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Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts
- legacynl 1y ago[flagged]
- lostlogin 1y agoShovels aren’t great for digging holes. That’s what spades are for. Shovels are good for filling holes. I think I’ve missed the point.
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- dhosek 1y agoDoes the appearance of this on the front page mean that DF is no longer blacklisted?
- iambateman 1y agoIt makes sense that Markdown is a good tool for a specific purpose, and generalized note taking isn't it. As an aside, I have a dream that Apple Notes could be piped into a website as a form of blogging. As it is, I haven't found a way to do it...
- nomad41 1y agoThere’s https://alto.so/ https://alto.so/ that does exactly what you want.
- Zak 1y agoI like my Markdown notes editor, but I agree it's not the right choice for Apple notes because exposing the underlying machinery in everyday use is not Apple's style.
- wodenokoto 1y agoIt’s also not handy to reach the mark-up characters from a touch keyboard. And if you are adding backticks and asterisks to a markup bar, you might as well just add bold and italics to the markup bar.
- Zak 1y agoThis varies a bit by touch keyboard. The standard iPhone keyboard is particularly bad at this while the AOSP and Google keyboards on Android aren't so bad. Joplin, the notes app I've been using lately does have a markup bar with those features.
- criddell 1y agoIt does feel like a good option for export though (as John says in the post).
- jhardy54 1y agoI think you want Alto / Montaigne (spelling?). They’re both made by the same person IIRC.
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- bowsamic 1y agoI’m surprised to see a DF article here. I thought he was black listed
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- zdw 1y agoWell, there's this: https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_is_afraid_to_discuss https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_i... Not sure if it's a blacklist as much as people insta-flagging, as happens with a many of the political-adjacent posts.
- legacynl 1y agothat blog post isn't really convincing. > Occasionally I notice a burst of traffic to Daring Fireball from Hacker News. It’s always short-lived, because for reasons I’ve never seen explained, Daring Fireball articles always get blacklisted from Hacker News once they hit their front page It seems to me that he concludes that he's blacklisted because the traffic coming from Hacker News is short-lived? > Daring Fireball articles seemed more or less appropriately popular there. Articles that I would think would resonate with the HN readership would hit, and get what always seemed to me an appropriate number of comments. So this guy seems to think that he can predict what will be popular and what will not? I think he's burying the lede here, who cares about being blacklisted, this guy can tell the future ! Isn't it much more likely that his posts are just less popular, and drive less engagement than he hopes? Most people (even very smart people) are bad at meta-cognition, and are likely to fall in the trap of reasoning based on (hidden) assumptions. If this guy actually has evidence of being blacklisted/botted I would be open to see it, but lack of engament isn't that.
- terhechte 1y ago[flagged]
- dogleash 1y ago
- kennywinker 1y agoJohn Gruber, creator of markdown, wrong about markdown again. (https://airsource.co.uk/blog/2014/09/04/markdown-has-been-standardised-and-the-creator-aint-happy/ https://airsource.co.uk/blog/2014/09/04/markdown-has-been-st...)
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- brookst 1y agoI mean it’s lot like he’s touting some fringe thing just because he made it. It must be so weird to see markdown become the lingua franca of everything from online forums to LLMs.
- andrewmcwatters 1y agoAs its author, he’s right though. There really shouldn’t be a standard considered Standard Markdown. It muddies the fact that it wasn’t published by its author. Maybe Common Markdown would have been a better name between a few large orgs.
- Almondsetat 1y agoBy this logic, since Ritchie died in 2011, you cannot have a "Standard C" because it's not from the author
- andrewmcwatters 1y agoWe don’t! We have ANSI and ISO C.
- zdw 1y agoWell, there's this: https://commonmark.org https://commonmark.org But everyone seems to have their own slightly different flavor, either pre- or post- that "standardization".
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- perbu 1y agoMarkdown is the native formatting of large language models. As such, support for it will be everywhere in the coming years. I suspect LLMs, not users, have been the requesting this feature at Apple.
- grapesodaaaaa 1y agoThat's actually a nice perk since I have LLMs summarize or re-word my research findings quite often. I'm a disorganized person, so they've been a big help with me organizing my work. I also like that Markdown is being added since it's what I typically use for documentation (github, etc). The default formatting in notes currently leaves something to be desired...
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- al_borland 1y agoShortcuts has Rich Text -> Markdown and Markdown -> Rich Text actions. I made a couple quick shortcuts to go both ways, with the clipboard as both the input and output. I put a widget for this on my desktop and it makes it pretty easy. Not as easy as native support, but not bad.
- benob 1y agoI wonder how to import markdown into Notes
- runjake 1y agoThere's a couple Apple Shortcuts actions to convert to/from Markdown and Rich Text for Notes, but I can't get them to work correctly.
- m000 1y ago[flagged]
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- ChrisArchitect 1y agoMore discussion: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44183923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44183923
- mcdow 1y agoKinda stoked for this. Been working on a notes app and apple notes is my current daily driver. Apple notes stores the notes in a proprietary and opaque format atm. I’ve been scheming ways to break the notes out without luck. Now I can just wait for this feature to come out.
- halpow 1y agoWhy keep using Notes if if it hurts you so much that they're not markdown-exportable? I haven't used Notes in decades other than to type out junk/numbers once every 4 months.
- runjake 1y ago> Why keep using Notes if if it hurts you so much that they're not markdown-exportable? Among other reasons, because the sync experience is second to none. Some of the other reasons: - Apple Pencil - Shared notes with friends and family (vacation planning, lists, etc)
- mcdow 1y agoSo first of all, I like Apple notes for its simplicity and ability to sync with iCloud. I don't really care if it's exportable using markdown, I only really care that it is exportable. Because I'd like to migrate to the notes app I am working on.
- cloverich 1y agoWas also in your boat, but realized there are various tools to export Apple notes as markdown that work reasonably well; Obsidian itself recommends one[1]. Meanwhile, I'm impressed that Apple notes keeps getting better. It was _almost_ good enough for me to abandon my own note taking app. The things that slowly drove me nuts were lack of real code formatting and lack of image formatting (after they added note linking and tagging, the prior issues I had). I'm still surprised how long it takes most notes apps to get decent out of the box image formatting; few would want to drop an image onto their note and have it blown up to take up the full page by default. Just make your notes app look like the typical blog by default and _most_ people will love it[2]. [1]: https://help.obsidian.md/import/apple-notes https://help.obsidian.md/import/apple-notes. [2]: tbf it took me quite a bit of work to get there in my own app, and its still got bugs
- meindnoch 1y agoMarkdown only makes sense in a non-WYSIWYG context.
- cloverich 1y agoIts fairly common to use markdown as shortcuts to WYSIWYG content - Obsidian and Notion for instance. At a higher level at some point if you want a fluid typing experience, you need some form of shortcuts, and given markdowns conciseness and ubiquity its a good choice as opposed to having a proprietary format users need to learn for just your app.
- flambojones 1y ago+1 - a universal way of doing this via markdown beats learning whatever app-specific hotkeys I have to do to make an H3 or whatever. I don't have any particular feelings about markdown as a format for data, but as a universal set of shortcuts, I've found it to be a huge productivity boost.
- germs12 1y agoI for one am pumped about this. I hate the styling of notes, but love every other aspect of it.
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- nonethewiser 1y agoI cannot understand how Apple notes works sometimes. For instance, sometimes after indenting a line I cannot un-indent on future lines. Just fighting the tool. Stuff like this really makes me dislike it. I find syntax highlighting with markdown preferable than a WYSIWYG rich text editor. I get why people who don't know markdown prefer it, but the advantages diminish significantly if you know markdown.
- frantathefranta 1y ago> For instance, sometimes after indenting a line I cannot un-indent on future lines I feel like this is why a lot of us use Markdown/Org, because this is the most annoying issue in Word to me since 2003. Why are the indentation rules so arbitrary?
- chrismorgan 1y agoI don’t use word processors often (less than once a year in general), and did something comparatively advanced in LibreOffice Writer a few months ago, involving mixing English and an Indian language, and trying to use styles and such (equivalent to tacking on a stylesheet in HTML). I learned that the toolbar button for lists creates a list with hard-coded inline styles for bullet appearance, indent amounts, &c. If you want to change it, you can’t use that button any more, and have to make your own style with the appropriate properties (not easy) and apply them to each list item. Part of the mess is that it doesn’t seem to actually model lists, just paragraphs which might have a list level associated with them. I have no idea why this was ever deemed acceptable: it precludes multiple markers on one line: 1. a) Sorry, but you can’t do this. b) It’s not expressible. 2. You need a paragraph first. a) Then it can be done. My guess is that LibreOffice inherited this limitation from Word. No idea if Word is so affected.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cloverich 1y agoI actually love that this was glossed over by him and most of the comments. I used Apple notes daily for years - hundreds or maybe thousand+ notes in it. The idea that markdown is easy to mess up compared to Apple notes is at best partially true. Apple notes messes up too, and in weird ways. The reality is if not markdown, its using its own syntax under the hood that is certainly not bug free, and will have its own (proprietary) bugs to deal with. And since its not markdown, you can't drop to raw text to fix it, or even understand it. Which is the whole reason more and more apps are moving towards it: You don't need to re-invent the wheel for all the standard note features, including your own special flavor of bugs. Apple notes realistically can't use Markdown in its UI. But if it could, having a toggle to flip to it would be lovely, especially when their UI gets buggy - there's always a plain text work around that's easy to understand, and fully human readable on its own.
- dotdi 1y agoWhen Gruber mentions that he never uses Markdown outside of his blog, and hinting at the fact that it was not intended for text editors (and other apps), there's one important point I want to make. Yes, Markdown has disadvantages, and a few rough edges for uses as the format for editors et al, but there are two very big advantages and/or sideffects of it's widespread use: (1) it's cleartext and therefore very good as a measure against vendor lock-in and (2) it has, to some extent, dampened the rampant "not-invented-here"-esqe tendency to use proprietary formats. Even in open-source apps, proprietary formats make it hard for non-dev users to get their stuff out. If it's markdown (or at least supports markdown export) from the beginning, at least you know you can take your data with you.
- empath75 1y agoIt's also great for writing documentation in a plaintext IDE, which I think is what _really_ drove a lot of the adoption.
- diggan 1y ago> which I think is what _really_ drove a lot of the adoption That GitHub used it as a "native" format everywhere from the beginning (as far as I remember), probably helped Markdown become at least as popular (or maybe even more) as GitHub itself. Then everyone and their mother started doing static blogs, and since people already wrote their READMEs and issue comments with Markdown, I guess it was natural to want to write your blogposts with Markdown too, just like Gruber.
- bsimpson 1y agoDon't overlook Reddit as a major reason for many otherwise-non-technical people to learn Markdown.
- OJFord 1y agoIt is funny to occasionally see it explained like 'on Reddit you can use ...' and think '..dude, markdown, just tell them you can use markdown' (and then realise oh right yeah ok, your way is probably clearer to them and you probably don't know it as 'markdown' either).
- diggan 1y agoIsn't it a bit early to have thoughts about something we don't know the UI/UX of? Could be that "Markdown support" is just "Import/Export as Markdown", or even just export. Or it could be a fully fledged WYSIWYG editor. The rumors seem to indicate just "Export as Markdown", which seems to be exactly what Gruber wants, according to the last 10% of the blogpost. So the rest is ranting against an implementation that doesn't seem like it'll happen?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mechanicalpulse 1y agoGruber is famously protective of the original Markdown specification and his specific use case. He’s reacting to others’ expectations and clarifying his position that a “Markdown editor” is a bit of an oxymoron. He supports that position by reiterating his inspiration for creating the format.
- kstrauser 1y agoI understand his point, but I disagree with it. Markdown wasn’t invented for the purposes we use it for today, true. And yet the most popular programming editor today is a website running inside a modified browser, themed with CSS and extended with JavaScript. We have a tendency, as a group, to push things beyond their original intent.
- layer8 1y agoNotes is already a WYSIWYG editor, with a feature-set exceeding that of plain Markdown (handwritten notes, math formulas and plots, colored highlighting, etc.). In the general case, Markdown export and re-import would likely be lossy, or would have to use HTML elements for non-Markdown features. The main question IMO is if they’ll add Markdown source visualization and source editing, in addition to export/import. It could conceivably even just be export, without import.
- bee_rider 1y agoIt seems sort of odd to have an “export to markdown” command. Markdown is nice… because it is sort of like a normal markup language, but easier to write, right? But exporting is specifically the one case where markdown’s strength doesn’t matter. The computer can type, like, real fast and can output verbose and niche syntax easily. Why not export to the best format, LaTeX? I don’t think anyone could argue that Markdown is better than LaTeX as long as you don’t actually have to write it.
- Eric_WVGG 1y agoI’d love to see Markdown added to Apple Messages. I’m constantly sending URLs to people, like https://somesite.com/login https://somesite.com/login. The point of these links is usually that people read them and understand them. But the automatic behavior is to replace the text with OpenGraph links, big obnoxious bubbles of graphics, which distort or destroy the meaning that I’m trying to convey. Given the opportunity, I would send most links wrapped in `backticks`.
- enlightens 1y agoFor those who don't know, you can tap on the link preview graphic and select "Convert to Text Link" to switch back to clickable text. As you mention there's no way to change the automatic behavior but at least it is possible to switch back to text links on a case-by-case basis.
- Eric_WVGG 1y agoTHANK YOU
- layer8 1y agoInstead of Markdown, add support for editing links with text, like word processors have.
- RS-232 1y agoIt would be awesome if Messages, Mail, and Notes rendered Markdown. System-wide Markdown editing would also be awesome, perhaps as a feature of the keyboard.
- kstrauser 1y agoI hacked up something like this for Apple Notes. It’s far from perfect, but at least it lets me type Markdown-style punctuation and get the expect results. Think of it like a crummy Vim mode sort of thing. https://honeypot.net/2024/01/17/making-notes-look.html https://honeypot.net/2024/01/17/making-notes-look.html
- anentropic 1y agoI'd love to see Markdown support in MS OneNote...
- noworriesnate 1y agoOneNote lets you add content in a canvas. It would be cool if there was an ASCII canvas note taking tool but I think it would have to be built on plain text from the ground up.
- anentropic 1y agoYeah I meant just within the individual text blocks, the canvas itself can't be Markdown of course It's such a more convenient way of "styling while you type" and has become the de facto way to do that... in Slack, Reddit comments, GitHub, Jira, Confluence etc... even MS Teams, they all allow Markdown "styling while you type"
- sylens 1y agoOneNote feels like such a laggard in this space. They don't even have support for code blocks
- anentropic 1y agoIt's main reason why I want Markdown within text blocks TBH
- accrual 1y agoAnd it's odd because Teams has first class support for many Markdown elements. I wrap code blocks in "```" all the time.
- cheema33 1y agoI was a heavy user of MS OneNote. It got slower and slower as I added more notes. And some notes got long. And then I discovered Obsidian with Markdown support. Now the idea of using OneNote sends shivers down my spine.
- dstroot 1y agoObsidian user here. BUT I also have a lot of stuff in Apple Notes. Have wanted to consolidate but always seemed to much of a chore. This is awesome for my use case. Kudos to Apple for adding this!
- samuelstros 1y ago100% agree with the sentimment. markdown is hell as a format for editors :D the effort it takes to serialize and parse markdown into an AST that rich text editor frameworks reliably operate on takes months. been there, done that. the majority of the engineering effort of building a markdown editor in the browser went into parsing and serializing markdown :/ Anyhow, we took the learnings from the Markdown editor app and created "zettel" as a result: https://github.com/opral/monorepo/tree/main/packages/zettel/zettel-ast https://github.com/opral/monorepo/tree/main/packages/zettel/.... The goal is to have an interoperable rich text AST—basically Markdown but with an AST spec.
- absurdo 1y agoI’ve trained our support staff on basic markdown syntax and while we do use it predominantly for spitting out documentation and guides and whatnot, its usefulness far exceeds the original intent. And that’s okay.
- cheema33 1y agoFunny. I am in the process of providing basic training on Markdown to our support staff. I think more than 80% of what we now write is in Markdown format. It is easy to read/write for humans. And AI.
- ab5tract 1y agoYeah, I understand that it might get confusing to use multiple implementations, or to transition between the two, but I seriously doubt these claims that “regular people” (as in, people who are expected to know how to use Word) are struggling with the syntax itself. The article pretends that Markdown got popular because “it was there”. 15 years ago people were adopting it _because_ it is dead simple, unobtrusive, and visually evocative. The ones who made it popular, in other words, did so quite intentionally.
- RS-232 1y agoSweet, just what I needed. This will make it even easier to migrate all my Apple Notes™ to Obsidian.
- orsenthil 1y agoI wish Obsidian gained similar marketing as Apple Notes is getting at WWDC.
- exploderate 1y agoThis will make working with Google Docs easier, as they can copy&paste from Markdown.
- ghushn3 1y ago[flagged]
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- e40 1y agohttps://apps.apple.com/us/app/exporter/id1099120373?ls=1&mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/exporter/id1099120373?ls=1&mt=... This is an app called Exporter that exports your Notes to MD. Been using it for a while, to archive the state of my notes.
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- kmelve 1y agoI wrote a piece a few years ago that still reflects a lot of my thoughts on the tension between Markdown as a format and the actual experience of writing and publishing on the web: [“Thoughts on Markdown” – Smashing Magazine](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/02/thoughts-on-markdown/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/02/thoughts-on-markdow...). What Apple seems to be doing with Notes—embracing Markdown syntax but not treating it as a source format—feels like a pragmatic move. It acknowledges Markdown’s familiarity without overcommitting to it as a canonical format. That distinction matters: many people like typing emphasis or `code`, but few need or want to version-control or export that exact syntax. It’s the gesture of Markdown that carries value for most users, not the fidelity to a plain-text artifact. "Even" Google Docs implemented it recently. In my article, I argue that Markdown is increasingly a “source language” for interfaces, not documents, and this Apple Notes move seems to align with that trend. Curious how others feel about Markdown as an authoring experience vs. a content format.
- marxisttemp 1y agoSee also SwiftUI’s AttributedString, which can be directly instantiated from a string literal containing Markdown syntax.
- Pulcinella 1y agoNitpick: AttributedString is a member of the Swift Foundation framework. It's not limited to SwiftUI. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/attributedstring https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/attribu...
- 827a 1y ago> The other great use case for Markdown is in a context where you either need or just want to be saving to a plain text file or database field. That’s not what Apple Notes is or should be. I don't follow why this is a relevant concern for Apple Notes. By any measure I would argue that Notion "has markdown support". By that I mean: You type Markdown, Notion knows how to render the markdown you type, and you can easily export files in Markdown. However, what they aren't doing, by any stretch of the imagination, is storing your documents in a markdown format on their servers or your device. There's a third quality that you might label "Native Markdown" where the documents themselves are stored in Markdown. Obsidian does this. I'd imagine products like the Github Issues description field also does this. But I would not require this quality in a product which has "Markdown Support". In fact, I would argue this is the defining difference between saying that a product Supports Markdown versus it Is Markdown. Its tremendously and obviously unlikely that Apple will be changing the storage format of their notes to be Native Markdown. I also don't think it really matters for a product like Apple Notes; I don't care what format the notes are stored in. Users of Obsidian might care about this, but that's because Obsidian has a different kind of customer than Apple; people who worry about data portability. Totally cool; that's just not Apple Notes. Its like arguing that Vim keybinds are only interesting within Vim. My favorite way to use vim keybinds is this great Firefox extension; scroll down pages with j, copy the URL with yy... Markdown is more than just a data format; at a much more abstract level, its a keybinding system for text formatting. In Apple Notes today I have to hit Shift+Cmd+H to get a header. I'd much rather just hit #.
- jamesgill 1y agoMy original description of what it is still stands: “Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Yes, that's how John Gruber defines it. But like every creation you share with others, it can evolve. If popular, it will evolve. People create their own versions and uses and intentions with it. I've used markdown for 12 years or so, for two reasons: 1. As a way to write plain text but still get visual layout cues without using a proprietary format/tool (e.g., Word). 2. Have options for later conversion to other formats/outputs (for Gruber, HTML.) So for me, writing markdown on my Apple device means that instead of using Apple's proprietary format, I have another place to write plain text markdown and use/share it elsewhere (which I often do).
- philistine 1y agoGruber is Markdown's father but the overall Markdown community has stopped listening to him a long time ago. Doesn't help that he hasn't fixed the bugs in his Perl script since 2004.
- stevekemp 1y agoIndeed. His post says: It’s trivial to create malformed Markdown syntax That's because his specification is loose, and there are no test-cases nor updates to clarify ambiguities.
- astrange 1y agoWhy do all these people like taking notes? I recommend a very simple process, which is to delete them and just remember everything.
- accrual 1y agoI'm sure this in jest, but my real answer: I remember so much more when I have notes to look back on. I store mine as some YYYY-MM-DD-Notes.txt and edit via local web UI or terminal/SSH. It's a blast to browse and see what I was thinking and doing, and how I've changed over time. I save working knowledge elsewhere as Topic.md in subfolders so I can remember how I deployed an app or fixed a recurring issue etc.
- DavidPiper 1y agoNot sure if you're serious, but you made me laugh, so have an upvote. I'm one of those people who went pretty hard into the whole "Second Brain" movement (using Apple Notes first, then Obsidian). ~6000 notes later and I've started finding the whole thing overwhelming and pointless at the same time. The vast majority of notes I have don't need to be noted down. At most they could have been a journal entry rather than a separate, curated piece. Usually I hear something like "excessive noting means you're less likely to try to commit something to memory because you know it's there when you need it". (This is touted as an advantage of the Second Brain concept, incidentally.) But I've actually found something different as well: excessive noting means you're actively engaging with significantly more information, and most of it is designed to be (or at least should be considered) ephemeral. Noting so much of it down is effectively the digital equivalent of hoarding junk, and the mental/memory repercussions are similar to the physical repercussions of hoarding actual junk.
- whatarethembits 1y agoWith (most) note taking systems, you’re supposed to periodically “clean house/review”, which among other things, avoids the problem you’re describing. I don’t do it often myself tbf.
- p1necone 1y ago
- modernerd 1y agoHe's right: Markdown was built for web editing in an era where physical keyboards outnumbered virtual ones. It doesn't really make sense for Notes outside of export. There's little benefit to it as an input system on iOS/iPadOS (likely the dominant platforms for Notes) where formatting menus are just as close as `#` and `_` characters. Several Markdown rules wouldn't make sense in the context of Notes. e.g. "end a line with two or more spaces then press return to create a <br>", which was designed to accommodate manually hard-wrapped text that Notes users likely don't want. Apple would have to follow something like CommonMark (feels unlikely) or implement their own Apple-flavoured Markdown, leaving you to learn what's supported and discover the quirks — kind of like its partial implementation of vim input in Xcode. Popular Markdown apps seem to have converged on 'edit on line focus, preview on line blur', which is surely what the Notes app would do, because modal editing with preview and edit modes feels un-Appleish. 'Preview on line blur' _is_ nicer than a separate preview mode if you're a Markdown power user, but it still leaves many quirks you have to learn. (Just today I wrote, '# Thoughts on C#' in Obsidian, which reads ok with the cursor on that line until I pressed enter and the preview became, 'Thoughts on C'. Leaving me to learn I was supposed to know to write '#Thoughts on C\#' in the edit mode.)
- woah 1y agoI use markdown all the time on iOS with Notion. It functions as a shortcut for formatting operations like creating headings and bullets.
- inopinatus 1y agoDo iOS devices still default to translating consecutive spaces into “. “ within a few seconds? Always used to be a bother when authoring md content on an iPad.
- double0jimb0 1y agoThat can be disabled [0] (and I feel like has been on option for many years now). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go4x9sIGEg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go4x9sIGEg8
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- larrywright 1y agoI don’t want Notes to become a Markdown editor. I think that would be confusing for the majority of users. What I would like is for it to understand Markdown syntax and just convert it to the right thing. If I type “# My Note”, it should convert that to note title format. If I type “## Heading” it should convert it to a heading format, and so on. Most apps do this already, to some extent. If you start a line with a - or an *, the app will convert it to a proper indented list. Heck, even Microsoft’s apps do this. I’m just asking for it to handle a few more things.
- diggan 1y ago> I don’t want Notes to become a Markdown editor > I’m just asking for it to handle a few more things. How is what you're asking for not making Notes into a Markdown editor? Those are all features that come from Markdown, and the reason "most apps" already handle those, is because they're aiming to support Markdown to at least some extent.
- jeeyoungk 1y agoI think the parent's suggesting that they should be "one way" shortcuts; i.e. "# Heading" auto-formatting as a heading is a shortcut, and it doesn't allow you to go back and modify the original markdown.
- larrywright 1y agoThat's exactly it.
- larrywright 1y agoMS Word is not aiming to support Markdown.
- jeffrogers 1y agoWell, there is no great way to import nicely formatted text into Notes, not even with Shortcuts. Respect to Gruber, but if Apple supports Markdown in Notes, it wouldn't be the worst thing.
- koinedad 1y agoLooking forward to markdown support! I’d love something like what Notion does for input using markdown
- marxisttemp 1y ago> It’s trivial to create malformed Markdown syntax Not helped by Gruber’s refusal to bless a specific well-specified Markdown flavor, leaving us to deal with all the undefined behavior of his original implementation.
- accrual 1y agoPersonally, I just want the ability to export from the stock iOS Notes app as plaintext at all. Currently I need to copy/paste my notes into my own editor or dump them .pdf and extract. I won't even be using markdown, I just want simple local-first backup.
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- tough 1y agoI'm still mad Apple Notes became unusable for me at some point due to iCloud fucking it up it has thousands of thousands of unrelated files in the notes db. The app just crashes mostly or is super-slow unusable Apple used to be UX king, now its a joke.
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- genewitch 1y ago> Apple used to be UX king Was this before or after the spinning beach balls?
- lloydatkinson 1y agoNow do Journal exports too and I'll actually use the app.
- cadamsdotcom 1y agoMarkdown is a great storage format for notes. The precision of editing in Markdown makes it easy to be certain your indenting is correct, or do weird things that are actually common, like having a sub-list that switches from bullets to numbers or from numbers to bullets.
- screye 1y agoWhat's the strictest type of markdown that can be serialized into a yaml/json ? If a strict subset can have 2-way-conversion to json through yaml, then markdown can be an effective json editor for the lay person.
- deafpolygon 1y agoI may be in the minority here, but I really don't want Notes to become a markdown editor. I enjoy the Rich Text editors far more. I find myself agreeing with Gruber this time.
- suobset 1y agoThe biggest thing that excites me about this is the fact that other Apple Notes export formats absolutely suck at the moment. You have PDF, and Pages. One's not editable, the other is a proprietary format that will lose formatting if converted to ODF or Word and is clunky in general.
- acd10j 1y agoBiggest advantage of markdown is that it is directly understandable using llm, as it is native text format, all others cannot be copy pasted and fed to llm and you have to write some translation between them.
- deverman 1y agoMarkdown is now the go to baseline for importing and exporting text data. I can see how I might want to export some more personal Notes to DayOne and archive some notes I don't need anymore to a more durable storage format. Would welcome this functionality.
- JSR_FDED 1y agoWhy is there no way in Notes to insert the current date easily? So often I need to go back to a note, and add some time stamped update at the end. Am I the only one?
- jaffa2 1y agoNo. Notes fails on many basic things, this is just one example.
- ericio 1y agoOne of the very first tools I install on a new Mac is the free WordService [1] tool from DEVONTechnologies (no affiliation). It adds a bunch of little text tools to the Services menu, including several for inserting the current date and time in various formats. They also provide a direct download version [2]. - [1] [WordService](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordservice/id899972312?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordservice/id899972312?mt=12 - [2] [WordService Download](https://www.devontechnologies.com/support/download https://www.devontechnologies.com/support/download)
- jbverschoor 1y agoFully agree. Obsidian, NotePlan, etc. are popular because their storage format is markdown, and you have access to the files, EVEN without exporting Markdown on iOS doesn’t even make very much sense in terms of keyboard strokes
- mark_l_watson 1y agoI love Apple notes and being able to export to Markdown is useful for generating LLM context and for vender neutral backup. I hope there is an Export All Notes option.
- johannesrexx 1y agoMr. Gruber was certainly one of the inventors of Markdown but has rested on the laurels ever since. Remember that the late Aaron Schwartz was the co-inventor of Markdown. So let's not give Mr. Gruber too much attention for his opinions on how Markdown has evolved because he's chosen not to participate in its development or adoption. Indeed, he is far more likely to let loose a tirade of anti-Trump sentiment, and in that regard he comes across as a terribly damaged individual. His opinions are many, and so we cannot give them too much weight. We must have balance in The Force.
- apple4ever 1y agoGruber is poor maintainer of MarkDown. Others have taken it so much further.
- rajnathani 1y agoA side: Apple Notes needs to get the ability to export all notes at once, without having to export each note 1-by-1 as a PDF. We have so much important text information on the notes app on our phones (whether iPhone or Android), and the ability to easily export this out (we're not even talking multimedia MP4 data, etc.) easily should be one of the most core features.
- fennecbutt 1y agoYeah but can I strike through text in their notepad yet? No? Well alright then.