Moving from Apple Notes to plain Markdown files

Checked November 2026 against Apple's Notes guide and Obsidian's help. Coffee isn't affiliated with Apple or Obsidian.

On a current Mac, Apple Notes can do this itself. Open the note, then choose File > Export To > Markdown on macOS 27 Golden Gate, or File > Export as > Markdown on macOS Tahoe 26. Apple's steps cover one note at a time, so a large collection is better moved with a bulk importer. The free one I can point to from its documentation is Obsidian's.

Apple's guide for macOS Sequoia lists PDF as the only export format, so on that version a bulk importer is the way to get Markdown.

What each version of Notes offers

Menu names change between versions, so go by what your own File menu says.

Export a note with Notes itself

1. Open Notes and click the note.
2. Choose the Export command in the File menu, as in the table above, and pick Markdown.
3. Give the file a name if you want a different one, then click Save.

Do this for a handful of notes and you're done. The file you get is an ordinary Markdown file that any editor can open.

On macOS 27 there's a second way that suits smaller jobs. Select some of the text in a note and choose Edit > Copy as Markdown, then paste it wherever you like.

Move a whole library

Apple's export and print steps describe a single note and say nothing about selecting several, so I won't promise that it works. Try selecting a few notes in your list and see whether the command is still available on your version. If it isn't, exporting hundreds of notes by hand isn't realistic.

Obsidian's Importer plugin is the route I can describe from its own documentation. Obsidian is free without limits and stores notes as Markdown files in a folder, so you can use it for the move alone and carry on in any other editor if you prefer.

1. Install Obsidian and create a vault, which is just a folder.
2. Under Settings, Community Plugins, install and enable Importer.
3. Open Importer, set the file format to Apple Notes, and click Import.
4. When it asks for the group.com.apple.notes folder, click Open to give it access.
5. Look over the template and note previews, then click Import and wait.

Obsidian's help says this brings over nearly all content types, including tables, images, drawings, scans, PDFs and links. It only runs on a Mac. It also doesn't touch password-protected notes: they're encrypted by Apple, locked ones are skipped, and you need to unlock them first.

Credit where it's due: for a big library this is the most complete route I found documented, and Obsidian competes with Coffee.

Check the result before you trust it

Apple's page doesn't say what happens to images, attachments, sketches, tags or locked notes during a Markdown export. Rather than guess, try it on one note that has all of them. Then open the exported file in TextEdit or another plain text editor and look at it as text.

Check these things:

• Images and attachments. Is each one a file beside the note, with a link that works? Or has it gone?
• Checklists and tables. Are they still lists and tables in Markdown, or flat text?
• Links between notes. Do they point anywhere outside Notes?
• Folders and titles. Is your folder structure kept, and are file names what you expected?
• Locked notes. Are any missing? Count them.

Keep everything in Notes until you've looked through a sample from each folder. Nothing about exporting needs you to delete the originals, and you can leave them there for as long as you like.

Going back is possible

This isn't a one-way door. Apple's guide describes importing Markdown into Notes on both macOS 26 and 27. On macOS 27 the command is File > Import Markdown or File > Import to Notes, and imported notes arrive in a folder called Imported Notes. It needs upgraded iCloud notes or notes stored on your Mac.

Before you switch for good

Plain files give you things Notes can't: you can open them in any editor, search them with any tool, and keep them in Git. Notes gives you things a folder of files doesn't, such as sketches and scans inside a note, and its own iCloud storage. A folder of Markdown needs its own answer to sync, which is what syncing Markdown with iCloud Drive covers, and you'll want an editor on every device you use.

Where Coffee comes in

Coffee has no Apple Notes importer, and none of its menus will read your Notes library. It doesn't need to take part in the move: do the export with one of the routes above, then point Coffee at the folder of files.

To do that, choose the folder when Coffee first asks, or later in Settings. Coffee works on the files where they are, and it treats the file name as the note's title, so Trip plans.md appears as Trip plans. Opening a note never renames its file. If you later edit the title heading at the top of a note, the file is renamed to match, and links to it are updated.

Coffee is Mac only, for macOS 15 or later, and it doesn't sync by itself. If you often edit notes on an iPhone, that matters more than anything else in this article, and there's a fuller comparison in Coffee vs Apple Notes. You can try it for 14 days with no card or account, and the prices are here.

Questions

Can Apple Notes export to Markdown?

Yes, on macOS Tahoe 26 and macOS 27 Golden Gate, according to Apple's guides for those versions. The command is in the File menu. Apple's guide for macOS Sequoia lists only PDF.

Can I export all my Apple Notes at once?

Apple's guide describes exporting one note and doesn't mention several. For a whole library, Obsidian's free Importer plugin is documented to read your Notes and write Markdown files.

Does the Markdown export keep images?

Apple's export page doesn't say. Try one note with an image and look at what you get before moving everything.

What happens to locked notes?

Apple's export page doesn't mention them. Obsidian's Importer skips locked notes, so unlock the ones you want to move first.

Does Coffee import from Apple Notes?

No. Coffee opens folders of Markdown files, so export your notes first and then choose that folder in Coffee.