Read Apple Notes in Wander

Steps

1. Export Apple Notes as Markdown into a folder like ~/Documents/notes, and leave real-time sync on.
2. Get Wander, free on the App Store for Mac with macOS 15 or later, iPhone and iPad. No account, no subscription.
3. In Wander, choose File > Open Folder… (⌘O) and pick the export folder itself. Wander loads images only from inside the folder you opened, so do not open a folder inside it.
4. Or from Terminal: open -a Wander ~/Documents/notes. Wander remembers the folder and, by default, reopens it at launch.

What you get

• the export’s folder tree, Apple Notes’ own folders included, as the sidebar
• the front matter collapsed to one line, and listed as Properties in the Info panel
• images from attachments/ where they sat, tables as tables, checklists ticked where they were ticked
• [[wikilinks]] you can click and #tags shown as tags
• an edit in Apple Notes rewrites the file, and the note open in Wander reloads with it

Opening a file never saves it again, and a plain folder gets no hidden files from Wander, so the export stays exactly as Exporter wrote it.

Pitfalls

• Edits in Wander are not sent back to Apple Notes, and Exporter replaces the file the next time it writes that note. Write in Apple Notes, or keep your own writing in a folder outside the export.
• In a plain folder, ⌘P finds files by name only. Full-text search, backlinks and the tag sidebar need File > Enable History & Search…, which creates a .wander folder inside the folder you opened.
• On iPhone, put the export folder where the phone can reach it, like iCloud Drive, then choose Open a Folder… in Wander there.

What each file holds is in the Apple Notes docs.