the right note.

**Each question starts fresh.** It doesn't remember your previous question, so "and what about the second one?" has nothing to refer to.

**It doesn't show its sources.** The answer doesn't say which notes it came from. To check, search for the note yourself.

For a question that really needs your whole library, a larger model with search tools does better: you can [connect your notes to an AI app over MCP](https://coffeetext.app/blog/connect-notes-to-ai-mcp), with the difference that what it reads goes to that app and its AI service. For finding a note you half remember, plain [search and Spotlight](https://coffeetext.app/blog/find-markdown-notes-spotlight-quick-look) are often quicker.

## Where your text goes

Ask uses the on-device model that [Apple makes available to apps](https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence/), and its code has no network path of its own. The text stays on the Mac, and it works without a connection once the model's there.

That's different from Apple Intelligence in general. [Apple's privacy page](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/apple-intelligence-and-privacy-mchlfc0d4779/mac) says that in many cases its models run entirely on device, and that demanding requests can go to larger models on Private Cloud Compute, Apple's servers. Ask uses only the on-device route.

"All notes" leaves out private notes, because search can't see them. A locked note you're looking at gives Ask nothing to read. If you've unlocked a private note and ask about it, its text goes to the same on-device model.

## What Apple's own features do

Apple's pages describe several things that overlap with this. I've kept to what they say, because the details vary by app and macOS version.

**Writing Tools** can [rewrite, proofread and summarise](https://support.apple.com/en-bn/guide/mac-help/mchldcd6c260/mac) text, including Key Points, and Apple says they're available in most places you write, third-party apps and websites included. Since they work on text you've selected, they answer "what does this say?" rather than "what did I write about this?"

**Siri AI**, in beta on macOS 27, adds [personal context, onscreen awareness and world knowledge](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/find-info-and-get-things-done-mchl6b029310/mac). Apple's languages to start are English, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, and [server-side features have daily limits](https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence/). The Mac page on Siri doesn't name Notes among its examples.

**Apple Notes** on iPhone: [Apple's iPhone page](https://support.apple.com/en-us/118442) says that in iOS 27 you can use Siri AI to search for notes or within them. I didn't find an Apple page making the same statement for the Mac, so I won't claim it. If your notes are in Apple Notes, try it on your own Mac.

The pages I read don't say whether these features reach Markdown files sitting in a folder, so assume not until you've tried it.

## Questions

### Does Coffee's Ask send my notes anywhere?

No. It uses Apple's on-device model, and the code has no network path. Connected AI apps are a separate feature, off until you turn it on, and they send what they read to their own services.

### Why does Ask say it's unavailable?

It needs macOS 26 or later, a Mac that supports Apple Intelligence, and Apple Intelligence turned on in System Settings. The message tells you which one is the problem.

### Can Ask read all my notes at once?

No. It searches for your question's words and reads the start of up to five matching notes, 9,000 characters in total. It's built for questions with a distinctive word, not for summarising a library.

### Can Ask change my notes?

Only if you press Insert, which adds the answer below the current line. It doesn't edit or rewrite existing text, and ⌘Z takes back an insertion.

### Does Ask work on Intel Macs?

No. Apple lists Macs with M1 or later for Apple Intelligence, and Ask relies on it. The rest of Coffee does run on Intel, on macOS 15 or later.

---

Written by Pedro Thomaz, who makes Coffee, a Markdown editor for the Mac on macOS 15 or later. It's free for 14 days with no card or account, then €3 a month, €29 a year, or €79 once with two years of updates. More at https://coffeetext.app/llms-full.txt