Apple Notes Expected To Gain Markdown Support (daringfireball.net)
- Reference: 0177938794
- News link: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/06/05/2048253/apple-notes-expected-to-gain-markdown-support
- Source link: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/04/apple-notes-markdown
> Some people find this surprising, but I personally don't want to use a Markdown notes app. I [3]created Markdown two decades ago and have used it ever since for one thing and one thing only: writing for the web at Daring Fireball. My [4]original description of what it is still stands: "Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers." Perhaps an even better description of Markdown is Matthew Butterick's, [5]from the documentation for Pollen : "Markdown is a simplified notation system for HTML."
>
> The other great use case for Markdown is in a context where you either need or just want to be saving to a plain text file or database field. That's not what Apple Notes is or should be. I can see why many technically-minded people want to use Markdown "everywhere." It's quite gratifying that Markdown has not only become so popular, but after 21 years, seemingly continues to grow in popularity, to the point now where there clearly are a lot of people who seemingly enjoy writing in Markdown more than even I do. But I think it would be a huge mistake for Apple to make Apple Notes a "Markdown editor," even as an option. It's trivial to create malformed Markdown syntax; it shouldn't be possible to have a malformed note in Apple Notes. I craft posts for Daring Fireball; I dash off notes in Apple Notes. [...]
>
> But Markdown export from Notes? That sounds awesome. Frankly, perhaps the biggest problem with Apple Notes is that its export functionality is rather crude -- [6]PDF and, of all formats, Pages . Exporting and/or copying the selected text as Markdown would be pretty cool. Very curious to see how they handle images though, if this rumor is true.
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2025/06/03/exclusive-ios-26-messages-carplay-more/
[2] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/04/apple-notes-markdown
[3] https://daringfireball.net/2004/03/dive_into_markdown
[4] https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
[5] https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/quick-tour.html#(part._.Markdown_mode)
[6] https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/export-or-print-notes-iphdf551cfa2/ios
Re: (Score:2)
Think of it as a simple notation for a subset of HTML. The idea is it is easy to write inline as you're composing text without having to think about markup.
If you're a long-time front end developer, it probably won't do much for you. The target market is folks who want basic layout and typographic control without having to become a front end developer.
Personally I question it as an export format. There are several different implementations that all behave a bit differently, what does interop look like?
I'd just be happy with better IMAP support (Score:2)
I use Notes with my Dovecot IMAP server. It works, but sync is oftentimes VERY slow. You can speed it up by going to the calendar app and refreshing the calendars (which is odd, because my calendars are on a totally separate CALDAV server).
It's been like this for many years. I realize I'm in the minority of notes users but reporting the bug doesn't seem to help much either.
Re: (Score:2)
Apple doesn't care for minority users like me. Others and I are old school who still use local USB sync. We don't use iClouds. macOS Calendar sync broke (not updating since macOS Ventura) between iPhones and MacOS' Calendar. :(
Re: (Score:2)
No because that's an iOS thing.
I think... (Score:2)
I'd rather have Treasury Notes
That's not the biggest problem with Apple Notes (Score:2)
> Frankly, perhaps the biggest problem with Apple Notes is that its export functionality is rather crude ...
With most of Apple's offerings (not just Notes), I think the biggest problem is just how far behind everyone else they are with regards to sharing. It took forever for them to add the ability to share *at all*, and even now the functionality seems like it was bolted on in a half-assed manner.