How to export all your Apple Notes at once

For years the honest answer was: you can’t. Apple Notes exported one note at a time, as a PDF, and getting a whole library out meant a third-party app or a script.

That changed with macOS 26 last fall. Notes now exports to Markdown, and on a Mac you can select a folder’s worth of notes and export them in one go. Most of the guides ranking for this were written before that and still tell you it’s impossible.

It’s not impossible. It’s also not one button. Here’s every way that works now, and what each one leaves behind.

A word about us first. We make Harbor, a notes app, so we have an interest in where your notes go next. This guide is about getting them out, whatever you do with them after. We’ll say where Harbor fits at the end, and only there.

The short version

• On a Mac with macOS 26 or later, open a folder, press Command-A, then File > Export as > Markdown. Each note becomes a .md file, with its attachments in a folder beside them. Do it folder by folder, because folders aren’t kept.
• If you want your folders and dates kept, or a format other than Markdown, use a free tool: Exporter for Markdown or HTML, Apple Notes Exporter for nearly anything else, including ENEX.
• On an iPhone, it’s still one note at a time. There are three workarounds, and none of them is great.
• Locked notes don’t export. Unlock them first.
• Notes in Gmail or On My Mac need extra care, and Apple’s data-copy request doesn’t include them.
• Check the files before you delete anything. There are reports of the built-in export mangling some notes in big batches.

On a Mac: select them all and export

This is the method to try first. It’s built in, it’s free, and since macOS 26 it handles attachments.

1. Open Notes and click a folder in the sidebar.
2. Click any note in the list, then press Command-A to select every note in the folder.
3. Choose File > Export as > Markdown. Apple’s macOS 27 guide calls it File > Export To.
4. Pick where to save.

Apple’s own guide only describes exporting a single note. Bulk export works because the same menu accepts a selection, which Bear and Inkdrop both document in their migration guides. When you export more than one note, Notes makes a new folder called “Archive,” writes one Markdown file per note, and puts images, PDFs and recordings in an Attachments folder next to them. Each file is named after the note’s first line.

What comes through: headings, bold and italic, lists, checklists, web links, and attachments as linked files.

What doesn’t: highlight colors, text color, size, typeface and alignment. Links between notes break, too, because they point at Notes’ own internals.

What gets flattened: your folders. Select notes from three folders and export them together, and you get one folder of files with no idea where each came from. That’s why you go folder by folder and rename each “Archive” folder after the folder it came from. It’s the same lesson as exporting from Evernote, where the notebook name lives in the filename and nowhere else.

We couldn’t confirm whether the exported files keep each note’s creation date. A Reddit thread says they don’t. If dates matter to you, use Exporter, below, which says it keeps them.

Check the files

A MacRumors forum thread from October 2025 reports duplicated lines and blank files in random notes when exporting more than 100 notes at once on iPadOS 26.0.1. One reply on macOS 26.2 counted 300 affected files out of 1,190. We don’t know if a later update fixed it.

So open a handful of exported files — your longest notes, the ones with tables and checklists — and compare them against the originals. If something’s wrong, export in smaller batches or use a third-party tool.

What about PDF?

Apple documents PDF export one note at a time: File > Export as > PDF. Apple’s iPhone guide warns, and Mac users report the same, that a PDF export keeps only the first page of a multipage PDF or scan inside the note. If your notes are full of scanned documents, PDF is the wrong format for an archive.

Free tools that keep your folders

The built-in export is fine for a clean move. If you want your folder structure and dates intact, or a format other than Markdown, these are the tools worth your time. Every one of them was updated this year.

Our pick: Exporter if you want Markdown or HTML with your folders intact. Apple Notes Exporter for anything else. If you’re moving to Obsidian, use Obsidian’s own importer, which documents the widest range of what it carries over.

Skip anything that hasn’t been updated since macOS 26 shipped. Several tools that still rank for this search were last touched in 2018 or 2021, and Notes has changed underneath them since.

On an iPhone or iPad

Here’s where it gets worse. Apple’s iPhone guide covers one note at a time: open the note, tap Share, then Export as Markdown, or Markup to save a PDF. Bear’s migration guide and a September 2026 walkthrough by La De Du both say iOS is still limited to one note.

If you’ve got dozens of notes and no Mac, you have three options.

Drag a batch into Files. In Edit mode, select several notes and drag them into the Files app, which is easiest on an iPad in Split View. You get RTFD files, Apple’s rich-text package format. They open in Pages and TextEdit, and they’re awkward everywhere else. Scanned documents don’t come along.

Build a Shortcut. The Shortcuts app has the pieces: Find Notes, then Repeat with Each, then Make PDF or Make Markdown from Rich Text, then Save File. It runs without a Mac. We haven’t tested how well it handles attachments, and one person on Apple’s forums couldn’t get it working on an iPad.

Try the iPad’s menu. Some iPad users report that iPadOS 26’s menu bar lets them select several notes and export them as Markdown in one go. We couldn’t confirm it, and that’s also where the corruption report above came from. If it works for you, check the files.

Ask Apple for a copy

Apple will send you a copy of the data in your Apple Account, notes included, from privacy.apple.com. Sign in, choose Request a copy of your data, select your iCloud notes, and wait.

What you get back is less than you’d hope:

• Plain text. Each note arrives as a .txt file in its own folder, with its attachments beside it. Bold, links and tables are gone, and handwriting and drawings disappear entirely. One person who tried it got a note of handwriting and photos back as an empty text file and two images.
• Only iCloud notes. Notes stored On My Mac or On My iPhone, or in a Gmail account, aren’t stored by Apple, so they aren’t in it.
• No locked notes. Apple excludes data it can’t decrypt. By the same rule, if you’ve turned on Advanced Data Protection, which end-to-end encrypts Notes, expect your notes to be missing altogether.
• A wait. Apple’s current support page doesn’t give a turnaround time. It used to promise seven days, and people report anywhere from five to eleven. Once it’s ready, you have 14 days to download it, and Apple says to use a Mac or Windows PC.

It’s a decent shoebox backup and a poor way to move. Use it when nothing else works.

Locked notes

Locked notes are end-to-end encrypted. Apple can’t read them, and neither can an export tool that doesn’t have your password. Obsidian’s importer skips them, NotesExport Pro leaves a placeholder, Apple’s data copy leaves them out, and Apple’s own guide says you have to unlock a note before you can send it to Pages.

The fix is boring: unlock the ones you want, export them, and lock them again afterwards.

The one exception is apple_cloud_notes_parser, a forensics tool that can decrypt locked notes if you give it the notes password. It fails on notes locked with your device passcode instead. If you’re weighing whether to lock notes in the first place, we wrote about what encrypting a note actually costs you, and being hard to export is part of it.

Notes in Gmail, Yahoo, or On My Mac

Notes doesn’t keep everything in iCloud. If you’ve added a Gmail or other email account to Notes, those notes live with that provider. Tools that read the Notes database can miss them; Apple Notes Exporter says outright that it can’t see them.

The usual workaround is to drag them into an iCloud or On My Mac folder first. Apple warns that moving notes between accounts “might permanently lose formatting and attachments,” though. Notes in those accounts can’t use many of Notes’ features to begin with, so there’s often less to lose, but look before you move hundreds of them.

On My Mac notes are the opposite case. The built-in export works on them, and so does Apple Notes Exporter. Apple’s data copy doesn’t include them, because they never left your computer.

No Mac at all

iCloud.com doesn’t help. You can read your notes there and download attachments one by one, but there’s no export.

If you have a Windows PC and an iPhone, there’s a technical route. Make an unencrypted backup of the iPhone with Apple Devices or iTunes, then point apple_cloud_notes_parser at it. You get HTML, CSV and JSON, plus the attachments. It’s a command-line Ruby tool built for forensics, so it’s not for everyone, but it’s the most complete option without a Mac.

What about a script?

You’ll find AppleScript and JavaScript snippets that loop through every note and save its contents. They work, after a fashion. A note’s contents come back as HTML, attachments beyond images mostly don’t come through, locked notes are skipped, and one widely shared script slows down badly past about 400 notes.

With free tools that do it properly, we wouldn’t bother.

Before you delete anything

Exporting makes copies. Nothing leaves Notes until you delete it, so don’t, until you’ve opened the exported files, checked your longest and messiest notes, and imported them wherever they’re going.

Keep the export folder afterwards, too. Markdown is plain text, and it’ll still open in twenty years.

Where Harbor fits

We make Harbor, so read this part knowing that.

Harbor doesn’t have an Apple Notes importer. It does have two importers that read what the tools above produce.

ENEX. Apple Notes Exporter can write ENEX, Evernote’s export format, and Harbor imports ENEX directly, with tags and attachments, then runs OCR over images and PDFs so the text inside them becomes searchable. If you’re curious what’s inside that file, we took one apart in what is an ENEX file?

A folder of Markdown. Harbor’s Obsidian importer reads any zipped folder of Markdown files. That’s all an Obsidian vault is. Folders become notebooks, and images linked from a note come in as attachments. How that import works, including what it drops.

We haven’t run a real Apple Notes library through either path for this post, so treat that as what the importers are built to read, not a tested migration. If you try it, tell us how it went at hello@harbor.my.

And if you leave Harbor one day, it exports your whole account as Markdown and reads that same export back in. Getting your notes out shouldn’t take a guide this long.

Sources

Apple: Import, export and print notes on Mac (macOS 27 and Tahoe 26 versions) · Export or print notes on iPhone · Get a copy of the data associated with your Apple Account · Lock your notes · Advanced Data Protection for iCloud · Notes accounts on Mac · Organize notes in folders.

Bulk export on Mac: Bear’s Apple Notes migration guide · Inkdrop’s import guide · La De Du’s Markdown export walkthrough (September 2026, tested on macOS 27, Tahoe 26 and iOS 26) · GadgetHacks on what Markdown export loses · MacRumors forum thread on export corruption.

iPhone and iPad: MPU Talk on iPad bulk Markdown export · MPU Talk on dragging notes into Files · Six Colors on bulk export · Shortcuts actions documented in Matthew Cassinelli’s action directory.

Apple’s data copy: MacRumors on requesting your data · Richard Dallaway’s test · Apple Community report.

Scripts: MacMost’s export script.

Tools: prices, formats and update dates read from each tool’s App Store listing or repository on October 6, 2026.

Last checked: October 6, 2026, against Apple’s macOS 27 and iOS 27 documentation. We didn’t run these exports on a test library for this post. The steps come from Apple’s guides and from people who have, and where they disagree, we’ve said so. If something here no longer matches what you see, tell us at hello@harbor.my and we’ll fix it and re-date this line.