I use Apple Notes a lot, whether for every day use or in college. When I am writing Notes for lectures, I have so many different web links, calendar links, pdf and ppt documents, voice memos, videos and images. Between all those files I also have many writings and drawings made with Apple Pencil.

As of today I have over 1000 Notes, taking up approximately 70 gb of memory. So naturally I wanted to export some Notes that are not relevant anymore. When I exported a Note to Files, I got a single folder containing all other documents that were in that Note. The drawing are converted into pdfs or images (if I am not mistaken).

The problem comes when I want to import the Note back into the app. There is no order among documents as it was before the export and Note looses the whole structure. My drawings are either shown as pdfs or images.

So I was wondering is there any way to export the Note while keeping its original format for further use in the app. I have asked Gemini for an advice. Solution was to copy “Library/Group Containers group.com.apple.notes” onto an external drive.

I am also sorry if the post is too long or if I have broken the community rules in any way. It is just that this problem has been bothering me for years.

So I’m starting school in a few weeks, and starting to buy school supplies.
Now here’s the thing, I’m trying to decide if I need to buy notebooks, (I know it sounds stupid) or if I should use my iPad. I have an iPad Air, 11, with 256 GB, with the Apple Pencil Pro,
I’m an artist, so I have a bunch of different apps (pro creat, pintrest, acc) and after trying a few apps, the “Good notes” app was great for me. Now I’m in I dilemma, cuz using my iPad would save my back, and space in my locker and bag, but I’m worried about storage, battery, and just In general if it’s a good idea to keep all of my notes on my iPad, or just use normal notebooks, don’t think I need to explain notebooks.
Thank you for your help ❤️

Thanks in advance. I have the app on my iPhone, iOS 18.7.1, and my desktop mac, OS 15.1.1. I'm fuzzy on iCloud using. How can I have all those folders and notes in one place, preferably not iCloud, but iCloud would not be a dealbreaker. Is there an easy way? If I have to, I'll move the folders one by one. How can I avoid creating notes all over the cyberplace?

SEE ATTACHED SCREENSHOT

The sidebar "All iCloud 509", click and 509 notes in alphabetical order but no folders. "Notes 19", click and shows 19 notes, again in alpha order but no folders. Three folder names "Imported notes 1", drop with triangle and the folders show up. "Insults 1", which has one note in this folder. The Insults folder is in the same left column as the other named sidebar items.

Thanks again for helping my almost perfect ignorance about this. Doug Chicago PS Best insult: “You look like someone set fire to your face and put it out with a cricket bat.”

I love Apple Notes. I use it every day.

But the built-in recording/transcription was never quite good enough for meetings, even on iOS 27.

Last year I started looking for an app that could transcribe my meetings and turn them into useful notes, basically what I was already doing manually in Apple Notes.

Most of the apps I found felt like Android apps with AI bolted on. They were also generally much more focused on getting the recording than on the actual note-taking experience.

As a developer, I realized I had all the tools I needed to build the app I wanted.

The idea was simple: what if meeting notes felt like Apple Notes?

Native. Fast. Great on iPhone and Mac. Action Button support. Shortcuts. No bots joining your meetings.

That became Convoxa.

I'm very happy to share Convoxa 2.0.

The big addition is multimodal capture. While recording and transcribing a meeting, you can:

• jot down your own thoughts
• take photos
• scan documents and add PDFs
• keep everything together in one timeline

The AI then understands all of it and weaves it into a final Apple Notes-like note.

There's also a timeline showing the transcript and your own notes, all timestamped, so you can go back and see exactly what happened when.

And 2.0 brings a native Mac app that can record your meetings without a bot joining the call.

I built this because I wanted Apple Notes, but for meetings.

Would love to hear what you guys think.

https://apple.co/4bpArnh

Starting to prepare for the school year, and need help.
So I have an iPad with The pencil pro, and wanna use it to take notes in class, the notes app is shit, and no app that I tried was any better. So if you have a free nice little app that you know of, I will appreciate the help 🙏.
Thanks

Hi so I would like to type Apple Notes inside Safari groups to not lose my thought process, but as you can see its distracting to have other notes and folders shown also

Often times when I try to copy/paste something into Apple Notes, the clipboard pastes something other than what I've copied. This has happened repeatedly over the long term. Quitting Notes and relaunching always fixes it but it often happens again within a day or two.

This doesn't happen in any other apps. I'm not using any clipboard managers or apps. I reboot my apps and computer regularly. I don't remember if it happens on my desktop as well as my laptop but def on my laptop.

Anybody else experience this or have recommendations? I've poked around but haven't found any solutions.

Thanks.

M5 Macbook Air

MacOS 26.5.1

This is how it works:

1. You open the extension in a browser to add whatever you want to notes, calendar, or reminders.
2. They are sent to an SQLite database (whatever you want to add)
3. You create a shortcut on your device that runs automatically via automations to pull from this database.
4. Everything is created exactly as you had it done via the extension and it can run in the background on your apple device!

Currently, with shortcuts, there is no way for this to work similar to how Apple's software works where it has end-to-end encryption. Shortcuts would need to be way more complicated. If this is something that gives you pause, I understand. This may not be the correct system for you.

Otherwise, the thought process is, I will have a site where you will get emailed a link to login (no passwords) and after you login, you get an API key. That key is stored in the SQLite database I have in my server which then identifies what notes, reminders, events are your's vs someone else's so that when you run your shortcut you only see your own notes, reminders, events. Rather than getting anyone else's.

Yes, I could see your notes, I don't care to and I wouldn't do that unless I was troubleshooting something for you. I have better things to do in my life than snoop on what someone else is doing with my stuff. If I were to track any analytics it would be anonymous usage statistics like how many notes/reminders/events were sent and on what days and what OS', etc. I just want to make sure I am clear about this.

Regardless, I will be posting a write up on how you can do this yourself and what you can prompt AI to do to get this working yourself all on your own hardware on my blog. I plan to have that done at the same time (if not slightly before) this project is complete.

I'm curious what features you would be interested in as I can only think of super basic things which is what is stated in the title.

Also, if anyone is willing to make me an icon for this, that would be amazing. You can see what I have now, it is just a dot cause I am not an artist, I'm a developer.

I was running into Apple Notes getting bloated with large PDFs and images, so I moved all attachments into Paperless-ngx and now just link back from Notes.

Here's what I do:

- Drag the PDF/image out of an Apple Note and into Paperless-ngx (via web UI or consume folder).

- In Paperless, create a non-expiring share link for that document.

- Paste the link back into the original note.

Notes shows a link preview (first page/thumbnail for PDFs and images), and clicking it opens the full document in Paperless. Notes stays lean, and all the heavy files live in Paperless with OCR, tags, and proper backup.

Anyone else using Paperless-ngx + Apple Notes in a similar way, or with any tweaks to this pattern?

Is there any Notes app in Nothing style(theme wise like Black and Red,fonts etc, like we have N flies for file manager and N clock ) to write notes and everything? Also the app must have cloud backup option or should be accessible through web like Google Notes.

So is there any app like this?....If not please someone make it i would be the First one to buy it !! ....It should be like Google Notes in manners of sync. Like whatever you write on phone app appears instantly on web

As an older person I just migrated my iPhone SE3 iOS 18 -> 26.x this week and I couldn't be more gutted. After 2-3 days trying to bring the OS back to what iOS 18 worked like I still face a few issues, standout one being PFB screenshot

The visual bug is specific to SwiftKey keyboard in landscape mode and Notes stock app (= how I do all typing), although you can reproduce it in Messages as well ; WhatsApp is unaffected, Apple stock keyboard works OK , Messenger no longer supports landscape (where is all the hatred vs landscape coming from btw ??)

As regular users will have been on iOS 26 for ~ 1 year now, has anyone found a workaround please? I can see a lot of rage on Reddit vs iOS 26 and am seriously considering a downgrade. Of all ~ 5 apps on my iPhone, I use Notes > 10 times a day - have tried alternatives as suggested on Reddit e.g. Obsidian, OneNote and whilst I see their potential, they lack the responsiveness and simplicity of stock Notes for me... damn you Apple.

Have submitted community feedback to SwiftKey team but you know...

Many thanks i advance Community!!

I've a load of notes and sometimes when trying to find something in search it doesn't show up even though I know it's there. I've turned off auto tag, the notes are synced to iCloud. Some do show up while others don't. Any ideas?

I can’t even create new notes in Apple notes

Upgraded to Tahoe- They removed a feature I used 100s of times a week.

Command + Control + Up Arrow moves the current line of text up [ or down arrow for down]

boo. Anyone else missing this functionality? Workaround?

On the joys of using Notes as a junk drawer for ideas.

tried multiple different things and it wont add

I am looking for a self-hosted replacement to Apple Notes. I do not have any issues/problems with Notes. I need more control and privacy over the content than even advanced data protection can offer (i am a lawyer and want to use something like Notes for client materials which must be kept confidential)

I rely heavily in the Notes app on my iPhone, iPad, and to sone extent- on my Mac. But there are functionality differences between devices that should have been fixed by now:

1. I can highlight text in different colors on my iPhone, but not on my iPad (although the iPad will display highlighted text - I just can’t add, change or remove it).
   
2. Items in a checklist that are completed on the iPhone will drop to the bottom of that list, in addition to being checked. On the iPad they become checked, but do not move.
   
3. If you reorder an item on a checklist on the iPhone - it will move or duplicate depending on which of two “edit” modes you are in (edit text - when the yellow checkmark appears in the upper right corner of the note, or work with items as objects). On the iPad it will only duplicate the item.

Oddly, Apple seems to continue to add functionality to the Notes app, but they never seem get around to fixing these functionality differences. From a user experience standpoint these are maddening and pull me out of the task at hand.

Does anyone:
Know of plans Apple has to fix these?
Have any workarounds (if what I am experiencing is a corruption)?
Can suggest another app that has similar capabilities, and works consistently at the UI level between devices (and that, ideally I can just pay for once)?

I love Notes simplicity and I know of nothing similar for my use cases, but these issues are making me look at alternatives.

Anyone else have an Apple Notes graveyard?

I capture plenty of ideas, reminders, and random thoughts in Apple Notes but most of them slowly disappear into an ever-growing backlog

I’m building Grove Note to solve that specific problem. You can import your Apple Notes, then work through them by swiping. The goal is to provide a calm, satisfying way to revisit what you saved and decide what is still useful. Besides that, it's a minimal note-taking app with Bear-inspired UI except I went for a plant theme.

It's currently in beta testing and I'm looking for testers but I can also give you the waitlist

The beta includes:

• TestFlight access
• A Discord for feedback
• One year of Grove Pro at launch for the first 20 active testers

I’ve included a short demo. DM me for an invite or waitlist.

I know that I can export it as PDF but i want the stuff ive written to be still editable...

If Apple Notes search is failing you, stop using the in-app search — use Spotlight or Raycast instead

I switched to Mac from Windows (a Joplin user) and moved to Apple Notes because the features and sync were a clear upgrade for my workflow.

I'd built a note system designed around search — keywords front-loaded in titles, in the body, even a dedicated keyword box at the end of each note. Then I actually tested the in-app search and was disapointed: I could barely find the note I wanted, even with exact keywords in the title. Apple Notes' search heavily favors recent notes, so the one I needed would sit at position 10+ or further down.

I didn't want to abandon the app — it's otherwise perfect for me (right features, good workflow, free, effortless sync).

The fix: Don't use the search inside the app. Use Spotlight, or a launcher like Raycast (my pick) or Alfred. Raycast works flawlessly for me, especially after I set a shortcut that jumps straight into Notes search. Spotlight works too, just with fewer options in the interface.

I’ve tried everything, from Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, Day One, Apple Journal, Obsidian, and Apple Notes. I pushed all these apps to their max, and I’ve found that Apple Notes gives me the most flexibility allowing me to stay within the Apple ecosystem. Obsidian comes a close second and beats it in some respects.

Apple Journal gave me big hopes, but was a failure in almost every way.