How to tune Notes on OS X to use plain text or not to reformat quotes

accessibilitycopy/pastenotes.app

As technical guy, I do hate the markup support in Notes.app and I would prefer to be just a smart text one.

Here is my wishlist:

Use a different font, like a fixed width one
Drop any font/color/size on text paste
Prevent replacing quotes with smart-quotes/curly-quotes (I like this while typing an email but not here where I copy/paste even code!)

I suspect that some of these could be obtained using some hidden preferences options. Anyway, if you know other 3rd party applications that could replace Notes, let me know. Still I do not want to lose the ability to access notes from iOS!

Best Answer

Notes

Notes.app in OS X 10.10 can do all you request:

Font colour, size, and family can be set through the Format menu.
Substitutions and smart quote behaviour are managed through the Edit > Substitutions sub-menu.

Screen shot of Notes.app in OS X 10.10

Beyond Notes: Text Wrangler

If you need more than Notes.app offers, try Text Wrangler from Bare Bones.

Related Solutions

Paste clipboard data as plain text Service

A couple options, gleefully swiped from Mac OS X Hints:

Applescript, converting pasteboard contents to plain text and pasting:

tell application "Finder" to set frontApp to (name of 1st process whose frontmost = true)
tell application frontApp
    activate
    set clip to «class ktxt» of ((the clipboard as text) as record)
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using {command down}
end tell

Shell script, save it in your Scripts folder and chmod 755

#!/bin/sh
pbpaste | pbcopy
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using {command down}'

How to force OS X Notes application to lose formatting when I paste text from clipboard

You can use OptionShift⌘-V to paste and match the current style. This removes all previous formatting, links, etc.

If you would like to make this the default action when pressing ⌘V, open System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts, and select Application Shortcuts from the list on the left. Then, hit + to make a new shortcut, select Notes.app from the dropdown list, enter Paste and Match Style exactly in the Menu Title box, then hit ⌘V with your cursor in the Keyboard Shortcut box. After hitting Add, you can flip back to Notes.app and click on the Edit menu to see that the shortcut has been reassigned.