I made a video last year where I provided an in-depth overview of the Notes app for Mac,
iPhone and iPad, and that video has been really well received.
If you're new to the Notes app, and you've not already watched that video,
I'd definitely recommend that you check it out, it covers everything from a beginner's perspective.
But Apple added some pretty significant new features in the latest Mac and iOS updates at
the end of last year. So rather than recreate last year's video, I figured I would make a video where
I share some tips with you about how to really get the most out of the Notes app. I'm going to focus
more this time around on the iPhone app, as the feedback I got in the last video was that this
is the one that most people are using, but I'll jump over to the iPad at times if it's relevant.
OK, let's get into it.
**Tip 1 - Use Folders**
This is the most basic tip that I always say to people when they're struggling with notes,
you need to get into the habit of organising your notes, and the app doesn't make it obvious right
away that this is how you should be using it, in my opinion. Imagine you're asked by a friend
to help them organise their front room, which is full of receipts and letters and other paperwork.
The first thing you would do is to try and sort everything into piles right?
It's no different with Notes, so if you're not already, you do need to get into the habit of
using folders. To do that, you've got this button at the bottom left of most parts of the app,
where you can create a new folder. You can also create folders within folders,
so you can do like I've done if you like, and have a top-level structure that's quite basic,
2nd Brain, Personal and Business, and then you can create more specific folders within each of those.
**Tip 2 - Use Hashtags**
This is the first new feature that Apple introduced with the latest update that I
want to talk about, adding hashtags to notes. Fundamentally, it's a way of further helping
you organise things, and this is something that you can use in tandem with folders if you like,
or you could theoretically use this without folders,
and it would definitely help you be a little more organised.
So all you do, is when creating a note, just head into that note and somewhere,
probably at the bottom, although it's up to you, add some hashtags. Now for a hashtag to work, it
has to be either a single word, or a combination of words with an underscore in place of the space,
putting spaces won't work. You can add as many as you like to the notes.
For this to work, you do have to type the hashtag, and then press the return button,
you'll know it's worked when the hashtag shows in yellow font like this.
But the magic of hashtags is in how you are now able to utilise them. On the main notes page,
you can see all of your hashtags down here at the bottom, and can simply tap on a hashtag to
see everything with that tag, immediately, even if it's spread out across a load of different places
in Notes. You can also search for hashtags up at the top, and you can do this either across
the entirety of Notes, or you can do this within specific folders, so you can see how you can use
these to be super organised. For example, let's say you're storing copies of contracts in here,
but you've got contracts related to your house, some related to your work, maybe some
related to personal finance. Just ensure that you always tag a contact with the contract hashtag,
and you'll be able to locate them much more easily, no matter where in the Notes app you are.
**Tip 3 - Hashtags become Smart Folders**
A continuation of using hashtags is to turn them into Smart Folders, and this is really clever. So,
here's an example, we've recently moved to Kent, and I've got a folder in my phone where I store
notes with anything related to the county that I might want to reference later on,
for exploring. Now what I can do, is I can go into my Kent folder,
and I can tap the ellipsis menu up here, and I can choose Convert to Smart Folder.
You see we get this warning appear, telling us what's going to happen. All notes in the
folder will automatically have the hashtag Kent attached to them, and this can't be undone.
Now, where Smart Folders become really useful is after you've created them. Because now,
whenever I create a note, if I add the hashtag Kent in the note, that note will automatically
get added to this folder, so I don't have to organise it away, I just write it out as usual,
and the phone will automatically handle the organisation of it for me. Useful right?
There is another way to create Smart Folders, you can create them from scratch yourself.
If I go to the main screen of Notes, and then press the New Folder button
down here at the bottom left, you can see that I've got the option to create a new Smart Folder.
I can name it, and then I can choose tags from the ones I've already got, or I can create new ones.
You can also create Smart Folders where a number of tags must be present, so maybe you create one
called Personal Receipts, but for that one you add a rule that the note has to have hashtag personal
finance, and hashtag receipts, and then only notes that have both of those would show in that folder.
It's an extremely powerful tool for those of us who like to be better organised with notes,
and whilst it does take a bit of muscle memory, getting used to always adding in
tags when you create notes, it's well worth getting into the habit of using.
**Tip 4 - Lock your notes**
A great tip for anyone storing notes where you'd like to have a little bit of extra security and
privacy, is to get into the habit of locking your notes. Now you can only do this for notes,
which is kind of a shame, it would be nice to see this functionality expanded to folders also,
but this is still pretty useful. So within any note, tap the ellipsis button to get into that
menu, and choose Lock. Once you do that, your note is locked, and you'll need to unlock it
before you can make any changes to it, view the contents of it, or even see a preview of it.
To unlock a note, you can set a password, or you can tie it in with the biometrics of your device,
like TouchID or FaceID. And it does of course include the contents of the note,
so a cool tip is that if you've got any, erm, risqué pictures you'd prefer to keep under wraps,
you could create a note with them, lock the note, and then delete the photos from your library.
**Tip 5 - Use Gallery view for visual notes**
A bit of a followup tip from the previous one is to use Gallery view
rather than list, when you're working with more visual notes. Now obviously,
if you're mainly storing text notes with no images, this might not be much use to you,
but if you're in a situation where you're always storing lots of notes with pictures,
documents or drawings, then getting into the habit of using Gallery mode can be really helpful.
To activate it, head into a folder, access the ellipsis menu, and then choose View as
Gallery. To illustrate it, I've got this folder with notes containing screenshots
and information about shows that I want to watch, and whilst the list is useful,
it's even more useful to have this showing in Gallery view, as you can see.
**Tip 6 - Share notes for collaboration**
Notes are a great way of storing and working on ideas,
which obviously opens up an opportunity to store and work on ideas with other people.
Maybe you're planning a family trip away, and you want everyone to be able to share
thoughts on where to go for dinner while you're away. Or maybe you're planning a major life move,
like a new house or a wedding, and you and your partner want to be able to share information
and ideas in a single, convenient place. Sharing notes helps you to do just that.
To share a note, head into the Note, choose the ellipsis menu, and choose Share Note.
You can choose your sharing options, so whether you want that person to be able to make changes
or just view the note, and whether they should be able to add additional people to the note or not.
Then, with that done, share the note using any form of communication you like.
You can even do this with a folder, and the share will apply to all of the notes,
or even sub folders, within that folder. Just follow the exact same process from the folder,
and choose Share Folder.
**Tip 7 - Send a copy of a note**
But, what if you want to share the contents of a note with someone,
but you don't want that person to have to have an Apple account,
and you don't need them to be able to collaborate. Maybe you're sharing some research with someone,
and you literally just want to send over the information you've got an a specific subject.
To do this, just choose Send a Copy from the ellipsis menu. It works much the same as sharing,
in that you can send the contents via text message, WhatsApp, email and most other
communication methods, but you will literally be sending a copy of the contents of the note,
rather than a link to allow that person to access and collaborate.
**Tip 8 - Scan documents with your phone**
You can add photos to your notes, it's very easy to do,
and you can either take a photo at the time, or you can add one
in from your camera roll. But, you can also scan a document using your phone.
To do this, within a note, press the Camera button, and then choose Scan a Document. Lay
the document down on a flat surface, I find that if you put it on a really contrasting background
like a dark table or a carpeted floor, that usually works best, and then just hold your phone
until the document is showing within the preview. The app will automatically take a scan of the
document, which you can then edit. For example, a photo, you might want to keep in colour, but
a letter or a receipt, you might want to have in black and white, it makes it much easier to read.
You can rotate the image, change the boundaries of the crop, add more pages, all really useful stuff.
Once that's done, the scan will be showing in the note, but even better,
you can usually search within the scanned document, especially if it's made up of mainly
computer text, or easy to read handwriting. It's surprisingly powerful and effective,
and a good way of keeping track of some of your paper documents, in our digital world.
**Tip 9 - Creating Notes from other apps**
Throughout most of these tips, I've been showing you how to create a note,
and then add stuff to it. But you can also create a note from other apps, which is extremely useful.
So for example, if I'm on this website, and I want to turn this into a note,
I can just choose the Share icon, and choose Notes. I can add this to an existing note,
or choose a new note. I can add some text, and some hashtags if I want to, and then save.
Same for Maps. This place in London looks great, so I can go to Share,
and then follow the same steps.
On Twitter, it's the Share button here, then 'Share via', then the same steps. Easy.
**Tip 10 - iPad tip - Quick Notes**
Everything that we've looked at also works on iPad, and I didn't really think it was
worth creating a whole new video just for the iPad. But one feature that the iPad gets that
you don't really get on iPhone or Mac, is Quick Notes. Let's say I'm on this website,
and I want to save it. Rather than sharing, if I just swipe up from the bottom right corner,
I get this quick note window. The link is already included in the note, I just have to
tap add link to add it in fully, and with the Apple Pencil, I can handwrite some thoughts.
These then exist in their own folder within Notes, called Quick Notes. The idea behind this is,
if I'm busy, but I want to quickly remind myself of something, I can do that using this function.
Then later on, when I'm ready, I can come back to my Quick Notes folder, and everything is there,
ready for me to expand on the note, and pick up where this one left off.
It's really good, and works great with the iPad and pencil, meaning I can do research without
having to constantly jump into landscape mode to access the keyboard or anything like that.
So there you go, 10 tips to help you get more out of Notes. Apple have added some really helpful
features recently, and hopefully there's more to come in this year's OS updates. What about
you? What features would you like to see next? 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.