iki vs apple notes
Apple Notes is excellent, free and already on your phone, and IKI does not want to replace it. Quick thoughts belong in Notes; the things you save to read again want a different home.
Apple Notes is the best junk drawer ever shipped: instant capture, iCloud sync, a Watch app, handwriting, document scans, all free and preinstalled. For jotting and lists it is hard to beat and we use it daily. Where it thins out is the other half of remembering: a saved link becomes a preview rather than the article, search is keyword-only, and your notes live in an opaque database rather than files you can touch. IKI covers exactly that half: full articles, screenshots with OCR, voice notes, semantic search and answers with citations, all stored as markdown on your device. Complement, not replacement.
| Apple Notes | iki | |
|---|---|---|
| Price (annual) | Free, preinstalled | Free plan; $49/yr Pro, or $6.99/mo. Founder: $99 once |
| Where your data lives | iCloud and an opaque on-device database; no file access | Markdown files on device, visible in the Files app |
| Data format / export | Per-note markdown via the share sheet (iOS 26); no bulk export on iOS | Already files, Obsidian-compatible; nothing to export |
| Saving a link | A preview card, not the content | Full text fetched, cleaned and kept |
| Read-later capture | No, not what it's for | Yes: share sheet, Safari extension, screenshot auto-import with OCR |
| Search | Keyword only | Hybrid semantic plus full-text |
| Ask your library | No | Yes, with citations; says "not in your library" when it isn't |
| AI (where it runs) | Apple Intelligence summaries of note text | The same on-device models, put to work on everything you save: summaries, tags, cards |
| Handwriting / Pencil | Yes, excellent | Yes; handwritten pages become searchable text |
| Encryption | End-to-end only with Advanced Data Protection turned on | Nothing leaves the device; shared pages are E2E-encrypted with expiry |
| No account needed | Apple Account for iCloud sync | Yes, no account, ever |
| Import path into IKI | Share a note as markdown (iOS 26) | Arrives as a markdown file and gets a card |
Competitor details checked August 2026; prices change, check their site.
It's free, preinstalled and requires zero setup. The fastest path from thought to note on any iPhone, and it always will be.
System integration nothing else gets: iCloud sync across every Apple device, the Watch, document scanning, shared notes with family.
For quick, disposable, collaborative notes it is simply the right tool. IKI doesn't try to be your grocery list.
There's nothing to migrate wholesale, and on iOS there couldn't be: Notes has no bulk export, which is rather the point of this page. For the notes that belong in a library, open the note, tap share, choose Export as Markdown (iOS 26), and send it to IKI. It lands as a markdown file, gets read, summarized and carded on your phone. Screenshots of older notes work too; on-device OCR pulls the text out. Everything else stays happily in Notes.