Apple Notes alternative for Mac. Faster than the app that is already open.
Is there an Apple Notes alternative that uses markdown files?
Apple Notes keeps your writing inside its own database. TypeFire keeps every note as a plain markdown file in a folder you choose, so it opens in any editor and moves with you.
There is an importer for existing Apple Notes, a global hotkey to search notes from any app, and it is free in full.
Why people move from Apple Notes
The specific reasons people give for switching.
You do not switch apps at all
Apple Notes is fast to open, but opening it still means leaving what you were doing. ⌘⌃3 puts a search box over your current app, and Enter pastes the note into the document you were already typing in.
Your notes become files
Apple Notes keeps everything in its own store. TypeFire notes are .md files in a folder you chose, readable by any editor, greppable, and yours whatever you use next.
Real markdown
Apple Notes has never supported markdown properly. TypeFire renders it live while keeping the raw file intact, including code blocks, tables and footnotes. Since 5.1 tables are edited in place with grips and menus, and callouts and a slash menu for every block come with it.
Wikilinks and backlinks
Link notes to each other and see what points back. Apple Notes has links between notes but nothing that shows you the reverse.
Snippets expand inside your notes
Type an abbreviation while writing and it expands, the same as it would in Mail.
It opens the vault you already have
Including an Obsidian vault, in place, with no import.
TypeFire compared with Apple Notes
Prices and capabilities as of September 2026.
| TypeFire | Apple Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to reach a note | One keystroke, no app switch | Open the app |
| Storage | Plain .md files you own | Apple's own store |
| Markdown | Yes, live rendered | No |
| Backlinks | Yes | No |
| Paste into the app you are in | Yes | Copy and switch |
| Text expander built in | Yes | No |
| Move your existing notes across | Yes, folders kept as collections | n/a, they are already there |
| Images in a note | Yes, saved beside the note | Yes, plus scans and sketches |
| iPhone and iPad | No | Yes, free |
| Price | Free, Pro $18 once | Free |
What Apple Notes does better
Four of them, named plainly, with what TypeFire does instead directly below.
It is on every Apple device you own, free
iPhone, iPad, Mac and the web, syncing through iCloud at no cost. That is genuinely hard to beat and TypeFire does not try: it is a Mac app.
It is already installed
Nothing to download, nothing to configure, and it is where most people's notes already are.
Handwriting, scanning and sketches
Apple Pencil support, document scanning and drawing. A markdown vault does none of that.
Shared notes
Collaborating on a note with someone else, built in and free.
What TypeFire adds
Not available in Apple Notes at any price.
Zero app switching
The notes come to you, over whatever you are working in.
Files you own
Plain markdown, readable anywhere, for as long as you keep the folder.
A clipboard manager and text expander
Both in the same free app, both working across the whole Mac.
AI on a note, on device
Summarize, outline, continue and extract tasks with Apple Intelligence and no key.
Turn anything you copy into something you type
Right-click a clip, choose Save as snippet, give it an abbreviation. The thing you copied once becomes something you type three characters to get, forever. The same conversions run across all three surfaces: a clip becomes a note, and a note you keep rewriting becomes a snippet. Snippets, clips and notes live in one app, which is what makes each of those a single click rather than an export and an import.
- 01
Copy something
It lands in Clips alongside everything else you copied today.
- 02
Save as snippet
It leaves your rolling history and enters your permanent library.
- 03
Give it a trigger
Type
invfrom then on and never look it up again.
A clipboard manager you can tell what to ignore
A clipboard manager sees everything you copy. Until 4.0 the only control over that was a password-manager exclusion you could not see. There are three now, none of them gated, and the limits of the strongest one are stated rather than buried.
Turn image capture off
One switch. Text keeps being captured and pictures stop. Images you have already saved are kept rather than deleted, which is not what most people expect a privacy toggle to do, so it is worth saying.
Name apps to skip
Add any application and TypeFire ignores what you copy in it. Choose from the apps it has already seen, with clip counts, or browse to any app on your Mac. Each app gets one of three settings: allow it, block images only, or block everything you copy there. The middle one is what most people want for a work tool, keeping the text and losing the screenshots.
The password managers, now visible
TypeFire has always ignored password managers. That list is in Settings now, twenty-three apps including 1Password, Bitwarden, KeePassXC, Dashlane and Apple Passwords, blocked by bundle ID in code rather than by a setting you have to find. It shows which of them you have installed, and any one can be overridden.
Encrypted on your Mac
Clips are stored in an encrypted database on your Mac. The key is generated on your machine and kept in the macOS Keychain. Images sit beside it, readable only by your own account.
Secrets expire in minutes
Card numbers and high-entropy strings are detected and deleted after five minutes by default, adjustable in Settings. Everything else follows the retention you choose.
An on-device AI option
Apple Intelligence and local models through Ollama or LM Studio run entirely on your machine. If you pick Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini instead, text goes to that provider directly; TypeFire operates no server in that path.
Where blocking by app stops being a guarantee
macOS does not tell an application which other application wrote to the clipboard. TypeFire matches on the app that was in front at the time, plus any app that identifies itself using the standard convention. That covers the overwhelming majority of real cases and it is not absolute. The protection that does not depend on a guess is the concealed-content marker: password managers mark what they copy, and TypeFire never stores it whatever else is set.
The app list also covers what you copy, not screenshots you save as a file. A PNG on your desktop records nothing about what was on screen, so TypeFire matches those to an app where it can and skips them when it does. It is right in the ordinary case and it is not a promise: to keep saved screenshots out entirely, turn off Save screenshots to Clips.
Eighteen dollars. Once.
TypeFire Pro is a single payment that unlocks unlimited clips, Selection Prompts, Prompt Chains, notes sync, note version history and saving from AI apps through MCP. There is no subscription and no per-seat pricing.
Free tier, then one payment
No free tier at all
One time
No free tier
One time
Lifetime, or $3.99/mo
Five snippets free, then a subscription
Two months of Paste, or all of TypeFire.
The graph is free, and it needs nothing
Press ` and TypeFire draws every note, snippet and clip on one canvas, using the links, tags and folders already in your files. Nothing to download and nothing to switch on. A connection you made is drawn solid, one TypeFire worked out is drawn dashed.
Turn on Weave and search starts matching what you meant rather than the exact words you typed. It runs on your Mac, with no account and nothing uploaded.
Moving from Apple Notes
Still not answered?
If you want your notes as plain files you own, TypeFire, Obsidian and Bear are the main options.
TypeFire's difference is reach rather than features: one keystroke puts your whole vault on top of the app you are already using and pastes a note into the document you were typing in, without opening an application at all.
Not properly. Apple Notes supports rich text with basic styles but has never supported markdown syntax, so code blocks, tables and footnotes are awkward and the content is not portable as markdown.
TypeFire stores notes as real .md files and renders them live.
Not entirely, for most people. Apple Notes is free, already installed and syncs to your iPhone, which TypeFire does not do.
The realistic split is keeping Apple Notes for phone capture and shared notes, and using TypeFire on the Mac where a global hotkey and plain markdown files matter more.
Yes. TypeFire imports Apple Notes as plain .md files and keeps each folder as a collection with the same notes in it.
It shows you the full list before writing anything, only ever adds, and copies rather than moves, so your Apple Notes are left untouched. Headings, bold, lists, links and tables convert; handwriting, sketches and scanned documents cannot, because markdown has no equivalent for them.
Images yes: paste one into a note and it is saved as a file beside the note rather than swallowed into a database, so it stays yours in the same way the text does.
What TypeFire does not do is Apple Notes' scanning, handwriting and sketch layers. If a note is mostly a scanned document, it belongs in Apple Notes.
No, and it is not planned. TypeFire is a text tool: snippets, clipboard history and markdown notes.
It does not read your calendar, create reminders or touch your contacts. If you want notes that link into Apple's wider ecosystem, Apple Notes is the right answer and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
No. TypeFire is a Mac application and its sync runs Mac to Mac through your own iCloud.
Apple Notes syncs to every Apple device for free and remains the better answer if phone access is essential.
The notes half is. The vault, the global overlay, quick capture, daily notes, wikilinks, backlinks and AI on notes cost nothing.
TypeFire Pro is $18 once for three Macs and adds notes sync, version history and the clipboard features.
Other comparisons
8 apps, where the notes live
Notion alternativeLocal files, no workspace
Logseq alternativePages instead of blocks
Apple Notes to MarkdownHow to move them across
TypeFire NotesThe whole feature
Free note app for MacNo limits on notes
Markdown notes for MacPlain files you own
A global hotkey for notesSearch from anywhere
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