Where Do Your Notes Actually Live? A Storage-Location Audit of the Popular Note Apps

Your notes live in one of three places: as files on your own disk, inside an app-specific database on your device, or on a company's servers. Which one decides everything — how you export, whether encryption is yours or theirs, and what survives if the vendor shuts down.

Marketing language muddles this. "In the cloud," "synced to your account," "stored securely" — each phrase describes a feeling, not a location. The 2019 Ink & Switch essay Local-first software named seven ideals for tools that respect ownership, among them "You retain ultimate ownership and control" and "The Long Now." ¹ Its authors put the physical fact plainly: "In old-fashioned apps, the data lives in files on your local disk, so you have full agency and ownership of that data." ¹ Steph Ango, who runs Obsidian, compressed the same idea into a sentence: "Apps are ephemeral, but your files have a chance to last." ² This audit asks the same three questions of eight popular note apps — Obsidian, Logseq, Apple Notes, Bear, Notion, Evernote, Standard Notes, and MNMNOTE — and scores each on the same axis. It does not crown a winner.

The three questions this audit asks

Three questions separate a note you own from a note you merely rent. First: where do the bytes physically sit right now? Second: what format does the app export to? Third: if the vendor disappears tomorrow, what do you actually keep? Every app below answers all three, differently.

The three questions are not equally visible. The first is a matter of fact you can usually verify on your own device. The second is a menu buried in a settings pane. The third is the one marketing never answers, because it asks what happens after the relationship ends. Ango frames the stakes as a design philosophy: "File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read." ² The dividing line beneath all three is a trust boundary: bytes on your device versus bytes on someone else's server. We have written about that boundary politically before; this piece stays technical, and about the present tense.

Obsidian: where do your notes live?

Obsidian keeps your notes as Markdown plain-text files in a folder it calls a vault, bytes that sit on your local file system, in subfolders you choose. ³ There is nothing to export, because the files are already plain Markdown. If Obsidian vanished, every .md file would stay readable in any text editor.

Obsidian's own documentation states it directly: it "stores your notes as Markdown-formatted plain text files in a vault. A vault is a folder on your local file system, including any subfolders." ³ Sync is optional and layered on top, whether Obsidian Sync, Dropbox, iCloud, or Git, but the storage itself is local by default. The honest caveat: plain files on your disk are only as safe as your backups. Local-first is not the same as backed-up, and the reason those files travel so well is that plain text is just characters an encoding standard guarantees, with no vendor format to decode.

Logseq: where do your notes live?

Logseq's classic version stores notes as Markdown or Org-mode files on your local disk, built around privacy, longevity, and user control. ⁴ Those are already portable files. But a newer database version, shipped through 2025, keeps data in a proprietary SQLite schema instead — portable only after an explicit export.

Logseq describes itself as "a privacy-first, open-source platform for knowledge management," focused on "privacy, longevity, and user control," with support for Markdown and Org-mode. ⁴ That describes the classic, file-based graph. The nuance that matters for this audit: the classic format and the new database format are not interoperable. On the classic version you keep your .md or .org files; on the database version you must export before you leave. Same app, two very different answers to question three.

Apple Notes: where do your notes live?

Apple Notes lives in iCloud, on Apple's servers, with a synced copy on each device. By default Apple holds the encryption keys, and its documentation says "only certain data is end-to-end encrypted," and Notes joins that list only if you switch on Advanced Data Protection. ⁵ There is no built-in plain-text bulk export.

Apple's iCloud data-security page states the default plainly: "Your iCloud data is encrypted, the encryption keys are secured in Apple data centers so we can help you with data recovery, and only certain data is end-to-end encrypted." ⁵ Advanced Data Protection is the opt-in that moves Notes into the end-to-end set — "Additional data protected includes iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes, and more." ⁵ Getting notes out means per-note sharing or third-party tools; Apple provides no vendor-neutral Markdown export. Your notes are tied to your Apple ID.

Bear: where do your notes live?

Bear stores your notes in a SQLite database on your device, kept in sync through iCloud. Its FAQ is exact: "On both iOS and macOS, Bear's notes are stored in a SQLite database." ⁶ Export runs to Markdown, HTML, PDF, RTF, or plain text — so you can leave with portable files if you convert first.

A SQLite database is an app-specific container, not a folder of files you can read directly. That is not a criticism; it is a design choice Bear documents openly ⁶, but it changes question three. If Bear went away, the notes would sit in a database format you would need the app, or a converter, to open. The survivability answer is simple and honest: export to Markdown before you need to, not after.

Notion: where do your notes live?

Notion keeps your notes in its own cloud, on vendor servers, with no local-first file copy. You download a copy when you export — to Markdown and CSV, HTML, or PDF, for a page, a database, or the whole workspace. ⁷ Notion-specific structure, like linked databases, flattens to CSV or Markdown on the way out.

Notion's help center confirms the export menu: "Any non-database Notion page can be exported as a Markdown file," with "PDF, CSV, or HTML" as the other options, and you can export "a Notion page, database, or entire workspace at any time." ⁷ The location fact follows from the export fact: you download a copy because the original lives on Notion's servers, not yours. Once you have that export, turning it back into clean plain Markdown is its own small task.

Evernote: where do your notes live?

Evernote stores your notes in its vendor cloud. Getting them out means the desktop app and one of two formats: an Evernote XML file with the .enex extension, or HTML. ⁸ Both are exports you download, not files that ever lived on your disk — and .enex is a non-standard XML you then have to convert.

Evernote's help documentation lists the choice directly: "You can choose to save your notes as an Evernote XML file (.enex) or as HTML files (.html)." ⁸ The export lives in the desktop app, not the web or mobile clients. The .enex format is Evernote's own, readable but not something another editor opens natively, so the survivability answer includes a conversion step. Cleaning that export into plain Markdown is the same job a Notion export needs.

Standard Notes: where do your notes live?

Standard Notes keeps your notes in its cloud too — but as end-to-end-encrypted blobs the server cannot read. Content is encrypted with XChaCha20-Poly1305, and your password is stretched with Argon2 to derive keys that never leave your device. ⁹ The app is open source and self-hostable, so you can export or run your own server.

This is the encrypted-blob middle case: the bytes sit on someone else's server, but only ciphertext. Standard Notes' documentation describes the scheme: XChaCha20-Poly1305, "recommended by leading technology companies like Cloudflare and Google," with Argon2 password stretching ⁹, and the company makes its own security claim: "We're proud to be an open source application with several completed third-party security audits." ⁹ That is the vendor's statement, not our verification. Because the code is open and self-hostable, question three has a strong answer: you hold the keys, and you can run the server yourself.

MNMNOTE: where do your notes live?

MNMNOTE stores your notes locally in your browser, on your own device, with no account required. It works offline. Export is open Markdown — the same plain text Obsidian and classic Logseq keep on disk. If the app went away, your notes would remain the portable Markdown files you can take anywhere.

On the trust-boundary axis, browser-local storage sits on the same side as Obsidian and classic Logseq — the bytes are on your device, not on a company's server. MNMNOTE adds opt-in, end-to-end encrypted sharing when you choose to send a note; the notes themselves stay local by default. It is one more entry on the same axis, scored by the same three questions — not the answer to them.

Side-by-side: the storage-location comparison

Here is the whole audit. Read the columns, not a ranking: every app answers where the bytes live, what it exports, and what survives the vendor. Two keep files on your disk, one uses a local database, one keeps notes in your browser, three sit in a readable vendor cloud, and one stores encrypted blobs you hold the keys to.

Who should worry about this — and who should not

Storage location matters most if you plan to keep notes for years, switch tools, or need to prove data never left your control. It matters least if your notes are disposable, your workflow is fully inside one ecosystem, and convenience beats portability. Neither answer is wrong, but the audit tells you which camp a tool serves.

Two honest caveats keep this fair. First, files on your disk are not automatically safe — a local-first note is only as durable as your backups, so pair any file-based tool with a real backup routine. Second, a vendor cloud is not a moral failing; Standard Notes proves a server can hold your notes while you keep the keys. The question the Ink & Switch authors raised is the one that outlasts marketing: whether "your work should continue to be accessible indefinitely, even after the company that produced the software is gone." ¹ If that matters to you, the tools that outlive their makers are the ones whose files you already hold, and the same logic drives which apps keep working when the network fails.

Frequently asked questions

These are the questions people actually type when they go looking for where a note app keeps their data. Each answer points back to the vendor's own documentation, because on a storage-location question the authoritative source is the company that wrote the code — not a review or a summary.

Where are Obsidian notes saved on my computer? Obsidian saves your notes as plain Markdown (.md) files inside a vault — a folder you pick on your own file system, including any subfolders. There is no proprietary database and no required cloud; you can open, back up, or move the files with any text editor or file manager. ³

Are my Apple Notes end-to-end encrypted? Only if you turn on Advanced Data Protection. By default, Apple's documentation says "only certain data is end-to-end encrypted," and the encryption keys are secured in Apple data centers for recovery. Notes becomes end-to-end encrypted once Advanced Data Protection is enabled — "Additional data protected includes iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes, and more." ⁵

What format does Evernote export in? Evernote exports to one of two formats from its desktop app: an Evernote XML file with the .enex extension, or HTML files. Its help documentation states you "can choose to save your notes as an Evernote XML file (.enex) or as HTML files (.html)." The web and mobile clients do not offer the bulk export. ⁸

Can Standard Notes read my notes on their server? No. Standard Notes stores your notes as blobs encrypted with XChaCha20-Poly1305; the keys are derived from your password with Argon2 and never leave your device, so the server holds ciphertext it cannot decrypt. The app is open source and self-hostable, and the company states it has completed third-party security audits. ⁹

Where does Notion store my notes? Notion stores your notes in its own cloud, on vendor servers — there is no local-first file copy. When you export, you download a copy in Markdown and CSV, HTML, or PDF, for a single page, a database, or the entire workspace. Notion-specific structure like databases flattens to CSV or Markdown on export. ⁷

If a note app shuts down, do I lose my notes? It depends entirely on where the bytes lived. If your notes were plain files on your disk, Markdown or Org-mode, you keep them and open them anywhere. If they lived only in a vendor cloud or an app-specific database, you keep whatever you exported before the shutdown, in whatever format that export produced. Export early, not in a panic.

Does storing notes locally mean they are backed up? No — and this is the most common misunderstanding. Local-first means the bytes live on your device, which is a portability and ownership property, not a safety one. A file on one disk is one accident away from gone. Pair any local-first note tool with a real backup routine; storage location and backup are two separate decisions.

Marketing tells you your notes are "in the cloud," "synced," "secure." The audit asks a colder question: on whose disk, in what format, and readable by whom after the company is gone. Answer those three, and you know exactly what you own — and what you are only borrowing.

If you want notes that stay plain Markdown on your own device, mnmnote.com opens in a browser tab and keeps the files yours.