[ecliptik]

A feature that a lot of Apple apps have that doesn't seem talked about much is they can use standard protocols and not require iCloud.

Mail.app/Reminders.app/Notes.app can use IMAP, Cal.app with CalDAV, and Contacts.app with CardDAV [1].

It doesn't offer a lot of the features iCloud has like advanced formatting or collaboration, but is a useful for simple standards based syncing and portability.

I've done this with my iPhone/Macs and Fastmail for the last few years and it works great [2].

1. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/set-up-mail-contacts-...

2. https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000279941

[IggleSniggle]

I…can’t believe I didn’t know this about Notes or Reminders. Thank you for mentioning this.

[polyrand]

Yes, the IMAP sync protocol was one of my discoveries when trying to turn Apple Notes into a CMS[0]. But like you said, many features are missing. I could do without the collaboration features, but I found that tables didn't work either. A lot of the unsupported features just disappeared from the IMAP-synced note, so you can't recover them later if you move the note back to an iCloud account.

[0]: https://ricardoanderegg.com/posts/apple-notes-blog-cms/

[donatj]

Hmm… I wonder how hard it would be to throw together a little IMAP server just for personal note synchronization.

Is note handling a standard part of the protocol or an extension?

[kello]

Wow! this is so cool! I had no idea about this!