It’s been a while since I made any content about the Notes app for iPhone, and with the
app seeing some pretty radical changes in iOS 16, I figured I would make a dedicated
video all about it.
So in this video, I’m going to show you everything that you need to know about how
to get the most out of the Notes app for iPhone, running on iOS 16.
Stick with me until the end of this video, especially if you’re considering using a
paid note-taking service, as the app is really pretty impressive now, and it might be more
than enough for you and your needs.
OK, let’s get into it.
App Navigation Opening up the app, let’s look very quickly
at how you’re going to navigate around it.
This entire screen is essentially dedicated to folders.
You’ve got Folders related to the Notes app in general up here at the top, things
like Quick Notes and notes that have been shared with you, we’ll come back to this
in a moment.
Then underneath that, you’ve got folders that you’ve created manually, within your
Notes account.
If you’re using multiple accounts within Notes, they will all show here.
So you can see that I’ve got my iCloud notes account setup, but you can have multiple accounts
if you wish, and can even create them against other email addresses like Gmail accounts.
This can actually be really helpful if you’d like to have say, a personal Notes account
perhaps, and a work Notes account, and keep them separate, but work on them all within
the one app.
You’d do this by opening Settings, then choosing Notes, then going into Accounts,
and toggling the accounts you’d like to use on and off.
Back on the Notes main screen, if you swipe down, you can access a search box up at the
top.
This search box acts like any other search tool that you’ll have used before, in that
you’re going to use keywords to search for the notes you’d like to find, but you can
see that you’re also able to search using a number of other options here, like shared
notes, locked notes, notes with checklists, it’s a really very capable search tool.
You can also combine these filters and search terms, so for example if I tap on Notes with
checklists, you can then add your own search term in addition, so you can really get quite
granular with this when you know that you’re looking for something in particular.
Down at the bottom left of the screen, you’ve got a button for creating a new folder, and
you can make that folder a smart folder at the same time if you wish, I’ll cover smart
folders in a bit more detail in just a moment.
At the bottom right you can create a new note, you simply tap that button and start typing,
again,we’ll come back to that in a second.
And then finally up at the top right, you’ve got an Edit button, where you can delete folders,
move them around, or even nest them within other folders by dragging them onto other
folders.
Creating a Note OK, so the most obvious thing you’re going
to want to know about is how to create a Note, and there are now lots of ways that you can
do this, compared to previous iOS versions where it was all a bit limited.
I already mentioned that from this screen, tapping the button in the bottom right of
the screen will create a new, blank note, and this is the most manual method of creating
a note.
Tap there, then start typing, and by default you’re going to be inputting the header
or title of the note first, before moving into the body of the note.
But, there’s a new way of creating notes in iOS16, and that’s by using Quick Notes.
This function has been around on the iPad and the Mac for a while now, and the idea
behind a Quick Note is that, at any point, anywhere in the operating system, you can
quickly create a note and link it back to something.
There’s a couple of steps to setting this up on the iPhone.
First, head to Settings, then Control Centre, and ensure that Quick Note is within your
Included Controls.
Then, anywhere on your iPhone, you can scroll down to access the control centre, and tap
this button here to create a new Quick Note.
Also, it’s worth heading into Settings, then Notes, and ensuring that these options
are selected as I’ve got them on-screen now, with Suggest App Link when Composing
Quick Note toggled on, and Suggest Notes with App Links set to Quick Notes only.
Let me show you why that is, and why this function is so useful.
Here on the iPhone’s home screen, look what happens if I access Control Centre and choose
Quick Note.
The note is created, but it’s just a basic, blank note.
Now see what happens if I open Safari, navigate to a page, and then access Control Centre
and choose Quick Note.
See how the note that’s created gives me the option of linking directly to this Safari
page?
This function works in Safari, but it also works in Mail, it works in the News app, it
works in Maps, it works in lots of different parts of iOS, allowing you to create links
in your Notes to whatever it is that you’re working on at that moment in time.
So, if you’re writing a note about something in Safari, the note will include a link to
that Safari page.
If you’re writing a note about an email you’ve received, the note will include a
link to take you right back to the email.
It’s really clever, and really useful, bringing all of the different parts of the iPhone’s
operating system together, and all you need to do is create a Quick Note, and tap the
link to add it to the note, like I’m doing here in this Safari related Quick Note.
Quick Notes will go into their own dedicated Quick Notes folder.
So, with that out of the way, let’s cover all of the different ways in which you can
add content to your note.
Obviously, you can type using the keyboard, but you can also dictate into your note using
the microphone button down here at the bottom right of the screen, you would simply tap
there, and speak the content that you’d like adding into your note.
iOS16 is much better with punctuation than previous versions, it’s not perfect, but
it’s pretty good, although you can of course use the keyboard to edit things as and when
you need to.
Above the keyboard is a menu bar with some different options.
Here, you can add a table.
This is still pretty limited in it’s functionality, it’s definitely not an Excel table here,
but you can input some data as you need to.
If you tap on a row or a column, you can see that you can add and delete rows and columns,
and you can format the text that you’ve input.
It would be really nice if Apple could see their way to including at least some basic
numeric functions in the future.
This Aa button is your text formatting button, where you can add options like being able
to input titles, headings, subheadings etc, you can make text Bold, Italic, Underlined
or struck through, and then below that you can create bulleted text, numbered text, and
indent text as you need to.
You can add a checklist, which isn’t quite as full-featured as a dedicated Reminder using
the Reminders app, but it functions if you’re working on a project note for example, and
you want a way of tracking tasks.
You can see that as you tick to complete things, they move to the bottom of the list which
is helpful.
If you tap on the camera icon, you’ve got a few options available for capturing data
using the camera.
You can choose a photo or video from your photo library using this button here.
Two down from that, you can use the camera to take a photo and add it straight into the
note, but above this is an option to Scan documents.
The difference here is that when you choose Scan documents, your iPhone is going to capture
an image using the optimal settings for a scan of a document, rather than a photo.
For best results, place the document you want to scan on a contrasting background, I find
that placing it down on carpet or a wooden table works really well, and I find tilting
the camera at a slight angle to avoid reflection helps, don’t worry, the phone’s software
will edit the scan to ensure it looks right.
The final option here is to scan text, which is your iPhone’s Live Text function.
This allows you to scan text in from essentially anywhere you like, whether that’s a business
card, or a menu, or an article in a magazine, or text off of a billboard, most any text
should work here, and will be captured as computer text, rather than an image.
The little pen icon to the right of that is your markup option, which allows you to use
your finger to draw on the screen.
You have a felt pen, then a highlighter pen, then a pencil, then an eraser, then a selection
tool and then a ruler.
If I tap on the felt pen for example, I can change the colour using this option here on
the right.
If I tap and hold on the pen for a second, I can change the thickness of the pen using
these options here, and I can change the opacity of the pen using this slider.
Also, here’s a cool little trick to know.
If I draw a common shape, like a circle, notice that by freehanding it, it doesn’t look
very good.
Watch what happens if, instead, I draw the circle, but hold for a second at the end of
it.
The phone identifies that I’m trying to draw a circle, and draws a perfect circle
for me.
This will work with other shapes too, like squares and triangles.
At the bottom right of this screen, there’s a little plus, and tapping on that will give
you the option of adding in some text to your drawing, or adding your signature, or adding
in a shape.
One last thing to show you when creating a note, is the ability to include and then make
use of Tags.
To do this, anywhere in the note, simply use the symbols part of your keyboard to input
a hash icon, and then add your tag, like I’ve done here.
If it goes yellow once you’ve input it, the tag has been input correctly, and can
be used.
Think of tags as an additional sorting tool, allowing you another method of organising
your notes.
Whether you decide to have a tag for a work project, or a family trip, or whatever you
can think of, getting into the habit of adding in tags as you’re creating notes will really
help when you come to the organiation stage of notes, which is what we’re going to discuss
in the next section of the video.
Tags work across folders, so even if you’ve got notes stored in lots of different parts
of your Notes app, you can still use tags to search for them, and collate them together
later on.
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Organising & Managing Notes OK, so with the creation of Notes out of the
way, let’s explore all of the ways in which you can now organise and manage your notes.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the video, you can store notes within folders, and you
can nest folders within other folders, giving you quite a lot of options for how you’d
like to organise things.
For example, I have two top-level folders, one called Personal, and one which I call
Digital Brain, which is where I store all of the things in life that I know I need to
remember, but that I don’t want to waste time trying to remember.
Then, within each of those, I store sub-folders as I feel necessary.
So, for example, I’d quite like to create one for Work.
I’ll tap down in the bottom right, and then call this folder Work, I’m going to add
an emoji too as I find it helps me see the top-level folders a bit more clearly, this
is of course purely a matter of preference.
Then, I’m going to create another new folder, but this one I’m going to call YouTube.
I’m then going to tap the Edit button in the top-right, tap on the ellipsis next to
the YouTube folder, and then choose Move This Folder.
I’m then going to put this folder into the Work folder, so you can now see how the process
of creating and organising folders works.
For this next section I’ve created a Note, and I’m going to tap on the ellipsis menu
in the upper right of the screen.
Scan is the same as the option that you get when you’d usually tap into the camera button,
and choose Scan Document, this is just a shortcut to that option.
Pin allows you to pin this note to the top of whatever folder it’s currently sitting
in.
So, if you've got a folder full of notes, but you know that this particular note is
one you’re bouncing in and out of all the time, it could be a good idea to pin it, to
make it easier to find in the future.
Lock allows you to lock the note, either using the passcode associated with your phone, or
a separate passcode specifically for Notes.
If you’ve got a phone with Touch ID or FaceID, you can use either of those to lock the note
instead, giving you a bit of peace of mind if you’re storing anything sensitive within
your note.
Locked notes won’t show without being unlocked, and that includes previews of them when you’re
browsing through a folder.
Next up is Find in Note, which is exactly what it sounds like, although it’s worth
exploring.
If you simply wish to find certain words or phrases in the note, type them in the search
box, and the app will return all matching results to you.
If you want to return a phrase, simply type the phrase in, putting it in quotations won’t
work.
By default, as soon as you begin typing a word, matches will show up, meaning that partial
word matches can occur, but if you don’t want that, tap on the magnifying glass and
choose Whole Words instead.
If you choose Match Case, the case used has to be the same as what you type in.
Find and Replace allows you to quickly find all instances of a word, and then replace
it with something else, making Notes quite a powerful little text editing tool on your
phone now.
Choose Done when you’re done.
Collaboration Back on the note, to the left of the ellipsis
is the share button, which has changed quite a bit since previous versions of the app.
The main difference here is this dropdown, which allows you to choose whether you wish
to share the note by sending a copy of it, or by inviting someone to collaborate on the
note with you.
Sending a copy is very straightforward.
Choose it, then choose your method of sharing, whether that’s by email, SMS etc.
Your recipient will receive a text copy of whatever you’ve written in your note, that
copy is then theirs to do whatever they like with, without impacting your original note.
If, on the other hand, you choose collaborate, Notes begins to act much more like an app
like Pages, where you can both work on the note together.
So here for example, I’m going to share the note with a contact using Messages.
All the message does right now, is send them a link to access the shared note, which the
contact will have to click on to access.
But once that’s done, your recipient now has the ability to work on the note with you.
They can add, delete, edit and highlight the note in just the same way that you can, so
great if you want to draft something with another person, without having to constantly
send drafts back and forth to one another.
And as you make changes, you can review the changes using this menu up here at the top.
You would simply tap here, and you can see who you’re sharing with, including direct
links to contact that person.
Below that, you’ve got a summary of the latest changes, and then underneath that you
can view all of the activity within the note, allowing you to quickly view what has been
edited.
My only complaint here is that you don’t have the ability to comment on something,
so if you wanted to draw attention to something, rather than editing it, and that kind of feels
like a glaring omission, but there you go.
Also, notice that because we’ve shared a note, if I jump back to the main screen of
the Notes app, there’s now a ‘shared’ section showing, and I can use that to quickly
view all of the notes that I’ve got shared with someone else.
Note that you can stop sharing a note by tapping into the note, tapping on the share icon up
at the top, choosing Manage Share Options, and make any sharing changes you’d like
to make.
Oh, and just to finish off collaboration, you can also share a folder, which would include
all of the notes within that folder, you don’t simply have to share by note alone.
To do this, you need to go back to the main folder view, tap the Edit button, then tap
on the ellipsis button for the folder you’d like to share.
Then choose Share Folder.
Same rules apply here as they do for an individual note.
Smart Folders OK so, the last thing I’d like to cover
is a function called Smart Folders.
These have been around since last year’s Notes update, but they’ve had some functionality
improvements this year that really do make them worth mentioning again.
Essentially, a smart folder is a folder where rules are applied to all notes, including
notes that you create in the future, and if a note ticks the necessary criteria boxes,
it’s automatically inserted into that folder.
This can be really helpful if you’re working on a project for example, and you’d like
the convenience of having all notes that relate to that project automatically sorted away
for you, although there are lots of potential uses for it.
Let me show you.
To create a Smart Folder, tap the new folder button down here in the bottom left, and then
tap the Make into Smart Folder button, once you’ve given the folder a name of course.
You’d then choose what filters you’d like to use, and as you can see, you’ve got a
lot to choose from.
So for example, you might choose to have notes that contain a specific tag.
Or notes that have been created within a specific time period, or notes shared with specific
people.
You can really be quite granular with how you would do this.
You can also choose for the smart folder, whether the notes should match any of the
criteria here, or all of them.
Once you’ve chosen your criteria, choose Done to create the Smart Folder.
The great thing about Smart Folders, as I mentioned earlier, is not only will current
notes that match the criteria go into your Smart Folder, but any new notes that match
the criteria will also go into the Smart Folder.
And that’s what I think make Smart Folders a really, genuinely great feature, that ability
to ensure that any new content you create automatically gets filed away for you, without
you having to do anything.
One negative that I do want to point out, is that for some reason you cannot nest Smart
Folders inside of other folders, which is super annoying from an organisation perspective,
perhaps this is something Apple can amend in a future version.
End So there you go, that’s a thorough deep-dive
into the Notes app on your iPhone, using iOS16.
Notes has come a really long way in the past few years, and I think for most people, there’s
no need to pay for any kind of third-party note taking app, you really do get everything
that most people will need here.
What do you think?
Any features missing from Notes that you wish was here?
Or any particular note taking app that you’d recommend using instead?
Drop me a comment, and let’s talk about it.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like, and
subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.