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Apple Notes

Ranked 5 of 33 note-taking apps by recommenders

Recommended for quick startup and reliable sync across Apple devices. Common caveat: it slows with very long notes and is weak on Windows, Linux and the web.

Recommended for quick startup and reliable sync across Apple devices. Common caveat: it slows with very long notes and is weak on Windows, Linux and the web.

74 people gave an opinion

recommend it
39
criticize it
35
approval share
53%
Each figure is one person. RecommendsCriticizes

Recommended in 12 of 13 months

  1. November 2025: recommended
  2. December 2025: recommended
  3. January 2026: recommended
  4. February 2026: recommended
  5. March 2026: recommended
  6. April 2026: recommended
  7. May 2026: recommended
  8. June 2026: recommended
  9. July 2026: recommended
  10. August 2026: recommended
  11. September 2026: recommended
  12. October 2026: recommended
  13. November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)

Why it doesn’t carry the badge

  • 39 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
  • 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
  • Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.

The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works

What people say about it

The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.

Why people recommend it

Each mark is one comment

  • Syncs reliably across devices

    “Apple Notes and Reminders did the job just fine and worked perfectly across devices”

    Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management”

    “I appreciate the notes being available offline and syncing across devices”

    Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica”

    “The seamless cloud sync between devices is much appreciated too.”

    Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Decoding the obfuscated bash script on a Uniqlo t-shirt”
  • Does its core job well

    “The best notes app on iOS is Apple Notes because it does a lot of things incredibly well”

    Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good”

    “Apple Notes and Reminders did the job just fine and worked perfectly across devices”

    Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management”

    “Notes and Reminders are extremely good at what they do”

    Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS”
  • Easy to start using

    “At their core, a user can open them up and start writing and creating new notes within a a minute of first use”

    Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Users don't care about your app's complexity”

    “anyone can just open it up and start writing without ever needing to know all those options are there”

    Comment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Apple Apps Are Rubbish”

    “I'm a big fan of the simplicity and ease of use.”

    Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “I ran an LLM on iOS to build another privacy focused notes app”
  • Convenient across Apple devices

    “that's also fine since it's convenient to use”

    Comment from 23 Nov 2025 in “My Quest to Find the Perfect Self-Hosted Notes App”

    “Functionality is great across Apple devices.”

    Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management”

What people warn about

Each mark is one comment

  • Slows down with long notes

    “My only complaint is Apple Notes becomes buggy when the note gets too long”

    Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Stronk.app – open-source gym lifts journal”

    “God forbid you try to paste too much text into a Note - the paste will crawl to a halt.”

    Comment from 28 Mar 2026 in “Make macOS consistently bad (unironically)”

    “once the note gets too long, it gets very laggy on phone and is difficult to navigate”

    Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)”
  • Poor keyboard navigation

    “These apps ported from iOS do not understand keyboard navigation and rely heavily on the trackpad or mouse.”

    Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “Get Ready for Touch on Mac”

    “Reminders, Notes and others are downright unnavigable and unusable with a keyboard”

    Comment from 24 Nov 2025 in “Apple to focus on 'quality and underlying performance' with iOS 27 next year”

    “none of those work well and cannot be navigated properly using the keyboard”

    Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Last Week on My Mac: Losing confidence”
  • Weak on web and non-Apple platforms

    “Apple Notes being decent, but using it in the web browser is basically a joke”

    Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “New Safari developer tools provide insight into CSS Grid Lanes”

    “functionality is very limited on Windows and Linux. Apple doesn't expose any APIs for Notes so it cannot be integrated with ChatGPT/Codex/Claud”

    Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management”
  • Proprietary storage hard to escape

    “None use the file system in anything like the way their unix underpinning would have files be understood or organised for users.”

    Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Make Tmux the OS”

    “I've been burned too many times by having my work locked away in some kind of proprietary Apple database.”

    Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Make Tmux the OS”

    “When you delete text it not gone you can still see it in the sqlite database they use for storage.”

    Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Apple fixes bug that cops used to extract deleted chat messages from iPhones”

Other note-taking apps people recommend

The four most recommended other note-taking apps, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.

Apple Notes compared with 4 alternatives
ProductRecommendCriticizeApprovalMonthsOwnedBadge
Obsidian44714576%121 yr13 ownersApproved
Org mode1753783%1210 yrs16 ownersApproved
Notion9112343%127 yrs4 owners—
Logseq522865%11——
Apple NotesThis page393553%12——
See all 33 note-taking apps, ranked

What people said

40 of the 87 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.

“These apps ported from iOS do not understand keyboard navigation and rely heavily on the trackpad or mouse.”

CriticizesComment from 29 Oct 2026 in “Get Ready for Touch on Mac”

“I'm really still accepting a decent amount of compromises.”

MixedComment from 16 Oct 2026 in “Apple routed a graphite pipe through the iPhone Duo's hinge to dissipate heat”

“I've got a notes system which includes the ability to add things to Family Apple Notes”

RecommendsComment from 8 Oct 2026 in “I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again”

“Apple Notes is really the best I've got.”

RecommendsComment from 8 Oct 2026 in “I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again”

“the kerning of the first letter of the headers feels very off on the website”

MixedComment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Making a GTK application in Haskell, part 1”

“I've been burned too many times by having my work locked away in some kind of proprietary Apple database.”

CriticizesComment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Make Tmux the OS”

“None use the file system in anything like the way their unix underpinning would have files be understood or organised for users.”

CriticizesComment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Make Tmux the OS”

“I would much prefer a native md option over whatever proprietary rtf stuff that Notes does.”

CriticizesComment from 28 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Building a Markdown editor for Mac, iOS and web”

“I appreciate the notes being available offline and syncing across devices”

RecommendsComment from 1 Sep 2026 in “We are rebuilding Monica”

“I do this with apple notes and voice memos and dump into ai to organize”

RecommendsComment from 6 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: An app to dump notes during the day and plan todos without distraction”

“Functionality is great across Apple devices.”

RecommendsComment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management”

“functionality is very limited on Windows and Linux. Apple doesn't expose any APIs for Notes so it cannot be integrated with ChatGPT/Codex/Claud”

CriticizesComment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management”

“Apple Notes and Reminders did the job just fine and worked perfectly across devices”

RecommendsComment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management”

“anyone can just open it up and start writing without ever needing to know all those options are there”

RecommendsComment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Apple Apps Are Rubbish”

“Note-taking works fine, in Google Keep, Apple Notes, or some other cloud equivalent.”

RecommendsComment from 18 Jul 2026 in “LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent”

“Nothing come close to apple notes or reminder for instance.”

RecommendsComment from 17 Jul 2026 in “GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims”

“It's straightforward to migrate from Evernote to Apple Notes.”

RecommendsComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public”

“The seamless cloud sync between devices is much appreciated too.”

RecommendsComment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Decoding the obfuscated bash script on a Uniqlo t-shirt”

“Trigger the feature, point the camera at something, and it will input just the text.”

RecommendsComment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Decoding the obfuscated bash script on a Uniqlo t-shirt”

“Apple has done a good job in the recent past of providing secure information partition options; locked notes, secure folders”

RecommendsComment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Apple WWDC 2026 Livestream”

“it syncs between my devices and it's usable on the phone”

RecommendsComment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Tolaria – open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases”

“When you delete text it not gone you can still see it in the sqlite database they use for storage.”

CriticizesComment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Apple fixes bug that cops used to extract deleted chat messages from iPhones”

“God forbid you try to paste too much text into a Note - the paste will crawl to a halt.”

CriticizesComment from 28 Mar 2026 in “Make macOS consistently bad (unironically)”

“Here is a video in detail which talks about Simple, Non-Commercial, Open Source Notes”

RecommendsComment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Revise – An AI Editor for Documents”

“Notes imports and exports markdown (and you can always print/export as pdf).”

RecommendsComment from 14 Mar 2026 in “Your Phone Is an Entire Computer”

“It looks like I eventually got it in Preview, but it doesn't look as clean as it did in Notes.”

RecommendsComment from 19 Feb 2026 in “Famous Signatures Through History”

“I'm a big fan of the simplicity and ease of use.”

MixedComment from 1 Feb 2026 in “I ran an LLM on iOS to build another privacy focused notes app”

“At their core, a user can open them up and start writing and creating new notes within a a minute of first use”

RecommendsComment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Users don't care about your app's complexity”

“Apple Notes being decent, but using it in the web browser is basically a joke”

MixedComment from 15 Jan 2026 in “New Safari developer tools provide insight into CSS Grid Lanes”

“it syncs fast and stays out of the way”

RecommendsComment from 6 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Stash – Sync Markdown Files with Apple Notes via CLI”

“My only complaint is Apple Notes becomes buggy when the note gets too long”

MixedComment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Stronk.app – open-source gym lifts journal”

“No more digging up details from an email or searching through some other system.”

RecommendsComment from 12 Dec 2025 in “My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)”

“It had changed my life, in a minor yet significant way.”

RecommendsComment from 12 Dec 2025 in “My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)”

“once the note gets too long, it gets very laggy on phone and is difficult to navigate”

CriticizesComment from 11 Dec 2025 in “My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)”

“I use Apple notes to save interesting stuff to post.”

MixedComment from 9 Dec 2025 in “My Apple notes should've been my journal”

“none of those work well and cannot be navigated properly using the keyboard”

CriticizesComment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Last Week on My Mac: Losing confidence”

“The best notes app on iOS is Apple Notes because it does a lot of things incredibly well”

RecommendsComment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good”

“Reminders, Notes and others are downright unnavigable and unusable with a keyboard”

CriticizesComment from 24 Nov 2025 in “Apple to focus on 'quality and underlying performance' with iOS 27 next year”

“that's also fine since it's convenient to use”

RecommendsComment from 23 Nov 2025 in “My Quest to Find the Perfect Self-Hosted Notes App”

“Notes and Reminders are extremely good at what they do”

RecommendsComment from 20 Nov 2025 in “New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.