Glenn Fleishman on Apple Notes and Markdown
Glenn Fleishman, writing at Six Colors, “Why Notes Will Never Let Us Edit Markdown”: The Notes app added Markdown import and export in the version 26 operating system releases, and the macOS 27 Golden Gate update lets us copy and paste as Markdown. Why can’t we just write natively in that hoary, simple format? I use Markdown all day, every day. In fact, I’m writing these words in Markdown without…
Glenn Fleishman, an Apple Notes enthusiast, penned an opinion piece on Six Colors titled "Why Notes Will Never Let Us Edit Markdown." He explained that the Notes app recently introduced Markdown import and export capabilities in the operating system's version 26 release, and macOS 27 Golden Gate update added copy/paste functionality for Markdown. Fleishman wondered why Apple hasn't enabled native Markdown editing in the Notes app, given its widespread use in content management systems and writing tools.
Fleishman argued that Apple Notes should exclusively support WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing, keeping users away from formatting codes. He also pointed out that Markdown, as a language, can be malformed, making it impossible for users to create improper notes in the app if native Markdown editing were allowed. Fleishman concluded that adding native Markdown editing to Notes would be a mistake, despite Apple's commendable effort in recent years to support Markdown through import/export and copy/paste features on Mac.
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