Apple Notes MCP server

The Apple Notes Model Context Protocol (MCP) server enables Claude Desktop to access and search through your Apple Notes database. This integration allows Claude to reference your notes during conversations, making it more helpful with your personal information.

Installation

Using UV Package Manager

The recommended installation method is using the UV package manager:

uvx apple-notes-mcp

Alternatively, you can use:

uv pip install apple-notes-mcp

Configuring Claude Desktop

After installation, you need to update your Claude Desktop configuration file:

On MacOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Add the following to your configuration file:

"mcpServers": {
  "apple-notes-mcp": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": [
      "apple-notes-mcp"
    ]
  }
}

If you can't find the uvx command, use which uv to locate the path and use the full path in your configuration.

MacOS Disk Permissions

Since the Apple Notes database is located deep in the MacOS file system, you'll need to grant Full Disk Access to the server:

1. Open System Preferences
2. Go to Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access
3. Add the application that runs the server (typically Terminal or Claude Desktop)

Usage

Once installed and configured, the server provides the following capabilities:

Available Tools

The server implements three main tools for interacting with your Apple Notes:

• get-all-notes: Retrieves a list of all your notes
• read-note: Gets the full content of a specific note
• search-notes: Searches through your notes collection

Using with Claude

After setup, Claude can access your notes during conversations. You can directly ask Claude to:

• Find notes related to specific topics
• Retrieve the content of specific notes
• Search through your notes collection

For example, you might say:

• "Find all my notes about recipes"
• "Can you show me my note about the project plan?"
• "Search my notes for information about gardening"

Limitations

The current implementation has some limitations:

• Cannot handle encrypted notes
• No support for pinned notes filtering
• Does not handle cloud sync status
• Cannot retrieve attachment content
• No support for checklist status
• Cannot create or edit notes

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "apple-notes-mcp" '{"command":"uvx","args":["apple-notes-mcp"]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apple-notes-mcp": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "apple-notes-mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apple-notes-mcp": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "apple-notes-mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect