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Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

macrumors.com

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

#31

Post by subjectsigma »

lurk2 wrote: 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.

From the article:

“Apple is working on supporting the ability to export notes in Markdown from Apple Notes, which is something third-party apps have supported for years.”

Am I misunderstanding or is that the feature you were asking for? If not then what does the article mean by export?

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

#32

Post by dunham »

lurk2 wrote: post #11
divbzero wrote: 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…

I wrote python code to extract the notes years ago[1], but it's bit-rotted, so it no longer supports tables, raw stroke data, or the newer features like equations. Maybe I'll update it someday, but I'm not using notes at the moment and have too many other things going one.

https://github.com/dunhamsteve/notesutils

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

#33

Post by candiddevmike »

mdeeks wrote: post #28

I really hope Apple Notes makes this something that's opt-in and I don't have to see. Thankfully it sounds like it is an export only feature. I think there is a bifurcation of people who like markdown and people who like rich text. And both groups have strong opinions. Apple Notes was my goto rich text editor. Fingers crossed that they aren't making this worse for us. Related: I switched away from Bear notes because…

You hate reading unrendered markdown? I've looked at markdown so much that my brain renders it in my head.

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

#34

Post by candiddevmike »

BrandonSmith wrote: post #7
marbletiles wrote: post #2

> 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 tend to copy Markdown content from other sources into Apple Notes. Being able to paste into Notes and have it format in the view is a big win. It is possible reporting is getting this wrong and the Markdown feature and it is just to serve use case above. As an example, Google Docs recently enabled "Paste from Markdown" that also is a huge convenience.

> I tend to copy Markdown content from other sources into Apple Notes. Being able to paste into Notes and have it format in the view is a big win.

AIUI it's only Markdown export support for now

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

#35

Post by tacker2000 »

puttycat wrote: post #24

In case anyone else had no idea where the 26 came from: https://9to5mac.com/2025/06/03/exclusive-ios-26-messages-car...

This link has the actual info: https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/28/ios-26-coming-next-month/

They are rebranding it to reflect the year, à la FIFA 26

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

#36

Post by LordDragonfang »

tlhunter wrote: post #20

Microsoft notepad is also getting markdown support. It's a very interesting coincidence! Overall, I'm surprised to see markdown become mainstream so quickly. https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2025/05/30/text-fo...

It's not a coincidence at all. Markdown is the "native" language for most LLMs, and the hype around it requires even low-level tools to support it (for both legitimate and marketing reasons)

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

#37

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

mdeeks wrote: post #28

I really hope Apple Notes makes this something that's opt-in and I don't have to see. Thankfully it sounds like it is an export only feature. I think there is a bifurcation of people who like markdown and people who like rich text. And both groups have strong opinions. Apple Notes was my goto rich text editor. Fingers crossed that they aren't making this worse for us. Related: I switched away from Bear notes because…

Bear’s implementation is great. One thing I hate about rich text is that it's basically impossible to not inherit the formatting of adjacent text if you move your cursor around, nor is it possible to see the current formatting state. If your cursor is between whitespace and an italic word, will inserted text be normal or italic? Markdown’s formatting characters solve this by creating a boundary that the cursor can be on either side of.

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

#39

Post by xyst »

lurk2 wrote: 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.

Agree. iOS notes is only good for throwaway thoughts or ephemeral notes

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

#40

Post by krackers »

ale42 wrote: 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!

They must be doing version numbers based on marketing. From OS X, to macOS 11...15, and now macOS 26.
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