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0:00 Everyone knows that Apple Notes is a powerful and versatile tool. But the seven secrets I'm about to reveal will blow your mind. I'm Dylan Stewart, The MacWhisperer, and in today's lesson, I'm going to teach you seven tools that will unlock Apple Notes true capabilities, but don't leave before you hear my MacWhisperer power tip, which will transform how you use notes forever. Our first secret is pinning notes. Let's jump right into our notes app right here and get started. If you're anything like me, you use notes
0:46 extensively, which means that you may have tons and tons and tons of notes. And when you need to find a specific note, one that's really important, you might find yourself scrolling forever, or coming up to the top and searching for it, which is fine, but if you're doing that all the time, that's exhausting. There's a better way called pinning notes. Here's how it works. We're going to start off by jumping into one of my notes folders here. Now in this folder, I've got a ton of notes that I need regularly, but there's a couple of them that I need every day. So rather than hunting around for them or jumping into this folder to find them, I'm going to scroll down and I'm going to pin them. The two notes I'm talking about are my YouTube ideas and my Zoom links note.
1:31 To pin a note, there's two very simple ways to do it. You can press and hold on a note like this. And then select Pin Note from the submenu. Or, even easier, you can swipe on the note from the left side to the right like this. Either way you do it, what happens when you pin a note is it automatically comes up to the top of that folder under a section called Pinned, making it easy for you to get to it. But that's not the real power of pinning a note. The real power comes in when you go into your all notes folder here where all of your notes are located. And those pinned notes are right at the top, meaning that you don't have to go into folders or dig around or search or hunt for the notes that you use the most.
2:17 I recommend only pinning about 10 notes, because as you pin more and more notes, it becomes harder to find the important ones. You can easily unpin a note by swiping from the left to right in the exact same way, and that note just drops back into its list outside of the pinned section. This makes it super easy to find the important ones. Those important links without ever having to hunt for them. Secret number two is about how to sort and view your folders efficiently. The default view for Apple Notes is just a list like this. In fact, it's a list that's broken down in chunks by when you sent it. But it doesn't have to be that way. You may have a folder full of notes that you'd like
3:02 to organize differently. like by title. It's easy to do by clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner here and coming down to where it says sort by. You'll notice the default is date edited, but if I click that I can change it to title and immediately all of my notes are sorted alphabetically now, making it easier to find a specific note just by looking in the alphabet for the title of it. But there's another way that you can do things too. I'm going to go ahead and click the three dots again and And I'm going to change it from sort by title back to date edited, which is really the way I like it most. One of the interesting things about date edited is that it puts things in these little clumps. Like here's my today clump, and my previous 30 days clump, and my April or January clump.
3:50 So it's very, very easy to see things in these chunks. But sometimes that gets distracted because I don't really know when I created it. I just need to track it a little bit easier. that clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner here will allow you to turn group by date off. What that means is everything will just be in a chronological list without any separation, which in a lot of cases makes it easy to find what you're looking for and allows you to keep more notes on a page because it doesn't separate them by those chunks. But there's another way that we can view our notes that is super powerful. For this, I'm going to step out of this folder and I'm going to go into a folder of my writing that I have right here. In this folder are all the poems I created for my wife for our last anniversary.
4:36 As you can see on the right, each of these poems has a beautiful picture that helps identify it and makes it easy to find the one I'm looking for. If I click on the three dots in the upper right corner here, I can view this entire folder as a gallery, which is perfect when you've got attachments or images on notes. Let's see how it looks. Right from here, it's so much easier to know which poem I want to go into, and it's got the titles right there. I named each of the titles by the specific day of the month. All I have to do is click on any one of these images, and there the poem is with its picture ready for me to read it. or share it or print it or whatever I want to do. And because of that gallery view it's so easy to see and I'm not distracted by all of the other clutter.
5:22 It's easy to turn it on and off by clicking the three dots in the upper right corner and selecting either view as list to turn it off, like that, or view as gallery to turn it on. It's a powerful secret that can make it easier for you to visually find your notes. And it also looks great in my recipes folder. Let's go ahead and hop into one of my recipes here, and let's turn that on by gallery as well. Right here now I can see the recipes easily and clearly so I know which recipe to click on to make my next gourmet meal. Secret number three is password protecting your notes. Apple's extremely security conscious and our phones have pin codes and face ID or fingerprint sensors
6:07 and our computers have passwords so it's pretty safe to use notes anyways. But sometimes you've got a note that's just a little more sensitive than the other ones. Maybe it's got a bunch of financial information or passwords in it, or maybe, like in my case, it's a list of the gifts for my wife's upcoming birthday. But the problem is, my wife has access to my iPad, which we keep in the kitchen, and my computer, which is in my office, and she knows the PIN code to my phone, so it's very easy for her to log in and, oops! stumble across the surprise of what I'm getting her for her birthday. It's easy to change that by clicking the three dots in the upper right hand corner here and choosing lock. When you do that it will scan your face and
6:54 immediately lock the note. You'll notice the note is still visible but we can see the padlock open on the top header bar. If I click that padlock, it's immediately going to close it and there's no way she can get into it without my face. The first time you set up a password for a note, it's going to ask you whether you want to use the device password, which is the pin code you use to unlock your phone, or a custom password to lock this note. Remember, if someone has your pin code, they can get into this note, so it kind of defeats the purpose. I'm going to create a custom password for it right here. And just like that, you can't get into this note without that custom password, meaning that my secret is safe. Secret number four is linking a note
7:43 to other notes. And this one is a super powerful tool that's new in iOS 17. Here's where it's useful. Let's say that we're having a dinner party. And in the note that I'm using to create this dinner party, I've got the separate things I want to cook. The appetizer, the main dish, and the dessert. Even the drink I want to serve. But each of these pieces has a note with that recipe in it. I don't want to have to leave this note, find the recipe, copy it, paste it, bring it back in here. It's going to make things complicated and crazy. So instead, what you can easily do is is link one note inside of another one. What I've done here is just by clicking on the guacamole note or the beet pesto note or the
8:30 key lime pie or the ginger beer note, it will jump me right to that note with the recipe just like this. And all of a sudden I've got access to the entire recipe without having to jumble up this note and jump back and forth. It's really simple to do. Let me show you how. In the case of this note, I also want to link to the entire guest list of who we want to invite to this party. So the first thing I'm going to do is type in the title of what I'm linking it to so I don't get confused. And then you come into your keyboard and you go to the greater sign right here and you click it twice. That immediately links you into your entire notes library, allowing you to search for anything you're looking for. Simply continue typing, and it will search for
9:17 that specific note. There it is, Dinner Guests. Now that's right there. and whenever I want to see who's on that list or call them, all I have to do is tap on the note and it jumps me right to that separate page with all of their information right there. It's a great tip and I found it extremely valuable in a number of situations. Secret number five is smart searching. If you've got a ton of notes like I do, sometimes you're going to have to search and it can be complicated and annoying, especially if you don't remember the title. But Apple's built in what's called Smart Searching directly into the Notes app. All you have to do is come up to the search bar right here, and you'll notice a bunch of suggestions that will categorize notes in an easy way.
10:04 For example, I can find all of my shared notes, all of my locked notes, all of the notes with checklists or tags or drawings, or scanned documents or attachments, which can be very helpful in situations where I don't remember the title of the note. Bye! For example, coming in here and clicking lock notes immediately shows me my credit card note that has all of my credit card information right there. So I don't have to remember the name of it. All I need to do is come directly into SmartSearch and pick any one of these selections to find all of the notes that fit that criteria without having to hunt around. Way simple. Secret number six is called Quick Notes. And Quick Notes is an easy way to take a note on something when you're not even in the Notes app.
10:51 But before we get started, you need to make sure you have Quick Notes turned on properly. The way to do that is to come into your Settings section here and come down to the Control Center here. In this section, scroll down until you find Quick Note. If it's got a plus button next to it, go ahead and click that. That will put it up in your Control Center. Once it's there, you can use the three bars on the right, by pressing and holding them, to organize it so you can find it easily in your control center. I'm going to put it right there. Now, if I'm in an app like Safari, and I see something that I want to take note of, I want to remember a little bit about it, maybe I'm not ready to buy it and I don't want to toss it into my reminders list, I just want to, you know, Get a little information about it. All I have to do is pull down from the upper right
11:37 hand corner here and click right on the quick note icon that we see here. That immediately brings up a brand new note and right up at the top it has this add link function which means all I have to do is click that and it adds the link of the website that I was on so that I can then add any other information I might need when I look this up later. This looks like a fun shirt, but I don't know how well it's going to fit or whether it's the right price. Period. Let's make sure and check that out. Exclamation point. And then I can click save in the upper right hand corner here. QuickNotes works all over the phone. So if I happen to be in a specific calendar appointment and I think to myself, Oh, I better
12:23 remember to bring the right equipment and take a couple of notes on what I want to do at that appointment. I can pull down from the upper right hand corner, click my quick note icon here, and then click add link, which will link to that calendar event. Meaning when I go back to the note later, if I click on it, it jumps me right there. Pamela wanted to talk about a new iPhone and Dennis wanted to talk about a new iPad, period. Click save. And that QuickNote is ready for you to find easily. QuickNotes are located inside the Notes app up at the very top in their own section. Coming into here, I can easily check out the note I created about the shirt on Safari and click this link to jump right to that webpage.
13:09 Or, I can click on this note to jump right to the calendar appointment for Pamela and Dennis. It's an easy way to add information directly into your notes QuickNotes without even leaving the app that you're in. Super, super helpful. Our seventh tip is called scanning. That's right, you can scan a document using the Notes app right from your iPhone camera and it's super easy, super simple, and amazingly helpful. Here's how it works. First thing we're going to do is we're going to open up the Notes app on the phone here and from here I'm going to create a new note by clicking the new icon in the bottom right corner. And from here, I'm going to click the camera icon on the formatting bar. Under that camera icon are all sorts of tools
13:55 like scanning text, taking photos or videos, or choosing a photo or video. But there's also scanning documents. When you click the Scan Documents button, you want to hold the camera as flat as possible over the image that you want to scan. It will attempt to find the edges and automatically scan it for you. There's a couple of settings that you can change in order to make it black and white, or color, or to turn off the auto edge detection. But if you just use it in its default state, it works like this. Let's go ahead and click Scan Documents. Let it find the document. And And just like that, it scans it. When you're done, you can click the save button in the lower right hand corner here, and that scan will go directly into this note.
14:42 You can then come in and add additional scans as you want. Simply by doing the same thing, clicking on the camera, going to scan documents, and holding it directly over. Now this time, up at the top, I've turned off the automatic, which means that as I hold it, it's not going to automatically try and scan it, which can be helpful if you're having a little bit of trouble with the color or the edges. Then, in the middle where you see those circles, if you click that, you can change it to grayscale, or black and white, or photo, or color. Over to the left of that you can add a flash if you want to. Then when you're ready, position it over the image, tap the camera icon,
15:29 click keep scan, and it will add it right into that same note next to the other scan, making it super easy for you to keep receipts, or recipes that you find, or cool quotes that you come across. Now in just a moment, I'm going to reveal my MacWhisperer power tip. But before I do, did you already learn something new? If so, give this video a thumbs up to make it easier for other people to find it. And if you've got a comment or a suggestion or a question, drop it in the comments section down below. And if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet, why not? Go take care of that. I'll wait.. Hit that subscription button and that notify bell so you're always alerted whenever I drop new content.
16:14 And with that being said, let's get into that power tip. One of the questions I get most often is when should I use notes and when should I use reminders? These two apps are so powerful, but they have a decent amount of overlap between them, meaning that maybe I should use this, and maybe I should use that. The way I teach my clients is, if it's something you want to refer back to, maybe it's a recipe, or a poem that you wrote, or notes you took on a cool YouTube video, then it belongs in notes. Reminders are for things you're going to cross off, like a to do list, or a grocery list, or a packing list. But what about when you've got something
17:00 you want to keep track of that you also need to be reminded about? You see, the problem with notes is if you don't go to the note, it's never going to come to you and say, Hey Dylan, remember me? You wanted to show Julie that poem. You wanted to cook that dinner. Or maybe you need to be reminded to buy that birthday gift for Julie so it can arrive in time. Or maybe I need to be reminded to call all the people for our dinner party. It's easy to do. Come into the note that you want to be reminded about. In this case, it's the dinner gifts list. And click the share button in the top right corner like this. Now make sure you don't have collaborate turned on. You want to change that to send a copy. And then, right below that, you can click
17:45 the Reminders button, which will add it to a reminder and allow you to put any information you need, like when you want to be reminded. In this case, our dinner party's on the 15th, so I better start making calls by the 10th. And I can even set a time for it, so I don't forget to do it. And then, simply click Add, And on that day and time, this note will pop up on all my devices and remind me to start making those phone calls. But there's even a simpler way to send a note to Reminders. And for that, we're going to use Siri. Let's hop into Julie's gift list here, because I would hate to forget to buy those gifts before her birthday. And now you summon Siri, either by using the side button on the right or your magic words. I'm going to use the button.
18:31 Remind me about this tomorrow. And just like that, Siri dumps it directly into the reminders list so that tomorrow I'll get a nice reminder and I'll be able to buy those perfect gifts. That's the way we like to do things here at The MacWhisperer. Keep it simple. That's what I've got for our lesson today, The 7 Secrets of Apple Notes. My name's Dylan Stewart. They call me The MacWhisperer and it's my passion and profession to help you get more done with your Apple products than you ever thought possible. And I'll see you next time.
