You capture everywhere
Ideas, quotes, plans and half-thoughts, across years and devices. Cohestry keeps capture just as quick, on iPhone and Mac.
Coming from Apple Notes
Your Apple Notes, connected and explorable.
Apple Notes is a wonderful place to write things down. Cohestry is for what happens after a few thousand notes: finding what you wrote, seeing how it connects, and bringing old ideas back into your thinking.
Who it's for
You like simple notes. You have a lot of them.
You've lost track of what you know
Search finds what you remember to look for. The Brain shows what you'd forgotten you wrote, and what it relates to.
You want your notes to add up
Connections, a ladder from capture to evergreen, and a daily nudge back to older notes turn an archive into a body of thought.
Before and after
Same notes. A different view of them.
My grandmother's tomato gardenEvery August the garden behind Ines's house on Alder Lane smel…
Alder Lane doesn't exist anymoreLooked up the old address today. The house on Alder Lane was d…
The cassette from 1998Found the mixtape Dad made for the drive to the coast in 1998.…
A shoebox of photographsMum's shoebox arrived: roughly six hundred prints, most unlabe…
Sunday dumplingsInes made dumplings every Sunday and never wrote the recipe do…
Why I keep everythingSomeone asked why I have eleven years of notes I never reread.…
The unfinished novel folderFourteen drafts of the same novel. None finished. The folder i…
Notes are compost, not storageA note that is only stored is dead weight. A note that is revi…
Pairing with an AI on the essaySpent the afternoon drafting the essay on attention with an AI…
An honest comparison
What each one does.
Apple Notes and Cohestry overlap a lot, and Apple Notes does some things Cohestry doesn't try to. This is what matters for connecting an archive.
| Capability | Apple Notes | Cohestry |
|---|---|---|
| Quick capture on iPhone and Mac | Yes | Yes |
| Folders and tags | Yes | Yes, plus collections |
| Link one note to another yourself | Yes (type >>) | Yes (type [[ ) |
| Export a single note as Markdown | Yes, on the Mac | Yes, share any note as Markdown |
| Sync through your own iCloud | Yes | Yes |
| A map of your whole archive | No built-in map | The 3D Brain, free |
| Connections found for you, each with its reason | Not offered | Found on your device; count free, revealed with Pro |
| On-device suggestions of related ideas, with quotes | Not offered | Local reflection with Apple Intelligence (Pro) |
| A ladder for developing ideas | Not offered | Capture → developing → developed → evergreen |
| AI agents can read notes you allow (MCP) | Not built in | Agent Bridge on the Mac (Pro) |
| Price | Free | Free; Pro optional |
Compared in September 2026 against current Apple Notes on iOS and macOS. Apple updates Notes every year; check Apple's Notes guide for its latest features. Apple Notes is a trademark of Apple Inc.; Cohestry is independent and not affiliated with Apple.
Moving over
What to expect when you import.
Cohestry imports from Apple Notes on the Mac, folder by folder, and keeps refreshing while it runs. You can keep writing in Apple Notes on your iPhone, or switch to Cohestry, or both.
- Titles, text, dates and attachments come across. Rich formatting, checklist state, drawings and scans don't.
- Password-protected notes are skipped.
- Apple Notes is never edited. Changes in Cohestry stay in Cohestry.
Keep writing. Start connecting.
Free on iPhone and Mac, with unlimited notes. Explore the example Brain first, no sign-up.
Explore the example Brain →