Read and write Apple Notes, with Apple Notes native formatting support.

Most Apple Notes MCP servers can only write plain text. This one creates natively formatted notes — Titles, Headings, Bold, Lists all render as real Apple Notes styles, not plain text. This is achieved by leveraging Notes.app's built-in Markdown import capability.

Requires: macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later, Node.js 24+

Claude Desktop — edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apple-notes": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@ailenshen/apple-notes-mcp@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code — run in Terminal:

claude mcp add apple-notes -- npx -y @ailenshen/apple-notes-mcp@latest

To support native formatting, the server uses Notes.app's built-in Markdown import — it opens .md files with Notes.app and automatically confirms the Import dialog. This requires two macOS permissions for node:

On first use, macOS will prompt you to approve — just click Allow. If you missed the prompt, go to the settings above and turn on node manually. After granting, restart your MCP client.

If a permission is missing, the server will tell you exactly which one and how to fix it.

Just talk to your AI naturally:

• "List all my notes in the Projects folder"
• "Search my notes for 'meeting agenda'"
• "Read my Shopping List note"
• "Create a note in Work with today's action items"
• "Update my Shopping List with these new items"
• "Delete the note called 'Old Draft'"

Want to access your Apple Notes from your phone or another computer?

npx @ailenshen/apple-notes-mcp@latest --http

This prints an endpoint URL with a built-in secret:

Endpoint: http://localhost:3100/mcp/a3f8b2c9e1d4...

Point your remote MCP client to this URL. To access over the internet, put it behind HTTPS using a tunnel (ngrok, Cloudflare Tunnel, etc.).

To keep it running across reboots, see the wiki for a LaunchAgent example.

• Reading queries the Notes database directly via SQLite — fast and safe. Content is converted from Apple's HTML to Markdown via turndown.
• Creating uses macOS's native Markdown import (open -a Notes), so formatting is preserved natively. Notes.app briefly appears (~0.5s) during creation.
• Updating deletes the old note and creates a new one, automatically preserving the original folder.
• Deleting moves notes to Recently Deleted, same as doing it by hand.

• Partial note editing (e.g. "fix just this paragraph") is not supported. update_note always replaces the full content. This is a fundamental limitation of how Notes exposes content — its AppleScript interface returns HTML, not the original Markdown, so a clean read→edit→write round-trip isn't possible today.
• Notes briefly appears during note creation. The Markdown import flow requires auto-confirming a dialog in Notes.app, which may momentarily bring it to the foreground.

These limitations would be lifted if Apple adds Markdown import/export to AppleScript, or opens an official Notes API — both are tracked for future macOS releases.

Apple Notes is the most natural place to keep personal knowledge on Apple devices — it syncs everywhere, it's fast, and it's private. But it's a walled garden with no API.

This project makes Apple Notes a first-class data source for AI. The long-term goal: wherever you're talking to AI — on your Mac, on your phone, on the web — your Apple Notes are always accessible, readable, and writable.

MIT