Apple Notes MCP Server is an MCP Server designed to seamlessly integrate your local Apple Notes with AI models like Claude. By granting access to your notes database, this server empowers AI to search and understand your stored information, enhancing its contextual awareness. It offers tools like get-all-notes, read-note, and search-notes to retrieve and utilize note content.

This solution addresses the developer need for AI models to access and leverage personal knowledge bases. It interacts with AI models through standard input/output, providing a secure and efficient data retrieval mechanism. The core value lies in enabling AI to provide more informed and personalized responses based on your Apple Notes content. Installation is streamlined via uv or pip, with configuration details provided for Claude Desktop. While still under development, Apple Notes MCP Server offers a promising avenue for enriching AI interactions with personal data.

Access to Local Apple Notes

The apple-notes-mcp server allows AI models, specifically Claude Desktop, to access and read data from the user's local Apple Notes database. This functionality is crucial because it provides the AI model with a wealth of personal information stored within the user's notes, enabling more contextually relevant and personalized interactions. The server bypasses the limitations of the AI model's pre-existing knowledge by directly feeding it user-specific data. This access is achieved by querying the Apple Notes SQLite database, which stores all the notes data. However, it's important to note that the server currently lacks the ability to handle encrypted notes, which could limit its functionality for users who heavily rely on this feature for sensitive information.

Use Case: A user asks Claude to summarize their meeting notes from the past week. The apple-notes-mcp server retrieves the relevant notes from the Apple Notes database, and Claude can then provide a concise summary.

Comprehensive Note Retrieval

The server provides tools to retrieve all notes (get-all-notes) or the full content of a specific note (read-note). This capability is essential for AI models that require a complete understanding of the user's notes. By offering both options, the server allows the AI model to efficiently access the necessary information, whether it needs a broad overview or a detailed examination of a particular note. The get-all-notes tool is useful for tasks like indexing and searching, while the read-note tool is ideal for answering specific questions or providing summaries of individual notes. The server uses direct SQL queries to the Apple Notes database to fetch the note content.

Use Case: An AI assistant uses get-all-notes to index all of a user's notes, enabling it to quickly search for relevant information when the user asks a question about a specific topic. Alternatively, if the user asks for details about a particular project, the AI can use read-note to retrieve the full content of the relevant note and provide a comprehensive answer.

Search Functionality within Notes

The search-notes tool enables the AI model to search through the user's Apple Notes for specific keywords or phrases. This feature significantly enhances the AI's ability to find relevant information within the user's notes, even if the user doesn't remember the exact title or location of the note. The search functionality allows the AI to quickly identify and retrieve notes that contain the desired information, making it a valuable tool for research, information retrieval, and task management. The server implements the search functionality by executing SQL queries with LIKE clauses against the Apple Notes database.

Use Case: A user is planning a trip and asks Claude for recommendations based on previous travel experiences. The AI uses search-notes to find notes containing keywords like "travel," "restaurants," or "hotels," and then provides the user with personalized recommendations based on the content of those notes.

Integration Advantages

The apple-notes-mcp server offers seamless integration with Claude Desktop through the Model Context Protocol. By acting as an MCP server, it allows Claude to access and utilize the data stored in Apple Notes without requiring complex API integrations or data transfers. The server is designed to be easily installed and configured, making it accessible to a wide range of users, including those with limited technical expertise. The use of standard input/output (stdio) for communication simplifies the integration process and ensures compatibility with the MCP ecosystem. The server can be launched using uvx or uv pip install, and configured in Claude's claude_desktop_config.json file.