Alto turns Apple Notes into a website | Hacker News Reader

Alto turns Apple Notes into a website

alto.so

84 pointscolinprince37 comments

Be careful keeping important things in Apple Notes and not backing it up elsewhere. One time I disabled the iCloud sync on Apple Note from my Mac. All of my notes disappeared everywhere. The notes were previously available across all my devices logged into that account as well as the web UI - all gone and unrecoverable (I did a lot of research and tried everything). And no warning in the UI that disabling the iCloud sync would delete any data.

Dumb mistake I won’t make again.

I’ve heard many times over the years not to trust “the cloud” and don’t consider it to be a valid backup solution. This is the first time I’ve ever actually been bitten by it.

With photos, Apple actually threatens you that they will delete everything including your local copies when you disable the icloud syncing that you never explicitly enabled...

Possibly worth noting that import export markdown is coming to Apple notes in ios26

https://9to5mac.com/2025/07/17/heres-everything-new-for-appl...

Wow, I didn't know about this. Awesome news.

So, alto.so is a platform for publishing Apple Notes on the alto.so website? This was a bit confusing to understand because the “Install Mac app” link points to an app called alto.computer.

The “Guides” link in the docs page leads me to an empty page (turned off ad blocker and checked, but no luck).

The app is free and the one time price request seems reasonable. But adding a custom domain is a comparatively more expensive subscription (or a much higher one time fee).

Are there apps that allow publishing from Apple Notes to a website with one’s own domain without additional subscription fees?

For anyone that doesn't use Apple Notes, and keeps their notes in Markdown or Org format, good news for you, there are tons of existing tools to do the same thing (converting your notes into webpages) and you don't have to pay for them.

For example: https://bloggrify.com/

Makes me think what would have happened if CityDesk from Fog Creek Software in 2001 modernized into today.

https://web.archive.org/web/20020802014713/http://www.fogcre...

Is there a good reason for one's Apple Notes to be turned into a "website"? (NB: there's something more meant here than notes-as-a-website, since that implies little more than than "your notes, but with URLs". "Website" is being used here as a euphemism for something else—something more than that alone.) Is that better than your website being a collection of notes?

It seems that the note is the preferred form of interaction, following straightforwardly from the concept of revealed preference—else those in the target audience wouldn't actually be choosing the notes every day, when they could be choosing not-notes.

So that's the value proposition here: taking the thing that its users like more and exchanging it for something that they like less.

With a custom domain, which seems to be available for a small price, this could be the easiest blog setup ever.

Again I gesture towards what we know as revealed preference. People like the idea of blogging. In practice, they don't like actually blogging. This is why we have:

<https://rakhim.org/honestly-undefined/19/>

I think this graph is somehow invalidated in recent times. Now we have something in the middle: Minimalist blogging platforms which provide the service sans the need to rebuild the site every time you publish something.

The graph was true, because handling the static site was a big time sink and also prevented me from having a blog. Otherwise you have to go full Wordpress or similar.

Now I use Mataroa. There's also prose.sh, bearblog, smolpub and possibly others. Being able to type something away in your notes app, and share it to somewhere is an unprecedented power enabler. Because it's simple, transparent, and heck, it works.

This is the also proposition of Obsidian publish. Yes you have Quartz4, which needs Node, NPM, and a factorio pipeline plus a server and whatnot. You select the pages, press publish and presto. Your site is up in "5" seconds flat.

Removing the exciting tech and making it simple, thin and invisible is a great way to make people to work your tool. If I want, I can make all the CI/CD dance and animate it in the process to entertain myself, but no. I want a simple, minimalist blog with a nice layout. Hence Mataroa.

Alto caters to the same demographic, and is brilliant for that.

Notes is a writing tool that approachable and easy to use. It also works across the ecosystem on a syncing platform I already pay for and whose privacy I am comfortable with. I like the idea of setting up a simple text based website without needing to adopt a new editor. That's plenty value prop to me.

I think that it is kinda cool to convert your notes to a website, especially if you want to easily share them. I just created a Shortcut that sends my modified notes to an email address, and then I use Eleventy to build a website. Here is the result: https://albertoprado70.github.io/Mini/this-blog-uses-ios-not...

What’s processing the mail?

Whenever I export notes from Apple Notes it replaces the Markdown title marker `# Title goes here` with `*Title goes here *****` or something similar. Any notes on this?

I noticed a trend with gen z at least that they use Apple Messages and Apple Notes for everything. Even scheduling and stuff, I had a shared note sent to me. So probably a replacement for Notion.

I suppose the use case for using Notes to back a website is the same reason you'd use Notes over Notion, Obsidian, Todo apps, Evernote, and everything else:

Notes are built-in to your Macbook and iPhone, and they sync across them, and you're probably already using it.

Every time I try to use a new tool, I end up going back to Notes.

I need to share a doc with family that is basically the agenda for our reunion.

There is no service (Google, iCloud) that we all have access to, and I do not want the doc I share to be full of prompts for the people I share it with to join any service (this disqualifies Dropbox paper).

I need to be able to update this doc on my phone.

I have this need a couple times a yeat, so this app appeals to me (haven't tried it yet!)

Didn't work for me. At first I thought the app did not open but it turned out to add a few buttons to the lower right corner of Apple Notes.

When clicking the buttons, nothing happened, not even the 'copy markdown' button worked. I'm running 15.5 (24F74).

Is a screenshot of the product not possible? Like wtf, show what the final result looks like

I think that’s the site?

You were looking at it:

“Made with Alto…”

I was crawling through the links and J ran into https://montaigne.io/ which also aay:

> Make a website, blog, or portfolio using nothing but Apple Notes.

A bit confusing.

That app's developer reviewed this app developer's app. Nice guerrilla marketing.

Very cool how you have both a one click purchase and a subscription :) I use apple notes a lot but never thought of making it into a website. Is this homepage a notes app site?

> I use apple notes a lot but never thought of making it into a website. Is this homepage a notes app site?

Same question. Is there an example of how the final website might look like?

At the bottom of the home page:

“Made with Alto”

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous

i'm curious, how does it work? does it read the db directly or use applescript to get the notes?

Would love an iOS (or even Windows, if possible) version.

You could utilise the Convert Rich Text to Markdown feature from in Apple Shortcuts

I did not know that, thanks!

Very nice!

Just FYI, one can also save RTF doc in cryptpad as html.

The 'no more tools to learn' promise is powerful, but here's my hang-up: isn't this... just another tool? A layer between my notes and the web, with its own app and pricing. Feels like we're just trading one set of complexities for another. Is this true simplicity, or just a different kind of abstraction? Maybe I'm just being cynical lol.

I think by tools they mean more complex tools such as static site generators. Rather than an application where you select a Notes Folder and it does the rest.

Not the title, why the edit? title: Alto h1: Welcome to Alto

it makes the headline more informative

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