Apple Notes Is All You Need — Here’s Why

0:00 Apple Notes is fast, free, deeply integrated across Apple devices. And with Mac OS 26 bringing even more updates, it continues to get better. So, it's not just a decent option for note-taking. It might be the best note-taking app for most people. In this video, I am going to show you why. So, let's take a look. The first reason is that it's really fast to capture your note. And for me, that's just a top priority when it comes to having a note-taking app. I want to be able to capture that idea really quickly. So, no matter what device you're on, it's going to be really quick. Uh, for example, here on the Mac, I've got a shortcut set up on my desktop that just says create note. And when I click that, I get a new note with the date. And I've built the

0:46 shortcut that way. Well, you don't have to build a shortcut. You could just rightclick on the icon in your doc and click new note there. And there you go. Now, if you're using an iPhone or an iPad, you can swipe down with that control center, hold down your finger on the notes widget, and you'll see new note there. You can create a note very quickly that way. Specifically using the Apple Pencil. I've got the Apple Pencil Pro here. You can, and this works with even if you've got a, you know, third party stylus or whatever, you can swipe up from the bottom right corner and that's going to give you a quick note. but also you can double tap with your pencil on the screen and that's going to give you a note and you can start doing some handwriting there. Some handwriting

1:32 there really quickly. So that's super nice. I I love that. Um now finally, I think it's one of the best ways to capture your ideas quickly and that's using audio recordings and transcription. Uh so I'm just going to show this here on the Mac side of things, but you can do this on your phone or in your iPad. If you are in a lecture, a meeting or a conversation or something and maybe you just got some ideas you need to get out, uh you can basically have the note open in front of you and then right up here on the Mac, you would just click record audio. And so now, as soon as I hit the red button here, it's going to start recording, but not just recording the sound so that you can go back later and listen. It's going to create a transcription of that as it's doing right now. So, I'm going to hit pause and we'll see the transcription. And

2:20 there it is. and it said, "So, I'm going to hit Paul." Yeah, that's what you're going to get sometimes with transcription. Let's keep that one. Sorry, Paul, if you're watching. Um, and click done. Now, I've got that for a future note. I can rename it. I can put tags on it. Uh, you know, uh, we'll tag it with iPad or something. And, and now that note is there for me with the transcription and the text that I need. So, super fast way to create a new note. Number two is that Apple Notes has some simple organizational features that are really going to help you keep your notes organized. Now, there's the traditional kind of manual folders method where you can just create a folder and you can, you know, name it what you want and hit okay and you can just drag whatever you

3:05 want in there manually. Um, one of the and I've typically I've done that. I don't have a ton of organization in my Apple Notes, but um what I've been toying around with recently is these smart folders that are so powerful. Let's say we click on new folder here. And we just want uh something that is about YouTube. So, let's make it into a smart folder. And here we're going to tell it any note that's got a tag that is YouTube. I'll select YouTube there and hit okay. any note I've got that has the tag YouTube on it is going to show up right here in this smart folder. So you could do that with a specific icon or a tag or whatever you want. There's a number of

3:50 different ways you can create these smart folders. So that's a great way to stay organized. And of course everything syncs uh between your devices and and uh keeps you synced up with your phone, iPad, or whatever device you're using. The third reason Apple Notes is really a go-to note-taking app is the flexibility in how you format your notes. Um, you know, you've got your normal, let's go to a new note here. You've got your normal stuff like the titles, headings, bold, italics, and so on. But also, you've got tables and checklists. And and these are really simple, but can also be really useful for uh organizing information in a note. Uh, I really love the checklist for quick checklist. I don't do a ton of project management in Apple Notes, but for project planning or I'm just trying

4:37 to throw out basically a task list is where a lot of these projects begin. Think, wait, here are all the things I've got to do. I can just click make a checklist and start creating that list. And so those checklists are really great and and you can extend your use of those into actually to, you know, put your whole to-do system in Apple Notes if you wanted to. So whether you're creating outlines or anything, there's there's so many different ways to format your notes. Then of course there's handwriting. Now you're going to be able to use handwriting if you've got the Apple Pencil or a comparable stylus and a compatible iPad. Let's go to a new note here and we're going to do some handwriting. You've got options in terms of what the page background looks like. Um, you know, I use the grid quite a bit, but um, when putting this grid on

5:24 the page, you know, you tap here and say, "Okay, I want lines and grids. Give me the grid." It puts the grid in front of you. And then you can start doing your handwriting. And the point is, it keeps things aligned and nice and neat. But when you're done with that note, you can remove that grid and it makes it look like you created that aligned and really evenly without a grid. So, it looks really great. So, you can pull that grid away when you're done. Uh or just leave it there, whatever. But, um you've got options there for those page backgrounds. So, you've also got a lot of pen types. Um there's, as you can see here, you know, there's the fountain pen. I use the fountain pen quite a bit. I just like the look of it. But keep in mind as well though when you are using the handwriting um Apple Notes is going

6:11 to autorefine your handwriting. So it's going to make things look neater but also try to keep your style. Now is that perfect? The functionality I think is still developing and getting better and better over time. But I have really appreciated the way it cleans up my handwriting. So you'll see here if I write something, you'll see how it kind of cleans it up. Well, if you don't like what it did, you can actually hit the undo button and it won't get rid of what you wrote, but it will get rid of that that auto refinement it did. Uh, so you can always, you know, remove it if you didn't like how it cleaned things up. But I really like the way that looks. But also, when you're creating shapes, so let's say you're doing, you know, I'm not really good at doing shapes. Um, just can't seem to keep a circle look

6:57 like a, you know, perfect circle. You can do a circle with your pen and then just hold it at the end and it'll snap to that shape. Love that. So, that's going to help a lot. And finally, with your pen, you've got that math notes integration. Um, you know, this is iPad OS 18 and beyond. Uh, but it's going to autosolve and and show different steps in math problems. So, you know, if you're trying to add something, yeah, you know, you're doing the budget and, you know, you don't want to do the math in your head. And, uh, let's put this here. There we go. It's going to do that math for us there. And we hit solve. There it is. I love doing this with my budget. I've got a page recently. I just started doing this uh with when I do the budget. I just really enjoy writing the numbers out and

7:43 then letting the uh iPad solve it for me. The fifth reason Apple Notes is should be a go-to note-taking app for most people is the integration and interactivity. Now, uh there's a lot of note linking you can do. So, I've got a new note here, and I can just go in and create a link to another note. So, these things can be tied together, and that can be really good for research purposes when you're putting together some initial notes, maybe for a paper or something like that. Um, there's live text and smart data detection. Um, you can tap phone numbers, addresses, you know, links directly, and of course, it's going it's allow you to interact with that. Um, you might be able to just call somebody or add someone to contacts. That's really helpful. Number

8:29 six is the ability to import and export with attachments. You've got PDF support where you can view, annotate, write directly on files. We talked about that. But also scan documents in. So if I've got my note here, I can go up to the file menu and insert from iPhone or iPad. I use my iPad or iPhone all the time for scanning. I'll just click scan documents and it's going to scan that document for me. In Mac OS 26, you can import and export with markdown. If you know what that means, then you're excited about it. If you don't know what it means, then let's just move on. Number seven is the privacy security. Uh, you know, you can lock notes down with a password or touch ID or Face ID. Like if I'm in this

9:15 note here and I want this to be a locked note, I can go up to that menu and click lock note. And then that's going to give me the login password to punch in there to lock it. And I'll do so. And you know, if you got a shared computer, perhaps that might be something that you want to do with certain private notes. Uh, and you can do it really quickly, too. And finally, number eight, Apple Notes is free. It's already on your device. You don't have to sign up for a subscription. You don't have to think about the $49 or $99 a year or any of that stuff. You don't have to install it. It's all right there. And it syncs across all your Apple devices instantly with iCloud. So, Apple Notes has proved to me that simplicity doesn't have to mean limitation. Sure, there are some limitations with Apple Notes, but I don't think most people are going to bump into those situations. Uh, the

10:03 features that you've got with Apple Notes will probably meet most use cases from the very simple ones all the way to some more advanced situations. So, what about you? Are you using Apple Notes instead of a paid solution? Or do you run into limitations that prevent that? would love to hear from you in the comments on what you're doing. Uh, and would love to have you as a subscriber, but at the very least, click that like button. Always helps out. I also have a free newsletter if you go to jasonbarmer.com. I write about productivity, motivation, and general well-being. So, would love to have you as a subscriber there as well. So, thanks. We will see you on the next video. [Music]