Description

Gives Joplin the look and feel of Apple Notes on macOS — an Apple-Notes-style note list, editor chrome, and colors in both light and dark mode. All standard Joplin functionality is preserved; every control is restyled, never removed.

Additional Information

Links:	Repository Homepage View source
Maintainers:	jake-k-npm
Version:	1.0.0
Minimum app version:	3.0
Downloads: This version:	179
Last updated:	2026-09-23T21:19:07Z

Apple Notes for Joplin

Makes Joplin look and feel like Apple Notes on macOS.

What it does

• Apple Notes note list — note rows show a bold title with the date and a snippet on a second line, inset hairline separators, Apple-style spacing, and the warm yellow selection highlight.
• Apple-style editor chrome — large bold title, date/time aligned to the title, a frosted-glass toolbar, and a uniform toolbar band, in both light and dark mode.
• Light and dark mode — follows your macOS appearance automatically, with Apple's cool light palette and true dark charcoal palette.
• No functionality removed — every Joplin control (sync, search, sort, tags, markdown toggle, note toolbar) is restyled and kept in place. Nothing is deleted or hidden behind settings.
• Self-contained — all styles are packaged inside the plugin. No userchrome.css or userstyle.css editing, no external files to install.

Installation

1. Open Joplin and go to Tools → Options → Plugins (on macOS: Joplin → Settings → Plugins).
2. Search for Apple Notes and click Install — or, if you downloaded plugin.jpl from GitHub, install it from the plugin page's gear menu (Install from file).
3. Restart Joplin when it offers to. Joplin only starts plugins while it is starting up, so this is when Apple Notes takes effect — and when it switches the note list style for you.

How the note list style gets enabled

Joplin keeps the selected note list style in a built-in setting, and its plugin API deliberately does not allow plugins to change built-in settings — there is no "activate this renderer" call either. So on its first run the plugin does the only thing that is equivalent to a user action: it invokes Joplin's own View → Note list style → Apple Notes menu item (through the @electron/remote access that Joplin enables for plugin windows) and then verifies that the setting actually changed. The result is the same as if you had clicked it yourself.

This happens the first time the plugin runs, whatever note list style was selected before — installing the theme puts Joplin on the Apple Notes note list. Pick another style afterwards if you prefer; that choice is yours and is kept.

If that is not possible on your Joplin version, the plugin tells you once, and you can set it manually from View → Note list style → Apple Notes.

Once the style has been active, the plugin never touches your choice again: if you deliberately switch to another note list style, that is respected.

Tools → "Apple Notes: Switch the note list style" runs the same switch whenever you ask for it — handy after you have tried one of Joplin's other note list styles.

How the automatic switch works

Joplin offers no plugin API for choosing a note list style, so on first run the plugin invokes Joplin's own View > Note list style > Apple Notes menu item for you and then checks that the style really changed. If Joplin refuses the live switch (some versions block plugin access to the app menu), the plugin writes the choice into your profile instead and tells you plainly that it will be in effect after the next Joplin start.

Troubleshooting

The plugin records what it did at startup in plugin-data/com.jk.applenoteslist/activation-log.json inside the Joplin profile directory — include that file when reporting a problem and it will say exactly where it stopped.

Usage notes

• The theme follows your macOS System Settings → Appearance for light/dark mode.
• Inside a specific notebook the note title uses the full width; in All Notes / Search / Tag views the title truncates to make room for the location chip.
• The sync status expander is hidden by design; the sync checkmark still appears as the sync indicator.

Compatibility

• Requires Joplin 3.0 or later (desktop).
• Designed for the desktop app on macOS; light and dark mode are both supported.

Feedback

Issues and suggestions are welcome via the repository issue tracker.

Development

npm install
npm run build   # tsc + bundle CSS into publish/plugin.jpl + publish/manifest.json

publish/ is what gets published to npm, and what the Joplin plugin repository picks up: it looks for npm packages carrying the joplin-plugin keyword that contain a publish/ directory with a manifest.json and a .jpl.

To try a build without publishing, install publish/plugin.jpl directly from Joplin's Options → Plugins → (gear) → Install from file.

Layout:

• src/index.ts — plugin entry point: loads the CSS, registers the note list renderer, activates the note list style on first run.
• src/theme.css — app chrome styles.
• src/note.css — note viewer (rendered Markdown) styles.
• src/manifest.json — the Joplin plugin manifest (id, version, description, ...).
• test/activation.test.js — runs the built plugin against a mocked Joplin host and a mocked @electron/remote, and checks the first-run activation logic (node test/activation.test.js).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.