With Quick Note/Live text Apple Notes would be a contender for default note app if …

Software
1

With Quick Note and Live Text, and prior significant enhancements to Apple Notes, AN would be a contender for a great default all encompassing note taking app with deep integration in the OS and across devices if Apple would:

  • Add a plain text/markdown editor option
  • Add exporting to plain text, markdown and to Word and/or Pages
  • Enable bulk export from within the app
  • Add backlinking
  • Improve the reliability and speed of iCloud syncing
  • Add daily notes and calendar integration

For me, this would make Apple Notes nearly the ideal note taking application.

Or, just have a Quick Note feature allowed for third party apps like Obsidian or Craft.

But alas, I know that few, perhaps none, of those features will be added to AN.

One can dream, right? :slight_smile:

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Good thinking. Quick Note could clearly benefit from letting users choose a default notes app!

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FWIW Shareful ( ‎Shareful on the Mac App Store ) allows you to do all of these:

Byword and Ulysses automatically convert the exported rtf data to Markdown, though Drafts does not.

Also, a lot of what’s needed to do the other tasks you describe is already there & accessible though AS - run this in Script Editor:


tell application "Notes"
	set n to selection
	properties of item 1 of n
end tell

See also Applescript and 'notes': Open note in new window - Stack Overflow

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Thanks @dfay. I’ve used Byword and Ulysses, both are good apps. Shareful looks interesting and I’ll check it out but at first glance (and it was only a glance) I don’t think it will bulk export Apples Notes to plain text but I may well be wrong.

As to scripts, you’ll have to pardon my lack of knowledge and courage. I know nothing about scripts, little time to learn and frankly, fearful I’ll screw something up. My issue I know. :slight_smile:

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if you run this you’ll see among the note properties body, which is an HTML representation of the note (presumably the basis for the RTF) and plaintext, which is unfortunately a bit too plain - no hyperlinks, e.g.

The folks at Bear have built an AppleScript which does exactly this bulk export to separate HTML files:

https://bear.app/faq/Import%20&%20export/Migrate%20from%20Apple%20Notes/

The file names in the results of running that script contain the variable part of the note’s id , which could also be used to produce a URL that would open that note for backlinking purposes.

Anyway it’s like 85% there, & with a bit of time one could probably produce scripts that do everything you request.

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If Apple would implement much easier linking between notes, I would be very interested.

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Thx @dfay , coming over as you linked from the drafts forum :slight_smile:

launching this AS code dosent do anything for me (launching via Keyboard Maestro). What should i see here?

thx a lot for your kind help!

Z

8

Hi
Sorry I missed this - you can run the script in Script Editor to see what it returns for each of the Note properties.

At this point though I’d wait for iOS 15 and Monterey to see what kinds of new automation and note organization capabilities make it into the final versions.

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Check out this Alfred workflow - I hadn’t updated my copy in ages – it now has a snippet to search for and paste a link to a note:

Also you can use it on Big Sur to search for iPadOS 15 / Monterey hashtags :slight_smile:

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Aaaah this field just never stands still :sweat_smile: thanks a lot for the tip, that’s a very interesting missing piece, will definitely dig into this!

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Yep. I also added a move to folder function that works with multiple notes selected (see the GitHub issues for the workflow - it involved changing four lines of code :slight_smile: ) and just filed away 180 notes that had been sitting there.

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