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0:00 Here is an awesome trick that's going to save you lots of time because it's going to organize your notes for you. So, this is a trick in the notes app for your iPhone, your iPad, or your Mac. Apple doesn't really advertise the amazing things that its notes app can do very well, but it's actually quite powerful and not too complicated, unlike some other notes apps. Here in the main notes screen on my iPhone, I can tap folders at the top left and it takes me to this folder screen over here. You might see a bunch of things going on here, but by default, when you create a new note, it will get added to this notes folder right here. However, we can create our own folders as well. Now, we can create regular folders in the same way that you
0:45 might do in Finder or in Google Drive, but that's a bit of a manual process. So, let's automate that. I'm going to tap the button at the bottom left over here to create a new folder. We'll give it a name in a minute, but let's first tap make into smart folder. Now, what I can do is create a folder that's going to show me all the notes that match certain filters or certain criteria, if you will. For example, let's see where it says attachments, and just tap to the right of that. And you'll get a list of possible types of attachments you can have in a note. And let's tap scans over here. Now you'll see that under enabled filters it says attachments scans. I'm going to tap done and I'm going to rename this folder or give it a name and call it scanned documents. And what that's going to do is it's going to create this smart folder which is
1:31 denoted by this gear icon on the left over here. And if I tap on that, it's going to take me into this folder and it's going to show me all of my notes that have scans attached. So for example, the other day I had dinner and I got a receipt over here. And let's say this is something that I had to expense for work. And hey, it's in euros over here. I'm wondering what is this in dollars. Let me just show you as a quick tip. I can just type in the note and it was 59.66. So I can type that like this and then I can just type the equal sign and notes will convert that to dollars for me. So I think that is really neat and maybe you didn't know about that yet. Let's do another example of a smart folder. I'm here in the main folder screen again and I'm going to create a new folder and tap make it into a smart folder and actually I'm going to go back to attachments and I'm going to tap
2:18 audio. So, it's going to show me notes with audio attachments. So, you might not know this yet, but the notes app actually lets you record voice memos inside notes now that then will get transcribed and everything, which is incredibly helpful. I recently did a video demonstrating how to do this. So, go watch that if you haven't already cuz it's a total game changer for using notes. Let me just tap done. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to call this folder audio notes. I'll tap done. I can go in there and boom, it shows me all of my notes with audio attachments. Like this one right here. And you'll see that this card at the top is the audio attachment. One other example. I'm going to go back to this folder screen, create a new folder, make it into a smart folder. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to choose the checklists option right here. I'm just going to tap next
3:04 to it. And then I'm going to say unchecked. I'll tap done. And I'm going to call this folder notes with incomplete to-dos. And then I'll tap done. And this is really helpful if you ever use checklists to write down things you need to do inside the notes app. Let me show you what that might look like. I'll go into the smart folder. And one note that you'll see that pops up over here is this one called Southwest USA road trip. So, if I just tap into that, what you can see is that actually I've got a checklist right here under the heading arrangements. For example, to book some campgrounds and plan to attend some night sky events. Those sound pretty cool. Quite excited to go to those because these check marks are unchecked, this note is going to show up in this folder. So, actually once I complete these tasks and I check them off, right, I can go out of this note and you'll see that it actually
3:49 disappears from this smart folder. So, that's the cool thing about smart folders is they will automatically update and show or not show notes based on the criteria that you've set. And these smart folders will also automatically sync to your other devices, by the way, assuming that you're logged into the same Apple account. So, at this point, we've already got some good organization going on. But if we have a little bit more time, we can do more and we can create some old-fashioned folders and then later on even combine those with smart folders. Let me show you. So, one thing you might like to do is to split your personal and your work notes. So, let's create a new folder. And this time, don't turn it into a smart folder, but just call it work and tap done. Now, you can keep your personal notes in the notes folder and your work notes in the work folder. This is a note about work.
4:37 I'm just going to long press it and then I'm going to tap move and I'm going to move that into work. Okay. And now I can go into the work folder. And you'll see that it's sitting right there. Here's a quick little tip, by the way. If you tap the ellipses at the top right, you can then tap view as gallery. And then your notes are going to display like this. Let me show you what that looks like in a folder where there's more going on, like in the main notes folder. Tada. It's pretty cool. Let's move another note into this folder for something else that I want to show you. Now, I'm going to start searching. But a good thing to know is that whenever you're searching in Apple Notes, it's searching across all of your folders. So even though the search bar appears in the work folder here, it's going to show any notes matching the search criteria. So, I'm going to type spirit and find that note right here. I'm going to long press it. And again, I'm going to move it. I'm going to put it in the work folder. And
5:23 now, if I'm looking at the work folder, you'll see it's sitting in there. But now, the cool thing we can do is we can combine smart folders and regular folders. So, let's go over here and create a new smart folder. So, we're going to create a new folder. Tap make into smart folder. And first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go to attachments and again filter on scans. But I'm also going to filter on folders and say include selected. So you'll see this panel pop up right here and it's going to ask me to select some folders to match the criteria. So I'm going to tap work near the top. And now I have two criteria. This smart folder is going to show notes that have scans attached and that live inside the work normal folder. Tap done. And let's say that for work I only ever scan something for my expenses. Then I can call this expense
6:11 receipts. That can be the name of my smart folder. Tap done and I can go in here and I'll see my note with an expense receipt. So, this can be super helpful if you need to periodically file your expenses and just quickly look at those scans to upload them into whatever system they use for that at your job. Now, when might you want to use regular folders? Here's another example. Let's say you are a builder and you're often working in home construction or renovation. Let's create a folder and we're going to call it jobs. And what we can do is we can actually go into that folder and create another folder inside it using this add folder option right here. And we're going to call it 45 Walnut Street. So we can give this folder the name that is the street address that we're working on. Okay. Go ahead and do another one. Actually,
6:56 we'll do add folder. And let's say we've also got 87 Chestnut Street. This way I can have this jobs folder that has a subfolder for each job that me I as the builder am working on. And here I can put quotes that I'm sending invoices, right? I can scan documents like a floor plan that I might need to refer back to later and really neatly keep things organized. So folders and subfolders are helpful, especially in this case when you've just got a list that keeps expanding, you know, new jobs, and you just want to group things related to this job together. This can also be for classes you're taking in school. It can also be, let's say you're a lawyer, different cases that you're working on, you name it. Now, in this folder screen, by the way, we can drag some things around to make it more aesthetically
7:43 pleasing. So what I can do is I can actually take this work folder and just kind of start dragging it and just drag it right underneath work. Maybe put the jobs folder right there. Now all of my smart folders are all sitting together, which I really like. And you'll see that private folder at the bottom, by the way. That's where I keep some of my private stuff that I don't want you guys to see. But that could be a handy tip for you as well. If you're sometimes showing your phone to someone else, just keep some of your notes private. You can also lock notes, but you might want to watch one of my other Apple Notes tips videos um to learn how to do that. So, if you're particularly eagle-eyed, you might have seen that we don't just have folders and smart folders, but we also have tags. I'm just going to expand that by tapping the arrow to the right of tags, and it's going to show you that I already have some tags, but let me show you how you create that. Back in my notes folder, I have this note right
8:29 here. Uh, let's say I took some notes on a neighborhood meeting. Okay, what I can do is I can just give every note that has meeting notes the hashtag. So, just start typing hashtag and then type meeting. And now what you'll want to do is just hit the space bar and then it turns from gray into yellow. And that means it's now recognized as a tag. And so I'll go back to another note. Here is a note that I might have taken in my local Toastmasters club that I've been a member of for a long time. It's a public speaking and leadership organization. And again, I'm going to apply the hashtag meeting, but I'm also going to apply the hashtag toastmasters. So you can apply more than one tag at a time. And now I'll tap done. What I can do then is go to this main screen over here and scroll down. And I can tap the meeting hashtag and it's going to show
9:16 me all of my notes that have that meeting tag. Or at this top you'll see a list of tags. And I can actually scroll that. You see that meeting is tapped right now. And I can also tap on Toast Masters. And now I'm showing all notes that have both the meeting and Toastmasters tags assigned. So I can really easily organize my notes this way as well and find notes that I'm looking for. tags combine really nicely with smart folders as well. So, let me show you how to do that. I'm going to create a new smart folder as we've done a few times and I'm going to say it must be tagged with any selected tag and I can say well it has to be the meeting tag. Okay, so I want to see notes that have the meeting tag and I also want created
10:01 here to be in the last seven days. Then I can tap done. And what I can do is I can call this this week's meetings. And now I have a smart folder. And let me just drag it so that this is alphabetical cuz I like that. And I have a smart folder that's showing all of my notes that I took for this week's meetings, provided that I do put that hashtag meeting on every single meeting note. But that's pretty easy to do. So, with some folders, smart folders, and tags set up, it can be much easier to find the note that you're looking for. But, of course, as I showed you before, you can always search for a note as well. Now, unfortunately, the search feature in Apple Notes is not the most intuitive to use. But if you download my free Apple Notes cheat sheet linked in
10:47 the video description, I'll show you how to use the search feature properly. So, go ahead and grab that and then I'll see you in the next video. Ciao.
