How to Save Notes as PDF on iPhone
Turn any Apple Note into a real PDF file in under a minute, no Mac and no third-party app required.
Quick Answer
Open the note, tap Share (or the ••• button, then Send a Copy), and tap Markup at the bottom of the share sheet. That turns the note into a PDF preview. Tap Done, then Save File To, and pick a spot in Files or iCloud Drive. If your version of Notes doesn't show Markup, tap Share, scroll to Print instead, then pinch outward on the print preview to open the same PDF, which you can save, AirDrop, or email straight from there.
Apple Notes doesn’t have an "Export as PDF" button sitting in a menu the way Mail or Safari do, so the request trips people up the first time they go looking for it. The trick is the share sheet: every note can become a PDF through Markup, or through the older Print-and-pinch move that works the same way in most iOS apps, not just Notes.
This guide covers both routes, what to do when the note you want is locked, what happens to scanned pages and attachments once they hit a PDF, and exactly where the saved file ends up on your phone afterward.
One honest limit up front: this is a one-note-at-a-time job. iPhone has no button that turns a whole folder into PDFs in one pass. If that’s what you actually need, jump to the last FAQ below for the Mac-based option.
Three ways to turn a note into a PDF on iPhone
Save a note as PDF on iPhone, step by step
1. Open the note, and unlock it if it has a lock icon
Find the note in the Notes app and tap it open. If you see a lock icon, tap it, authenticate with Face ID, Touch ID, or your notes password, then tap the lock icon again to unlock it. Share is turned off on a locked note, so this step is not optional if the note you want is one of the locked ones.
2. Tap Share
Tap the Share icon in the top-right corner of the note. Depending on which version of Notes you have, you may see it right away, or you may need to tap the ••• (More) button first and choose Send a Copy, which opens the same share sheet either way.
3. Tap Markup at the bottom of the share sheet
Scroll the row of app icons and actions along the bottom of the share sheet until you see Markup, then tap it. This turns the note into a PDF on the spot and opens it in the Markup editor.
4. Annotate if you need to, then tap Done
If you want to sign it, highlight something, or scribble a note in the margin, use the pen, highlighter, or text tools along the bottom of the Markup screen. If not, just tap Done in the corner and move on.
5. Tap Save File To, not Save Image
Notes will offer a few destinations. Save File To is the one that keeps it as an actual PDF. Save to Photos turns it into a picture instead, which loses the searchable text and looks worse on anything longer than a page.
6. Pick a folder and tap Save
Choose On My iPhone, iCloud Drive, or a connected service like Google Drive or Dropbox if you have its Files extension installed, then tap Save. The note is now a standalone PDF you can open, share, print, or move from the Files app whenever you need it.
Common Questions
Why doesn’t Apple Notes have a direct "Export as PDF" button?
Apple routes it through the share sheet instead of a dedicated menu item. Tapping Markup on a shared note turns it into a PDF, and tapping Print, then pinching outward on the preview, does the same thing through the print pipeline. Both live inside Share rather than a separate export menu, which is why the option is easy to miss the first time.
What if I don’t see Markup in the share sheet?
Use the print route instead. Tap Share, scroll down the list of actions, and tap Print. On the print preview screen, pinch outward with two fingers on the page thumbnail, and it opens as a full-screen PDF. From there, tap the Share icon again and choose Save to Files, Mail, Messages, or AirDrop. It is a couple more taps than Markup, but it produces the same PDF.
Can I save more than one note as a PDF at the same time on iPhone?
No. iPhone Notes has no multi-select PDF export, so each note goes through the Share, Markup, Save File To steps on its own. Notes on Mac exports one note to PDF at a time too, from File, Export as PDF. If you need to turn a whole folder or your entire library into PDFs in one pass, that is a job for a dedicated Mac export tool rather than the Notes app itself.
Why is my exported PDF missing pages from a scan or document I added to the note?
That is a known quirk, not something you did wrong. If a note contains a multi-page scanned document or an embedded PDF, the export only carries over the first page of that attachment, since Notes flattens the whole note into one PDF rather than stitching every page of every attachment in. Files that Notes doesn’t know how to render at all, like an audio recording, simply don’t appear in the export.
Can I save a locked note as a PDF?
Not while it’s locked. Unlock it first by tapping the note, authenticating with Face ID, Touch ID, or your password, then tapping the lock icon to remove the lock. Share and Send a Copy are both disabled on a locked note, so there’s no way around this step.
Where does the saved PDF actually go on my iPhone?
Wherever you told it to go in the Save File To step. If you chose On My iPhone, open the Files app and look under On My iPhone, or check Recents at the bottom of Files, since a file you just saved usually shows up there first. If you chose iCloud Drive or another cloud service, it appears in that location instead and syncs to your other devices signed into the same account.
Does the PDF keep checklists, tables, and images from the note?
Yes, for the most part. The export is essentially a flattened, print-style rendering of exactly what the note looks like on screen, so checkboxes render as checked or unchecked boxes, images and sketches carry over, and simple tables keep their layout. Very long or heavily formatted notes are worth a quick scroll-through after saving, just to confirm nothing got cut off at a page break.
What if I need to save my whole Notes library as PDFs, not just one note?
The Share, Markup, Save File To flow is built for one note at a time, and repeating it for hundreds of notes gets old fast. If you’re backing up or migrating a whole library, folders and all, that’s better handled on a Mac with a tool built for batch export, like Notes Exporter Pro, which can turn an entire folder or library into PDFs (or nine other formats) in one pass instead of one tap at a time.
Need to Export More Than One Note?
iPhone can only save one note as PDF at a time. If you're backing up or migrating a whole library, folders and all, that's a job for the Mac, where Notes Exporter Pro can batch export your entire library to PDF, and nine other formats, in one pass.