Apple Notes

Connect

Press “connect” on the Apple Notes card (on first launch, “connect apple notes” on the welcome card). The panel opens in ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes: press “Select this folder” without opening anything. Exporter reads the Notes database there, read-only. Then press “select export folder”, and “sync now”.

Where the files go

A folder right in your home folder, like ~/Documents, gets a notes-export folder inside it; a deeper folder, like ~/Documents/notes, is used as it is. The export to row shows the real folder.

The tab the card is on is also the folder layout:

tab	files land in
Folders	Apple Notes’ own folder tree
Tags	a folder named after the note’s first ticked tag; a note with no ticked tag is left out
Smart	a folder named after its smart folder

Switching between these tabs moves every file on the next sync, and the card says so under the tabs. Shared, Pinned, Recent and Popular are lists: a tick there counts as a tick on Folders.

A file is named after the note’s title, with . removed and / and : turned into _. Two notes with the same title in one folder both get six characters of their id, like Meeting-3f9a1c.md. Beside the notes:

• attachments/, next to the notes of each folder
• bases/: all-notes.base, photo-notes.base and all-attachments.base, views for Obsidian’s Bases, rewritten on every export
• .exporter/: last-export.json and last-export.md for the last run, history/ with the last 50, and files.json, the list of files Exporter wrote

What is exported

Every note in the folders or tags ticked on the card. The first load ticks everything, and folders and tags that appear later are ticked for you; what you untick stays unticked.

Left out:

• locked notes, the ones with a password
• notes Apple Notes has not downloaded from iCloud to this Mac yet
• Recently Deleted
• the notes of a smart folder marked “so it exports nothing”: its search cannot be read, so tick its notes on Folders

In the file, checklists become - [ ] and - [x], tables Markdown tables, highlights ==text== and links to other notes [[wikilinks]]. Your #tags stay in the text. Underline and text colors are dropped.

Attachments

Images, PDFs, scans and drawings are copied into attachments/ and embedded where they were, with ![[attachments/...]]. A drawing becomes its image, with any handwriting Apple recognized quoted under it. An attachment whose file is not on this Mac is skipped, and the Export log lists it as “source file not found”.

Markdown and HTML

Markdown is the default. “switch to html” on the format row writes one web page per note instead: its styles inside, so nothing loads from the internet; the note’s id and dates at the top in place of front matter; links between notes as links between pages; attachments copied into attachments/ next to the page and linked, so move a page together with that folder.

One format at a time. A sync removes only old files of the format it writes, so switching leaves the other format’s files behind: give each format its own folder. The MCP server reads Markdown only.

The file

The front matter keys, always in this order, each left out when it does not apply:

key	holds
title	the note’s title
id	Apple Notes’ id for the note
created, modified	Apple Notes’ own times, with no time zone, the form Obsidian reads as dates
source_url	a notes:// link that reopens the note in Apple Notes
pinned, shared	true when the note is pinned or shared
collaborators	the people a shared note is shared with
cover	the first image, as a wikilink to its copy in attachments/
links	the web links in the note

There is no tags key. A note in Travel > Norway, as Travel/Norway/Bike tour, day 2.md:

---
title: "Bike tour, day 2"
id: "5B7E2C19"
created: 2025-06-21T20:14:02
modified: 2025-06-22T08:03:47
source_url: "notes://showNote?identifier=5B7E2C19"
links:
  - "https://www.visitnorway.com/"
---
# Bike tour, day 2

From Voss to Flåm. Ferry times are in [[Bike tour, day 1]].

![[attachments/Drawing 3f9a1c.png]]

Free and unlocked

Your first 100 notes export and keep syncing free; new notes after that need the one-time unlock (pricing).

Sync and full resync

After the first “sync now”, every edit in Apple Notes is written to its file while Exporter runs, window open or closed. Quitting stops it; exporter sync catches up. When you delete, rename or move a note, the next sync removes its old file, and only files listed in .exporter/files.json.

“full resync” asks first, then removes only the files Exporter wrote, exports again and picks the free 100 again. Anything else in the export folder stays: your own notes, and a vault’s .obsidian.

Problems and fixes

• “that is not the Apple Notes folder”: you picked another folder. Press “try again”, then “Select this folder” without opening anything
• a locked note is missing: remove the lock in Apple Notes. Settings > “notes database diagnostics” counts the locked notes
• iCloud notes are missing: open Apple Notes and let it finish syncing, then check the card’s selected count
• files moved into other folders: the card went to another tab. Go back to the tab you want and press “sync now”
• a note failed: last sync shows a red “details” link. “apple notes was writing this note and it will export on the next sync” clears itself; if “could not read note from database” keeps failing, send the report from Settings > “notes database diagnostics” with the note’s title
• an image is missing: open the note in Apple Notes so its file downloads, then sync again
• edits do not show up: Exporter has to be running, and the note ticked and within the free allowance