ample notes is one of the largest note-taking applications in the productivity Market but
it really goes unnoticed because it's already installed on iOS and Mac devices on Millions
maybe even billions of people's devices around the world today we're going to give you a
comprehensive guide to understanding Apple notes and taking advantage of it I'm not going to give
you some of the basics I'm going to dive into a few of the more intermediate tips and tricks
to really mastering Apple notes in today's video and hopefully you can walk away a little bit more
of an apple note Maestro from this video hello everyone and welcome back to the keep productive
YouTube channel my name is Francesco I'm very excited to dive into Apple notes it is very much
the meme if you are at the front end or the back end Apple notes is one of those experiences that
if you really get involved in it it can be quite an advanced note-taking application and it really
does remind me of that Meme because when I was working at a company a many year years ago the
guy who ran it the CEO was just using Apple notes and he was pretty happy and I was there like with
this Advanced Evernote setup and it really is a depiction of the meme that I regularly posted on
social media so today I've broken it into a few sections but before we begin today's video is
sponsored by tool finder you can find it linked below to find it something we've created to help
you find the best productivity tools you can find it linked in description as well as our
brand new newsletter for diving into the latest productivity tools on the market so let's start
with organization and this is something that Apple notes does okay it's not something that's going
to revolutionize your setup but the main feature that really goes unhidden or hidden is something
called smart folders and it's a way for you to set up folders and sign your Apple notes that
meet a certain criteria and that could be anything amazingly from pinned posts or pinned notes in a
certain folders or across folders or maybe even notes are created within a certain date and it
can also be stuff like tags things that you add to your notes to give them more context but this
means that you can span notes that go not just between one folder but many folders inside of
it now if you're doing this on Mac it's going to look a little bit different however on iPad
it looks probably the most in-depth or the most best demonstration of how it fully Works inside
of this smart folder area you can set up filters for not just all but Emmy or and additional ones
which make it the perfect place to really set up a combination of filters that might suit your new
smart folder this is great not only for the tags not only for the notes but you can also filter
through a wide variety of different types of notes like notes that have handwriting in it notes that
are created with quick notes and even things like locked notes allowing you to see all of
your most private notes across all of the folders that you may have created inside of Apple notes
now if you're somebody that doesn't know you can go ahead and create folders and set them up with
your iCloud sync account which means that if you have multiple Apple devices they will sync across
the board this is great for keeping in touch with OneNote that might be updated with another note
that is synchronized in real time so I fully recommend checking out this feature if you're
looking to go a little bit deeper when it creates terms to organization setup when starting off with
Apple notes okay so when it comes to creating your notes inside of Apple notes there are two elements
that really go unnoticed when taking advantage of that and that's the toolbar area which you can
actually edit and customize much further inside of all versions of Apple notes which means you
can choose what goes on that toolbar at the top but what's really nice is you can create tables
here now tables are very basic in the extent that they are nothing like notion databases
is but they provide you with a great way for you to get started adding information now for example
if you wanted to move stuff around you can you can move around columns and columns and rows and
really change the information inside of it like make it bold italic or even add more formatting
if you did want to but tables are great and one of my favorite uses is for games like we do rummy and
things like that tallying scores and shorter bass stuff like that but it can also go much
further like creating a pros and cons list for a house you might be buying and you could be sharing
that with your partner which I'll talk to a little bit later on in this video something else you can
add inside of your note in Apple notes is tasks and funnily enough they aren't connected with
apple reminders just yet but you can create these small checklists which are perfect for managing a
grocery list or keeping an eye on what project I items and tasks you have inside of your workload
but what's really nice is you can actually search in the search bar for anything that is checklist
based which is great for finding it for later you can't go and add due dates and information like
that but it is handy when you're creating a smart folder you can create it with checklist in mind
making sure that you keep all of your checklists in one folder organized so you can find all of the
tasks that are relevant but in general checklists can be used throughout a note anywhere throughout
the note which makes it perfect for being able to embed with other such media like note taking
or even handwriting so Apple notes is really underrated for its capture and find abilities
search as I just mentioned is quite powerful you can actually search anything that is handwriting
based which makes using the apple pencil much more effective on the iPad and even iPhone if
you don't use your maybe just use your fingers then it actually allows you to capture that quite
easily but also make make sure you can find those really fast another element of Apple notes that
people don't really check out is the ability to capture stuff really fast using Force touch this
is a feature that is available on most iPhones now but if you push down on the Apple notes app you
can quickly take a note and even take advantage of scanning a document from here as well and
scanning of documents is something that comes in a really high quality almost or on par to likes
of Evernote scanning abilities and it makes it great for being able to send documents to other
people just from the Apple Notes application and it will save it in line which means you can give
it a title and even reference it for later which makes it perfect for being able to grab stuff
really quickly without downloading a third-party application another quick ability is on any of
your devices if you swipe to the bottom right hand corner you can take a quick note which is a great
way to save a bit of time especially if you're on Mac and this is a really handy function and
gets saved into your quick notes area which is a separate area of Apple notes which appears at the
top below or above shared and it makes it great for being able to quickly access that if you've
got multiple of them and you haven't yet organized that into a folder which really incites the like
of likes of GTD getting things done a book by David Allen so next up is collaboration and to
be honest I never really thought of appinotes as a good collaboration tool the application itself is
a really simple tool in nature but I never really thought about it until recently when creating
weekly plans with me and my wife that it really clicked and actually made it quite an effective
way to do that together now let's be fair trying to get my wife on something like Evernote or mem
probably will be much more difficult so I thought maybe I could use the collaborative function
inside of Apple notes and recently we've created a week plan which is a set of dates of activities
we're doing and a set of meals with a table and outlining what meals are having each night as well
as any other information this is really becoming our base which we change every single week and
now I can see updates that she posts and she can see updates that I post this is really simple to
set up and all you do is you actually share the note via iMessage the other person will accept the
collaboration and from here you can modify the note in detail which is great but it's nice as
well because it's not say in real time so you can't see each other's curses but you can see
each other's updates and if you swipe right on the Note itself you can actually see highlights that
the other person has made in a bit more detail now I can also share this with more people meaning I
don't have to limit it just to one person I could share this with roommates and you can still use
the checklist functionality as well as all of the rest of the functionality you get inside of your
Apple notes account which makes it a great base for organizing a checklist of roommate stuff to
do like Clearinghouse organizing chores etc etc so this application is great as well for
capturing images inside of here which means you can bring together ideas thoughts and processes
all in one base on iPad and iPhone the settings in Apple notes are pretty good you can go into
quite a high level with detail when it comes to organizing and organizing the structure and
layout of your folders and also what note appears as well as the titles and details like that now
there's also great ways on Mac to be able to lock your notes you can set a password or configure it
to have Touch ID which makes all of your notes much more secure and as I was mentioning earlier
you can actually create a smart folder based on all of your locked notes which is a perfect
place maybe for a journal or details like that although Apple does have a journal application
coming up now one of the questions I'm sure I'll get in this video is what's the difference between
Apple free form and Apple notes well they're very similar in a lot of ways you can collaborate in
real time on them but freeform goes in much more detail with the ability to add Post-it notes and
much more detail around each note when it comes to collaboration which means you can draw shapes
and modify information in real time seeing each other's curses and interactions and you can even
do stuff like join a FaceTime together which means you can see each other in real time on iPad and
Mac devices but it also works great asynchronously for planning and organizing ideas and Thoughts
with family friends and maybe business colleagues but as long as they've got your Apple ID and
they're signed into the right freeform account so the differences are pretty clear freeform
much better for collaboration and the likes of Apple notes much better for much lighter forms
of collaboration freeform is much more like Miro whereas Apple notes is much more like obsidian
not quite but you get what I mean a note-taking application versus a whiteboard application now
iOS 17 is introducing some pretty decent abilities like note PDFs and also note linking which means
you can create bi-directional links between certain notes that you have inside of your
account something small and they might tailor towards the PKM personal Knowledge Management
Market but something that probably the average Apple notes user will enjoy but not rely on
entirely there's a great video by paperless X which overviews all of the iOS 17 updates that
are expected in September or October of 2023 which will give you a great outline of how Apple notes
is going to evolve but one of the biggest things is the collaborative PDFs allowing you and your
team or maybe even you and you as a student to be able to collaborate on a PDF in real time and that
includes The annotation abilities as well this is similar to freeform in a way but really condensed
into Apple notes whereas I would say freeform is much better for collaborative whiteboard function
like Miro and be able to bring ideas together whereas this is much better for annotating and
revising information that you've already got so this was a little bit more about Apple notes
and I tried to go from a different angle with this application or this overview to give you a
better idea of how Apple notes works and to give you a better idea of how to take it a little bit
further if you're using it right now so if you're interested in till final you can find it linked
below it will help you find a productivity tool and it's our base for that so if you're interested
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thank you very much everyone and I'll see you all in a future video I'm sure cheerio [Music]
thank you