Which method fits your setup
| Your situation | Method | What you get |
|---|
| A few notes, macOS 26 or later | File > Export To > Markdown | One .md per note, saved where you choose |
| A few notes, iOS 26 or later | Share > Export as Markdown | One .md per note, to Files or another app |
| Part of a note, current macOS | Edit > Copy as Markdown | Markdown on the clipboard |
| Whole library, any macOS from 10.15 | Exporter app | One directory per Notes folder, dates and attachments |
| Whole library, moving to Obsidian | Obsidian Importer on macOS | A vault with frontmatter, attachments, scans |
| iPhone only, many notes | No bulk option | Export one by one, or use a Mac |
Apple added Markdown export to Notes in the 2025 releases, so most guides written before then tell you it is impossible. It is now built in, but it is a per-note feature. Apple's own guide describes exporting the note you clicked, nothing more. A library of a thousand notes still needs a tool.
What survives and what does not
The text, headings, lists and checklists come through in every method, because they map directly onto Markdown. The differences are in everything around the text.
- Dates. The per-note export does not write created or modified dates into the file. Exporter keeps both. The Obsidian Importer writes the frontmatter its template defines, which you can edit before importing.
- Folders. Single-note exports know nothing about folders; you file them yourself. Exporter and the Importer both rebuild the folder structure.
- Attachments. Exporter and the Importer export attachments, and the Importer handles scans, drawings and PDFs. With the per-note export, check the output folder before assuming attachments came along.
- Locked notes. The Importer skips them until you unlock them. Treat every bulk tool the same way: unlock, export, re-lock.
- Shared notes and collaborators. The export is your copy. Collaborators, mentions and activity history do not come along.
- Tags. Apple Notes tags are text in the note body, so they survive as text. Whether your new app reads them as tags depends on the app.
How to verify nothing was lost
- Count per folder. Notes shows a count for each folder. Compare it with the number of files in the matching export directory.
- Open three notes you know. One with a table, one with a checklist, one with a photo or scan. Fix the method's settings and rerun if any of them is wrong.
- Look for empty files. A zero-length or near-empty .md usually means a locked note or a note that failed to convert.
- Check dates if you need them. Sort the export by modified date. If every file shows today's date, the method did not keep dates and you need Exporter or the Importer.
After the move
Apple Notes has no wikilinks, so links between notes are usually missing rather than broken. Spend ten minutes on the notes that belong together (a project, a trip, a renovation) and link them with [[wikilinks]] in the new app. In Scribelet the backlinks panel then shows every note that points at the project note.
Checklists are the other cleanup worth doing. In Notes a checklist item with a deadline lived in your head. Write the date into the task with @due(2026-11-14) and it shows up in the Tasks view and on your daily note until it is done. If you are still choosing a destination, Obsidian vs Apple Notes compares the two most common ones.
Get your Apple Notes out of iCloud and into files you control
Export to Markdown, zip the folder and import it into Scribelet: folders become tags, checklists become tasks with due dates, and your notes stay on iPhone and the web. Free to start.
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