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Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

macrumors.com

11–20 of 277 posts

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#11
post #8
post #4

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.

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.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#12
post #11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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).

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#14

The MacRumors article claims Markdown input formatting but they source this from a 9to5Mac article which only seems to claim Markdown exporting. Edit: The article has since been corrected.

Markdown export would be appreciated. My number one concern with Notes is that it is 100% opaque file formats (weird serialisation inside SQLite and no api). Backup to markdown would be great.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#15
post #3

I first thought it was some kind of extrapolation like... at the rate features are currently being added, Markdown will land in ~2032 with iOS 26... just noticed about the new version numbering, I missed that news!

It sounded to me like a joke, as in “markdown will be supported on February 30th”. Then I read the article text, which seemed serious, and I was confused.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#16
post #4

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.

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

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#17

> Instead of tapping buttons to bold text or create headers, users could type *bold* or # Header directly into their notes. Which will be more keystrokes, not fewer – it's faster to get to the formatting buttons than it is the punctuation keyboard on iOS, and even on Mac the shortcut commands are often faster too. Notes was a fanastic example of a rich-text environment, but if Markdown input helps the die-hards that…

I think it’s user preference. For me it’s easier to get to the punctuation asterisk (basically muscle memory and <0.5s) than to tap the formatting menu, wait for the keyboard sheet to go down and the formatting sheet to go up, tap Bold, then tap the X and wait for animations to complete again (which I have no muscle memory for and need to look at every UI element that I’m tapping).

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#18

The MacRumors article claims Markdown input formatting but they source this from a 9to5Mac article which only seems to claim Markdown exporting. Edit: The article has since been corrected.

I pinged one of the editors and they updated the article, thanks for calling this out.
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