How to use Notes on iPhone and Mac as a serious substitute for Obsidian or Bear

If you’ve been paying for Bear or building your vault in Obsidian for a while, you probably haven’t seriously looked at Apple’s Notes app in years. That’s a mistake. With iOS 18.2 and macOS Sequoia 15.1, the app natively and for free covers far more than most people think: note-to-note links, hierarchical tags, smart folders, password locking, recording with transcription and real-time collaboration.

It won’t replace Obsidian for anyone who relies on knowledge graphs, nor Bear for Markdown purists. But for the 80% of users who just want to take notes, link them and find them quickly across Mac, iPhone and iPad, the honest answer is that nothing else needs to be installed. This guide walks you through it step by step.

What Apple Notes can (and can’t) do in 2026

Before getting into settings, let’s set the ground rules. This is what you’ll find:

Feature	Notes (iOS 18 / Sequoia)	Obsidian	Bear 2
Note-to-note links	Yes, native	Yes, [[wikilinks]]	Yes, [[wikilinks]]
Hierarchical tags	Yes (#work/clients)	Yes (plugins)	Yes
Smart folders	Yes	Not native	No
Real Markdown	No (rich text)	Yes	Yes
Visual graph	No	Yes	No
Cross-platform	Apple only + web	Mac/Win/Linux/iOS/Android	Apple only
End-to-end encryption	Yes (locked notes)	Local	Yes (Pro)
Price	€0	€0 personal	€32.99/year

The two important limitations to acknowledge without tricks: there’s no real Markdown (you can type # for headings and little else, and you won’t be exporting clean .md files) and there’s no graph view. If your workflow depends on either, close this tab and go back to Obsidian.

Prerequisites

iPhone or iPad running iOS/iPadOS 18.2 or later.
Mac running macOS Sequoia 15.1 or later.
Signed in with the same Apple ID on all devices.
iCloud enabled for Notes: Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Show All → Notes.

Without iCloud syncing, what follows makes no sense: notes will stay isolated on each device.

Initial structure: folders, not chaos

The first mistake people coming from Obsidian make is replicating the structure of their vault folder by folder. Don’t. In Notes it’s best to start flat and let tags do the heavy lifting.

A reasonable structure:

Inbox — everything you capture quickly.
Projects — one subfolder per active project.
Reference — notes you consult but don’t edit.
Archive — closed items, out of the way.

To create folders on Mac: sidebar → right-click iCloud → New Folder. On iPhone, from the folders view, tap the bottom-left icon.

Note-to-note links: the trick almost nobody uses

This is the feature that puts Notes on par with Bear for day-to-day use. You can link one note from another, just like Obsidian’s wikilinks, although the mechanics differ.

How to create a link

Inside a note, type >> (two greater-than symbols).
A floating search box with your notes will appear.
Type the first letters of the title, select the note and press Return.
A clickable link with the title of the target note is created.

It works identically on Mac and iPhone. If you change the title of the target note, the link updates automatically. That’s exactly what Obsidian does with its backlinks, although here you don’t have a panel showing who links to whom. For that, a trick: search for the note’s title in the search box and all the notes that mention it will appear.

Bear-style hierarchical tags

Tags in Notes work with # and support hierarchy with /. Examples:

#work
#work/clients
#work/clients/acme

In the sidebar you’ll see a Tags section that groups everything automatically. Tapping #work also shows its subtags. It’s exactly the same behavior as Bear, with the advantage that you don’t pay €33 a year.

Practical tip: define 5–7 root tags and no more. #personal, #work, #ideas, #learn, #shopping. Everything else, hierarchy underneath. If you end up with 80 loose tags, you’ve lost.

Smart folders: where Notes beats Obsidian

Neither Bear nor Obsidian has this feature out of the box, and it’s the one that makes you rethink the entire workflow. A smart folder is a saved filter: it automatically shows notes that meet certain conditions.

To create one:

Mac: File → New Smart Folder. iPhone: new folder icon → Convert to Smart Folder.
Give it a name (e.g. “Pending this week”).
Add combinable filters: tags, creation date, edit date, mentions, checklists, attachments, folder.
Save.

Examples I use daily:

Monthly meetings: tag #meeting + edited in the last 30 days.
Unprocessed captures: “Inbox” folder + no tags.
Invoices 2026: tag #invoice + created in 2026.

It’s almost effortless GTD. In Obsidian you need plugins like Dataview for the same thing.

Search: more powerful than it looks

Notes search in Sequoia recognizes text inside scanned images (OCR), handwritten text with Apple Pencil, content of attached PDFs, and even objects in photos (“receipt”, “whiteboard”). Try it: search for “ID card” and you’ll get photos where one appears, even if the note is called “various 2024”.

Combined with tags and smart folders, in 95% of cases you find the note before you remember where you saved it. To find exact words within a long note, on Mac use ⌘ + F inside the note.

Locking and privacy

You can lock individual notes with your device passcode, Touch ID or Face ID. Mac: right-click the note → Lock Note. iPhone: swipe the note left and tap the padlock.

Locked notes are end-to-end encrypted even from Apple. If you forget the password, there’s no recovery. Store it in your password manager; if you still use Keychain, review how to manage passwords with the Passwords app in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia.

Quick capture: where the iPhone shines

Three shortcuts that change the workflow:

Swipe from the corner with Apple Pencil on iPad → new blank note.
“Hey Siri, new note” → dictate and it’s saved to the default folder.
Share from any app → Notes → add to an existing note or create a new one.

On Mac, the equivalent is Quick Note: move the cursor to the bottom-right corner of the screen or press Fn + Q (configurable in System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Hot Corners).

Audio transcription and voice notes

New in iOS 18: you can record audio inside a note and Notes transcribes it automatically. Useful for meetings and interviews. Tap the paperclip icon → Record Audio. When you finish, the transcript appears below the player, searchable like normal text.

Recognition in Spanish works reasonably well if the audio is clean. In noisy rooms, it drops to mediocre. It’s not Otter.ai, but for internal notes it’s more than enough.

Honest comparison: when to switch to Obsidian or Bear?

Go to Obsidian if:

You need your notes to live in local .md files you can version with Git.
You heavily use plugins (Dataview, Templater, Kanban).
You want a visual graph of your notes.
You also work on Windows or Linux.

Go to Bear if:

You write pure Markdown and export to HTML/PDF with fine styling.
You value typography and minimalism above all.
You don’t mind paying €33/year for a very polished app.

Stay with Notes if:

You only use Apple.
You want zero friction, zero subscription, zero maintenance.
Rich text with images, tables, lists and PDFs is enough for you.
You share notes with family or a team that also uses iPhone.

Common problems

Notes don’t sync between devices. Check that iCloud → Notes is enabled on all of them. If a note is under “On My iPhone” (local account), it won’t leave the device. Move it to iCloud from the sidebar.

The >> links don’t appear for me. They require iOS 17 or later. On older devices, they don’t work.

Tags aren’t grouping. Make sure the note is in an iCloud account. IMAP accounts (Gmail, Exchange added to Notes) don’t support tags or smart folders.

Search doesn’t find text inside images. Go to Settings → General → Language & Region and confirm your primary language is supported by Live Text. On Mac, the same in System Settings → General.

I can’t export several notes at once. That’s a real limitation. On Mac you can export note by note as PDF (File → Export as PDF). To migrate in bulk, use a third-party exporter or copy-paste manually.

Alternatives within the Apple ecosystem

If Notes falls short but you don’t want to pay for Bear, check Craft (Notion-style blocks, €5/month), NotePlan (notes + calendar + real Markdown, €8/month) or Drafts (ultra-fast capture with automations, freemium model). None is free and native at the same time; that’s Notes’ winning argument.

For broader productivity workflows, combine Notes with a launcher like the one we explain in how to use Raycast on Mac to replace Spotlight: you open a specific note in two keystrokes without touching the mouse.

FAQ

Can I migrate my Obsidian vault to Notes without losing links? Not automatically. The .md files are imported as rich text, but the [[wikilinks]] stay as plain text. You’ll need to redo the links with >> note by note. For large vaults (500+ notes) it’s not worth it.

Does Notes work offline? Yes. You can create and edit without a connection; it syncs when iCloud comes back. Changes aren’t lost.

Is there a web version of Notes? Yes, at iCloud.com. Useful for checking from a borrowed Windows PC, but limited: no smart folders and some formatting features are missing.

Can I use Markdown even though it’s not native? Partially. Typing # + space at the start creates a heading. - + space creates a list. *text* does not automatically make italics. For real Markdown, Notes isn’t your app.

How much space does it take up in iCloud? Text notes weigh kilobytes. What inflates storage are attachments: PDFs, photos and audio. Check in Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Storage → Notes.