How to change orange text back to black in Notes?

One way to ensure that the text is black in Notes is to copy/paste that content into a plain text editor (e.g. BBEdit) and then copy/paste that plain text back to a new note, not the same one.

All text and its styling in Notes is really HTML/CSS behind the presentation layer. Notes from the distant past in macOS is not the same Notes that you find in Sequoia. There may be discrepancies when that older Notes content is opened in the newer Notes.

If the issue is a borked .plist, then reinstalling macOS from Recovery won't fix the issue. Try the following instead:

Quit Notes.

In Finder, press shift+cmd+L to open your local Library folder. Press cmd+1 to change to Icon view mode. Then, locate and enter the Containers folder. Scrolling down in Icon view, locate the Notes folder. Enter the following folders in order:

Once in that Preferences folder, locate com.apple.Notes.plist and drag and drop it to your Desktop. Leave that Finder Window open on that Preferences folder.

Relaunch Notes and try your plain text copy into Notes to see if the text remains monochrome. If it does, then you are good, Notes has rewritten the moved .plist file into that Preferences folder location, and you can remove the com.apple.Notes.plist file on your Desktop. Close the open Finder Window.

What I meant to post before the hosting software interfered:

Select the colored text in Notes. Visit Edit menu > Substitutions and uncheck anything selected in the sub-menu. Save the note and then see if the multi-colored text remains. If not, then this is a solution and you can skip the remaining content in this post. If not…

If the issue is a borked .plist, then reinstalling macOS from Recovery won't fix the issue. Try the following instead:

Quit Notes.

In Finder, press shift+cmd+L to open your local Library folder. Press cmd+1 to change to Icon view mode. Then, locate and enter the Containers folder. Scrolling down in Icon view, locate the Notes folder. Enter the following folders in order:

Once in that Preferences folder, locate com.apple.Notes.plist and drag and drop it to your Desktop. Leave that Finder Window open on that Preferences folder.

Relaunch Notes and try your plain text copy into Notes to see if the text remains monochrome. If it does, then you are good, Notes has rewritten the moved .plist file into that Preferences folder location, and you can remove the com.apple.Notes.plist file on your Desktop. Close the open Finder Window.

If however, Notes still inserts copied plain text with colors, then it is not a .plist issue and you can move that com.apple.Notes.plist file from the Desktop back into the Open Folder location you moved it from.

To change the orange text back to black in Notes, you can highlight the text, right-click, and select "Show Colors." Then, choose black as the color for the text.

Your TextEdit session may have been Rich Text by default (note the presence of a ruler and toolbar) and must be set to Format menu > Make Plain Text before copy/pasting your Notes content into it. Personally, I avoid TextEdit like the plague…

Not sure what is going on with your Notes on Sequoia when originating plain text gets styled again in a new Note.

This was an interesting thread, and revealed to me a feature which I’d not previously encountered.

It seems that - at least in iOS 18.5 - orange type is where Notes is inserting the results of automated math operations.

It’s control is in More (3 dots)

I found that turning this control “off” eliminated the previously inexplicable orange type.

Unsure of it’s applicability to Sequoia.

Chattanoogan wrote:

This was an interesting thread, and revealed to me a feature which I’d not previously encountered.

It seems that - at least in iOS 18.5 - orange type is where Notes is inserting the results of automated math operations.

It’s control is in More (3 dots)

I found that turning this control “off” eliminated the previously inexplicable orange type.

Unsure of it’s applicability to Sequoia.

Good catch. That thought drifted through my brain but the things turning orange didn't see to be math operators so I dismissed it. Go you for looking further.

I just noticed that I have three Notes folders in ~/Library/Containers. Select the first and press shift+cmd+i to open a Show Info panel. You want the one whose Name and Extension field on that panel show com.apple.Notes. This is the one to drill down into and move the com.apple.notes.plist to the Desktop. Ignore the others that have different names in the Name and Extension field.

I cannot explain the presence of multiple icons bearing the same icon name, but different filenames. Confusing.

To change the orange text back to black in Notes:

1. Select the orange text.
2. Tap “Aa” or Format (depending on your device).
3. Choose black from the colour options.

To change orange text back to black in Notes, simply select the orange text, then click on the "A" symbol in the toolbar and choose the black color option from the color palette.

There is no separate download for the Notes application as it is installed by the operating system. I do not have the text styling issue you report in my Notes on Sequoia v15.5.

I would reboot the Mac and try your plain text paste again in a new Note. Then contact Apple Support. There will be a macOS 15.6 arriving in the near future, see if after its update installation, the issue remains with Notes.

Your decisions to use Evernote, Obsidian, or any other third-party Note taking application will be your own as I have no specific recommendation. I would wait on the results of the second paragraph before any decision is made.

I can select text in a Note and press shift+cmd+C to open the Color picker. When I choose red, then the selected Note text changes to red. There is no secondary menu item named Show Colors until one has navigated to Font > Show Colors.

I should have mentioned this in an earlier response, but was driven by the notion that the mixed colors of the OP's pasted plain text may have been altered by one of the Substitution items. The text in Notes is either styled or unstyled HTML tags behind the visuals.

By drill down, I meant to open the Notes folder whose name and extension is com.apple.Notes.plist and then open Data > Library > Preferences folder to locate and move the com.apple.Notes.plist file to the Desktop by dragging it.

Reboot your Mac and relaunch Notes to see if the text is monochome that has had color in it — and remains black. Those Notes named icons in the Containers folder have all manner of created and modified dates that are not current. Mine are that way and it is likely yours are too.