[plg]

I have been using Apple Notes which is great because I can read/write in the moment on a Mac, on iPad, on iPhone, and everything is (almost always) synced and stored in the cloud. I have been doing one note per day.

On the other hand, PTF (Pity The Fool) who tries to export these notes. I know some people have written exporters but of course, whenever Apple decides to change format, PTF.

I would like to change to a more portable format, e.g. markdown, but I am looking for a solution that syncs nicely across devices. Maybe iaWriter. Maybe just sublime text or even emacs and just put everything in a dropbox folder.

[mortify]

If you don't need collaborative notes, Memos is a great markdown supported option.

[al_borland]

I’ve gone back and forth between Apple Notes and more portable solutions many times now. It has been awful, but I decided to stick with Apple Notes. If/when it goes away, I will need to suffer one more time. If I keep trying to app hop looking for the perfect tool, I’ll suffer every 3-6 months for the rest of my life and never find peace.

I like that Apple Notes gives me the option to write, easily add images, make tables, etc. While 98% of my notes are just text, and some of these things can be done in markdown, it is higher friction in markdown. So I’m choosing the lower daily friction and extra features, knowing that I’ll probably experience one high friction migration day in the future, but that day could be 10 years from now.

The biggest issue moving notes out of Apple Notes was the extra new lines and spaces all over the place. I have to assume if the app is going to shutdown that some nice developer will make a little tool to take care of this. If not, meh… I’ll use it as an opportunity to clean up some clutter.

[lloeki]

> some nice developer will make a little tool to take care of this

There are already a bunch:

- (discusses the internals) https://devlog.notespub.com/2022/08/site-generator-for-apple...

- https://github.com/dunhamsteve/notesutils

- https://github.com/ydkhatri/mac_apt

- https://github.com/threeplanetssoftware/apple_cloud_notes_pa...

[plg]

PS — Do you trust that your Notes will not disappear one day in some kind of OS-update-related or iCloud-related hiccup? I guess I still feel nervous from the "me.com" days in which Apple's cloud storage simply didn't work.

[plg]

Thanks I appreciate this. It’s a very pragmatic take on this.

[overvale]

Text files in iCloud (or whatever whatever) works great. There’s a bunch of good iOS text editors. I like Runestone.