How to move Apple Notes to Obsidian, Notion or Google Keep

Apple Notes has no button that moves everything to another app, so the route depends on where you're going.

Before you start

Locked notes are the main thing that gets left behind. Obsidian's importer skips them, and Apple Notes won't export a locked note, so take the lock off the ones you want to bring. If you've lost the password for one, what to do if you forgot your Apple Notes password explains what's possible.

Apple Notes to Obsidian

Obsidian has the only real importer of the three. Its official Importer plugin reads Apple Notes' data on your Mac and turns each note into a Markdown file in your vault. It runs on macOS only; Obsidian says it isn't available on iOS yet.

1. Install ImporterIn Obsidian, open Settings, choose Community plugins and turn off Restricted mode if it's on. Choose Browse, find Importer, click Install, then Enable.
2. Open Importer and pick Apple NotesOpen it from the command palette or its icon in the ribbon, and under File format choose Apple Notes.
3. Give it access to your notesClick Import. When Obsidian asks for the group.com.apple.notes folder, click Open. That folder is where Notes keeps its data on your Mac.
4. Check the preview, then importYou can change the note template and the file names before the import starts.

Obsidian says it handles virtually everything in Apple Notes, including tables, pictures, drawings, scans and PDFs. The plugin's code puts notes in folders that match yours and turns checklist items into Markdown checkboxes. If you're still deciding, Apple Notes vs Obsidian covers what you gain and what you give up.

Apple Notes to Notion

Notion's import list has Evernote, Trello and Confluence, but not Apple Notes. The way in is Markdown: Notion imports Markdown files, and Apple Notes can write them.

1. Export your notes as MarkdownUse the menus below, note by note. Apple's export works one note at a time, so for many notes a free exporter is quicker.
2. Put the files in a ZIPOn a Mac, Control-click the folder in Finder and choose Compress. Notion keeps the folder structure from a ZIP.
3. Import the ZIP in NotionIn the sidebar, open Settings, then Import, and choose the ZIP. The notes arrive as pages you can move anywhere afterwards.

Mac, macOS 27

FileExport ToMarkdown

Mac, macOS 26

FileExport asMarkdown

iPhone

ShareExport as Markdown

How to export Apple Notes to Markdown has the free exporters that do a whole library at once, and what to check in the files. On Notion's side, mind the limits. On the Free plan a single file can be at most 5 MB (50 MB on paid plans), and Notion handles about 120 Markdown files every 12 hours. A ZIP can be up to 5 GB, but Notion says one with more than 10,000 files is likely to fail. Apple Notes vs Notion compares the two apps if you haven't decided yet.

Apple Notes to Google Keep

Google Keep can't import notes from any app. Its help pages cover sending notes out of Keep and downloading them with Google Takeout, and nothing about bringing notes in. So the move is by hand:

1. Copy the note in Apple NotesOpen it, select all the text and copy it.
2. Paste it into a new note in KeepMake the first line the title, and add a label if you sort notes that way.

That's fine for a few dozen notes, and slow for hundreds. Pictures have to be added to each Keep note separately, and Keep has no folders, only labels, so your folders won't come with you.

One thing that confuses people: if Apple Notes shows a Gmail account in its sidebar, those notes aren't in Google Keep. They live in your Gmail account and sync over IMAP, the same way Mail does, and Keep never shows them.

What comes across

Google Keep gets the text of each note and nothing else. For the other two:

“Depends on the export” means Apple doesn't say what its Markdown export keeps, and the free exporters each do it their own way. That's what the test note in the checklist above is for.

Or move to a notes app that works like Apple Notes

Pinto Notes, the notes app for iPhone and Mac that I make, looks and works like Apple Notes, keeps every note as Markdown, and lets ChatGPT and Claude read and edit your notes once you approve them. On a Mac, File, Import from Apple Notes copies every note in every folder, with the folders' names, nesting and order. Pictures come along as files, and importing again skips notes that are already there. Apple Notes doesn't change.

It has limits too. Locked notes stay in Apple Notes and show as “Locked in Apple Notes”. Checklists and pins come over exactly only if you give Pinto Notes Full Disk Access, which it never asks for; without it, checklists arrive as bullet lists. There's no Windows, Android or web version. The iPhone app is coming soon to the App Store. Moving from Apple Notes walks through the import.

Questions

Checked against the app on 12 October 2026.