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 you even knowing it. All content-management systems (CMSes) I’m aware of support native Markdown entries when posting, and many writing and note-taking apps integrate Markdown conventions without needing to trumpet them.
Fleishman not only ably describes why Apple Notes doesn’t support editing in Markdown syntax, but also why it shouldn’t. It is correct for Notes only to natively support WYSIWYG editing. Normal users should never ever be exposed to formatting codes. Also, Markdown, as a language, can be malformed. It should be impossible for users to create a malformed note in Notes. If you could edit in Markdown in Notes, you could create malformed notes. That’s just gross. I can say that. Markdown isn’t for everyone. And even for me — Markdown’s creator — I don’t want it in Notes, which is the notes app I use.
I think Apple has done a really good job in the last few years adding import/export and copy/paste support for Markdown to Notes. That’s the right way for Notes to support Markdown. My biggest complaint with Notes’s recent Markdown support — as noted by Fleishman — is that most of these features are only on the Mac, not iOS.