Where Scratch saves your notes on Mac

You typed something important into Scratch and now you want to know — is this in iCloud? On disk? Will it survive a Time Machine restore? Knowing where a scratchpad actually keeps your files matters when you start to rely on it.

Two paths

Native macOS. Apple’s Notes.app stores notes in a SQLite database buried inside ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/ — it’s not designed to be browsed or backed up file-by-file, and the format isn’t portable. Stickies keeps its data in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Stickies/, also opaque. TextEdit is the honest one: it saves wherever you tell it. If portability and a real file on disk matter to you, TextEdit is the only stock option, but then you’re back to manual filenames and folders.

Scratch. Every note is a plain .md file in a single, known folder. No database, no proprietary container. You can open the folder in Finder, copy a file out, drop it into VS Code, or include it in any backup you already run.

Find your notes on disk

1. Open Finder.
2. From the menu bar choose Go → Go to Folder, or press ⇧⌘G.
3. Paste ~/Library/Application Support/Scratch/Notes and press Return.
4. You'll see one .md file per note, plus a small companion metadata file. Open any markdown file in any editor — they're standard CommonMark.
5. To export a single note without leaving Scratch, drag the row from the sidebar onto your desktop. macOS drops the underlying .md file there.

Backups

Because the notes folder lives inside ~/Library/Application Support, Time Machine picks it up automatically with everything else in your home directory. iCloud Drive, Dropbox, and rsync-style backup tools also handle it as a normal folder. There’s nothing custom to configure — your scratchpad backs itself up the same way the rest of your Mac does.