🧹 Clean Up Your Apple Notes: The Ultimate Organization Guide! 💡

0:00 Are your notes a completely disorganized, cluttered mess? It's all right. I've been there. Are you ready to do something about it? Then stay tuned. I'm Dylan Stewart, The MacWhisperer. And in this lesson, I'm going to drop my best pro tips on how to keep your notes program clean, clutter free and organized so that you can always find what you're looking for quickly and easily. Make sure to stick around until the end for my MacWhisperer power tip, Trust me, your Mac will thank you for it. Our first tip is pinning notes. Pinning notes is an easy and simple way to make sure the note you're looking for stays up at the top instead of getting buried down with all of the other notes.

0:45 All you have to do to pin it is come down to that note and right click on it and choose Pin Note. That'll send it up to the top. But you can also pin a note by swiping from the left side to the right side, just like this. And as you do that, it will also pop up to the top. Let's head up to the top of this folder. Right there, in the pinned section, we're going to see the two notes that we pinned there. But that's not the best part about pinning notes. As we go deeper into this lesson, we're going to create all sorts of folders. And as you end up with more and more and more folders, pinning notes becomes really important because in our all folder, all of the pinned notes end up right at the top here. So you don't have to open different folders to find that important note.

1:32 All you have to do is come into the folder where it exists, pin it. and then it will always be right up at the top for you to easily access. It's easy to unpin by simply right clicking it and choosing Unpin Note. Try to keep it to about 10 to 15 just for simplicity. Our second tip is Folders and Subfolders. Before we start creating folders and subfolders, let's talk about what happens the first time you create a folder. For a lot of people, they've got their notes set up like this where you don't even see the folders at all. You just see the existing notes on this left sidebar. What you want to do first is come over here to the sidebar button and enable it. Now you'll see the folders on the left side.

2:18 What you'll notice here is we have one folder called Notes. But when we create our first new folder by clicking the New Folder button at the bottom left like this, we'll give it a name. And I want you to notice when we create that one folder, we end up with three. From this point on, you're going to see both of these folders all the time. The All folder, which may say All iCloud or All. Mac or All something else, depending on how you've set up your iCloud. That folder is all of the notes you've got in your iCloud account. All of them, no matter what folder they're in. The Notes folder is any notes that have not been sorted or filed yet. It's sort of the unsorted section. When you create a new note, it automatically goes into Notes.

3:04 And down here we've now got our new Faves folder. So as I drag things from Notes into Faves, you'll notice they disappear from Notes, dropping the number by one. or two, but the all iCloud still has everything. This is your library of all of your notes in one place. This is your unsorted notes. And this down here is your new folder. So now that we know what happens the first time we create a folder and we know that we have to keep our sidebar organized, let's dive into my notes app with all of its clutter and let's figure out how to clean it up. The first thing to talk about with notes is something I call the five folder fix. As you can see on my left sidebar, I've got a ton of folders here. Now, this is a great way to organize things, except

3:52 when you have too many folders, you find yourself scrolling all the time to find the right one. Most people create too many of them on the front line. Then instead of having five or ten places to look, they've got 30 different folders to look for. And when that happens, most people will just defer to searching all the time, but that's not the most effective way to do things. Searching is great, but knowing where something is is better. So as you can see here, I've just got a ton of these folders. The first thing we want to do before we even create additional folders is to consolidate the folders you've got into basic categories. There's a lot of great categories like work or personal, family or home, finances or legal

4:37 or medical, whatever notes you're taking, ask yourself, if you only had five folders, what would they be? For me, I'm going to start with my work folder here and I'm going to start adding the things that should be there. YouTube is part of my work. So is the MacWhisperer here, which actually should also have that folder in it. I'm just going to do some real quick sorting for you. As you create subfolders within your main folders, make sure to close the arrow on the left so you can get a good idea of how many folders you have left to organize. Before you know it, you'll have a nice, clean, organized sidebar with somewhere between 5 and 10 folders.

5:23 It's easy to move something from one folder to another simply by dragging it over. While you're looking in the all folder beneath each note you can see what subfolder they're in. Here we see this one is just in notes and this one is in YT and this one down here is in CPRs and planning. So each of these notes is already in a folder. Before we go crazy trying to put everything into other folders, let's start with the notes that haven't been put away yet. And this is where the notes folder itself comes into play because these are all unsorted. They're notes that I created but didn't put away. I can start taking these and dropping them where they need to go. So this might go into work, and this might

6:10 go into personal, and this might go into work over here. You can also put things directly into the subfolders. Here, you can see that I've got this course filming that can go into my iPhone course and I can start to put things away. What you want to do is get to a point where your notes folder is empty and you're regularly organizing it as you add new ones in so that you don't get lost about it. It's important to create folders and it's very very easy to do by clicking the plus button in the lower left hand corner here where it says new folder. Then take any notes from within other folders and move them over there so they're easy for you to find when you're looking for them. If that folder that you've created belongs within something else, feel free to just drop

6:56 it into that other file so subfolder and keep things clean and simple. Tip number three is hashtags. A lot of people don't understand hashtags and they tend to create tons and tons and tons of them. So when Apple introduced this to notes, I watched people overcomplicate things. They would come into a specific note, and they would come in and they would go, this is a restaurant. And then they would say, this is in Los Angeles. And then they would say, this is Middle Eastern food. But the problem with that is, as you create these separate hashtags, they show up on this left sidebar over here. So if you create too many of them, just like any other organizational tool, it becomes useless because I've got 5, 000 things to search for.

7:42 You want to be really intentional and specific about the tags that you create. What are tags and why are they important? Well, tags are a very easy way for you to create a specific search, for you to fine tune what you're looking for easily. The problem is, as you create more and more folders Some topics may end up in multiple folders, making it hard for you to track them down. Let's look at my recipes folder as an example of this. My wife went and took all of our recipes and broke them down into every different kind of meal. Here are the burgers recipes, here are the scallops recipes, here are the steak recipes. All of these are great, except when I want to figure out what to eat, because I don't always know what I want as my main ingredient.

8:29 So by creating a hashtag called recipes, All of my recipes can be shown in one place regardless of the fact that they're actually sorted into different folders. This makes it easy for me to see everything all at once. It's easy to create a hashtag. Come to the bottom of the note, and press the pound sign, it will bring up a list of all of your existing hashtags and you can either use your mouse or continue to type. to pick the exact one you want. If you haven't created the hashtag you want yet, just type it up here and create a brand new hashtag like that. When you press the return button, you'll notice that hashtag turns yellow and it gets added over to the left side here into my hashtags list.

9:14 That's how easy it is to add them. But you can also add them in bulk by selecting multiple ones. and right clicking and under the tag section here you can select any specific one. But again, I urge you do not go tag crazy. Be intentional with your tags and create specific tags for notes that might be in different folders or notes that combine different topics. For example, I've got a ton of writing in this folder and some of these writings were specifically for my wife. If I click down here where it says hashtag Julie, I'm going to see everything that has to do with my wife. But if I click on hashtag Julie and add writing, I only see the posts that I made specifically for her. Our next tip is Smart Folders, and Smart Folders

10:02 are an easy way to create an automatic rule that files your notes for you. Here's how it works. In the former section, we were talking about hashtags, and we talked about the Julie hashtag and the writing hashtag, which resulted in all of the writings that I've done specifically for Julie. Now, I intend to do additional writings for Julie. Rather than having to constantly file them and put them away, what I can easily do is create a Smart Folder, because I've already selected these hashtags, I'm going to right click on one of them, and you'll notice right there it says, Create Smart Folder. Boom! It called it, Julie in Writing, but I can rename that, like that. Now, you'll notice that unlike the little folder icon, this has a little gear shift icon.

10:49 That means that it's a smart folder. I'm going to move it to the bottom down here. But I can even customize it further by right clicking on it. I can edit the Smart Folder, and when you edit the Smart Folder, you can either add additional tags or additional rules. Let's click the plus button here and see what we've got. Down here, we've got Date Created, Date Edited, whether it's shared, whether it's got mentions, or checklists, or attachments, what folder it's in, whether it's got a quick note or a pin note, all of these pieces of information make it really, really easy for us to find exactly what we're looking for. Now in this case, I want to do Date Created. was in a specific range. This is going to allow me to put it on a very specific time so I only find the ones that I want. In this case, I'm going to do January 2023 all

11:36 the way until April 2024 and click OK and it will realign and grab only the ones that fit that criteria. Smart folders are really, really helpful and there's a lot of great ways you can use them. You can make it really, really easy to find what you're looking for without having to file it. You'll notice all of my recipes are collected here in the All Recipes section, just like that. Our last tip is cleaning up and consolidating your existing notes. Most people create notes on the fly, and they aren't really thinking about the big picture. So they end up creating a bunch of notes that are all on the same topic. For example, all four of these are restaurants. And the intention when I tagged this was this was a restaurant I wanted to visit in Los Angeles.

12:23 But by having them separated this way it's entirely probable. Then I'll never find these notes, because as I create new notes, they're going to drop further and further and further and further down this list until they're gone forever. So you want to be a little bit smarter about how you create notes. Rather than creating all of these separate notes, consider consolidating them. Now I'm going to teach you a little trick when it comes down to consolidating things. The trick is this. You can double click on any notes. to open it up into its own window. So we're going to open up a couple of these in their own window here, and now we can start adding all of these other restaurants onto this one list. Easy to do by coming in here, selecting this

13:09 one, Command X to cut it, and paste it down here. What's nice about clicking Command X is that when I close that, it's going to actually delete that note so I won't have to delete it later. Let's come down to the next one. Command X. Paste it right here. Let's go ahead and grab this last one right here. And now instead of having four separate notes with restaurant information, I've got all of it in one specific place. But if you love keeping track of restaurants from all the places that you go to, you can even take it one step further and create a folder specifically called restaurants. Within this restaurants folder, you can add your restaurants in LA. but you can also come in and create additional notes for restaurants in Boston or restaurants in

13:54 San Diego or restaurants in New York so that when you're looking for a restaurant you know exactly where to go. The next thing you want to do is clean up old notes. And the easiest way to clean up old notes is to create a smart folder. Here's the way I'm going to do it. File. New Smart Folder. This Smart Folder is very, very specific. It's going to be Date Edited is before 2021. Now, you can choose as far back as you want to go, but starting with these old notes will make it easy for you to track down the things that are probably not as relevant. Do I really still need that Microsoft Word lesson? Am I still needing all of those testimonials? Are those links still accurate?

14:40 Am I still working with Wes Blackwell? As you come into these old notes, feel free to delete them and clear them out, unless there's some reason you're holding on to them. It's a really easy way to find old and unnecessary notes. And there's another way that we can do it too. I'm going to right click on this, and I'm going to go back to Edit the Smart Folder. But this time, I'm going to come in, and I'm going to say the checklist. Unchecked. That means these are checklists that I started, but didn't finish. Let's see what shows up. Oh, for sure. There's things here that don't need to be kept. Uh, we already had that New York trip. We can delete that and get it out of there easily. Uh, Christmas 2023 list. I mean, that's not necessary at all. Or maybe here's this checklist for Burning

15:26 Man from last year. I don't need that. Come into a smart folder and create an easy search that will help you locate lost and forgotten notes that may be irrelevant and should either be filed or deleted. And last but not least, look through your folders. Look specifically for folders where it's empty. If it's an empty folder, why keep it? Hunt out those empty folders and delete them and also look for folders that are just not really being used that much like class suggestions and consider putting it into a different folder and eliminating the now empty folder. If you do that you're going to eliminate a lot of the folders that are keeping

16:11 things complicated. Remember ideally you want to have about five main folders and some sub folders and some hashtags and you should be able to find what you're looking for like that. Now, in just a moment, I'm going to drop my MacWhisperer Pro Power Tip. But before I do, drop your comments and suggestions down below. I want to hear what you think. Did I miss something? Do you have a question about something? Do you have a better idea than I do about how to organize notes? I can't wait to hear it. And while you're down there, make sure to give this video a thumbs up. If you got great value, that makes it easy for other people to find it. If you haven't subscribed to my channel yet, It's time. Go click that subscription button and that notify bell So you never miss out when I drop new content.

16:57 And now let's get into the MacWhisperer power tip This power tip is called make it stand out As you end up with more and more and more notes, it's easy to overlook them or get lost . It just becomes unbearably complicated. There's a couple of ways you can make them stand out and you might have noticed it already for me. The first one is, feel free to add an emoji to a folder. It makes it easier for you to see it, especially if you've got a ton of folders. Let's come in here. To create an emoji easily on a Mac computer, the key code is command control and the space bar that will bring up your emojis and even allow you to search for them.

17:42 So if I come in here, I can immediately find the flexing muscle for my coaching business. You can see my little pen for writings and my heart for Julie and burger for recipes. It's easy for you to create whatever emojis you want to make your folders stand out. But don't let it stop there. You can also create emojis within a note. So here, if I've got this quotes note , I might want to come in here, again, Command, Control, and Space to bring it up. And I might want to grab a stack of books. right here to make that stand out. Notice on the left side it pops up right in front of the name meaning that it's just easier to see that you can see some of the other ones I've got like for a recipe or for a gift list or for the zoom links

18:29 I've got or my affiliate link info it's easy to create those emojis. But there's another trick on top of that. And that trick is to add photos. Notice the beet pesto pizza here. Notice Julie's gift list or the dad gift list. Whenever you add a photograph to a note, it puts that photo on the right there. And if you choose to organize by gallery by clicking on the link right here, Those pictures help those notes stand out even more. It's really, really easy for us to add a picture to anything. I'm going to come back to our quotes list here and we're going to add a different image to it. There's multiple ways to add an image. You can easily come into the note itself and click over here on the pictures icon to either grab something from your photos.

19:14 or take a photo with your camera or your iPad or sketch something, anything you want to do. But in this case, I'm going to open up my finder by clicking on the finder face at the bottom here. and it's right there at the top. I'm just going to click it and drag it right over into the notes. And now there we've got our quotation photograph for the quotes to make it easy to always see what that note is without having to click on it. That's how you make it stand out using emojis in your folders and on your notes and putting photos wherever you can so that things look great. That's what I've got for today's lesson on organizing your notes. I'm Dylan Stewart, The MacWhisperer, and it's my passion and profession to help you get more done with your Apple products than you

19:59 ever thought possible. And I'll see you next time.