Full transcript of “Take Notes Faster on Your iPhone or iPad – Simple Tips for Seniors”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 Over the years, Apple Notes has become my favorite notetaking app. I use it regularly on my iPhone and iPad to keep track of the books I've read and want to read, jotting down a quick note to remind me of something later, or an interesting restaurant I found in my local area. There are many uses for the Notes app. However, unlocking the iPhone and finding the notes app, opening it, and then creating a new entry is timeconuming. So, in this video, I've compiled several ways of starting a new note without the time consuming effort. Welcome to Ellen's Tips for iOS, where I help seniors master their iPhones and iPads. If you find the video helpful,
0:46 give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. Let's get started. In iOS 18, you can replace the flashlight and camera icons with other actions. So, if you take a lot of notes, you can easily replace the camera button with quicknotes. If you use the camera button frequently, you can easily launch it by swiping to the left of the lock screen. So, let me show you how to get to the camera. So, I'm on the lock screen right now. If I swipe to the left, I immediately come in to the camera. Just going to swipe out of that and come back to the lock screen. Here you'll notice in the lower left hand corner I have the magnifying glass and on the right I have
1:33 the camera. If I want to change this to make it a uh the notes app. If I push and hold while I'm in the lock screen, you'll see that it comes into the customize option. I'll select customize and then I'm going to choose lock screen on the left. And now you'll see a minus button appears on the lock screen next to the camera. So, I'm going to go ahead and close that because I want to change that and make it one of the notes uh actions. So, I'm going to tap on the plus sign. I can search for controls up in the search area. I'm going to tap on notes. And you'll see the quick note
2:18 option appears. I'll go ahead and select that. And now you'll see that uh the camera a action button has been changed to the quick notes. I'm going to tap done in the upper right corner. I'm going to tap on focus to bring it back to the lock screen. And now if I kind of just push and hold on this and let go, I come into a quick note. So that's an easy way to add notes to the lock screen. If you prefer a simple tap to add a custom notes app widget on the iPhone or iPad lock screen, this will be your go-to action if you have not updated to iOS 18 or if you're on an
3:07 iPad. So to add the widget, the first thing we have to do is open the Shortcuts app. And I'm already inside, but if you're unsure what it looks like, I'm just going to tap on search, start typing in shortcuts, and you'll see it available there. I'll go ahead and tap on shortcuts to open. And we're going to tap on the plus sign in the upper right corner. And it says search for actions. I am going to search for notes. And I'm going to scroll down until I see create note. I'm going to go ahead and select that. And it it says here create a note with content. So that's what you will write inside the
3:54 notes uh note. But you can choose a folder to place that note in. So, I'm going to select that and I'm just going to go ahead and use my notes folder in iCloud so that everything is backed up to that. Going to do that. And now you'll see it says create note with contents in the notes folder. I'm going to go ahead and tap on done. And when I do, you'll see the first note in the upper left corner is the one that we just created. Now, we need to customize that to add it to our lock screen. So, we want to add that shortcut to the widgets area on our lock screen. I'm just going to swipe down from the middle of my screen at the top to come back to
4:39 the lock screen. Push and hold. Tap on customize. Tap on lock screen. And now I am going to locate I'm going to tap add widgets. and I'm going to locate the Shortcuts app. There it is. I'll open it. I'm going to go ahead and just tap on it to add it. I'm going to tap on it again. And we're going to locate this says my shortcuts. And there's that create note that we just added. I'll tap on that. I'll go ahead and close this out. Let me tap on done. And now if I tap on
5:25 that widget underneath the clock, it's immediately going to let me create a new note and add it to the notes uh iCloud folder. If you have uh an Apple Pencil, all you need to do is tap your locked iPad screen with your Apple Pencil. Just tap on it. It's going to immediately open up a new note where you can begin typing or you can actually begin to write your note. Another easy quick and easy way to uh get into the notes app is by swiping up from the bottom right corner. If you have an Apple Pencil, you can just swipe up and you'll see that a
6:12 quick note appears. I'm going to go ahead and tap done. Let me come back to the main screen again. I can also use my finger and do the same thing. And you'll see a quick note appears and you can begin typing your note. I'm going to tap on done. But you want to make sure that you have this set up correctly. So I'm going to come into the settings app. Under multitasking and gestures, if you want to use your finger on your iPad, you want to toggle this switch on. Swipe finger from the corner. And then if you swipe up from the bottom left side, you'll get a screenshot or the bottom right side, you'll get a quick note. And you can change these to whatever you want. Another thing that you want to look at, scroll down to the very bottom of settings and tap on apps. Then I'm
7:00 going to tap on end so I can quickly get to notes. And here I'm just going to scroll down until I see corner gestures. I can tap on that and I can also change the corner gestures from here. You can also add notes options to the control center for a quick and easy way to uh enter the notes app. So you'll see the control center there. I'm just going to swipe down from the upper uh right area of my screen to access it. I'm going to tap on the plus button. I'm going to go ahead and tap add a control at the bottom here. I'll go into search controls and I'll type in
7:45 notes. And two options appear. I can use the quick note option, the option on the right, or I can add the notes option or if I want to. So now you'll see the notes option has appeared. If I tap add a control again, you'll see I'm still under the notes area. I can also add a quick note if I want to. And now those two options have been added to the control center, making it easy to get into the notes app. There are times you may not want to use the keyboard to take a note. And you can use Siri to do this. So you can say something along the lines of, "Hey Siri, take a note. Vacation idea, Disney World.
8:34 The note appears. Tap on it and you'll be right inside the note where you can add any of your ideas. Using Siri may not always be the best option for lengthy notes, but for a quick idea, it works really well. Another quick way to start a note or get inside an existing one is to add a note widget to your iPhone home screen. And that's what I've done with these two widgets. This allows me to easily get into my book queue or to watch a video on how to wrap a pickle ball paddle. So to do that, what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to open up the widgets. So I am going to just
9:19 push and hold on the home screen. I'm going to tap on edit in the upper left corner and I'm going to tap add widget. Now I'm going to search for notes. I'll tap on notes and you'll see the options that are available for your widgets. So, and above it or right underneath it, it'll say get access to one of your notes in a folder. So, it'll tell you what each one does and you can choose the one that you know is best fit for you. I'm going to choose this one that says get quick access to one of your notes. I'm going to tap add a widget. Once it's added, I'm going to
10:04 tap on the widget. It flips it over. And now, if I tap into this area, I'll get a listing of all of the notes that I can use or that I can look through to see if I want to use them. So, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to tap into this one that says post tournament assessment. I'm going to tap anywhere outside that note. It flips it around. I can go ahead and tap on done. And now, when I want to quickly access this note, I'll just tap on it and it'll open up that particular note. We can also use uh Spotlight search to access, you know, notes quickly. So to do that, if I pull
10:52 down on the screen to come into the search area, and I already typed in notes, but let me do it again so you can see what happens. I'll type in notes. And you'll see in this top area, the notes appears, but we also created that shortcut. And when we created that shortcut, it also will allow that to be a top hit. And then there's some a couple of other shortcuts that I created that immediately pop up. So we already created the shortcut and so now you'll see it appear in Spotlight search which will allow you to quickly and easily create a new note or quickly get into the notes app. Another great option, if
11:38 you have the notes app located on your um home screen or even if it's in the app library, if you just push and hold on it until the quick action box opens up, you'll see you have a whole listing of things that you can do. You can create a new note, a new checklist, scan your document, record um audio, and other options. If you're inside an app and want to save something, there's no need to open the notes app. You can use the share sheet instead of copying the link and manually pasting it into a note. So, let me show you how this works. I'm just going to open Safari. And I already have a page
12:25 here, uh, an Apple support page. And so if I just choose the share button at the bottom, it's this um square with an arrow pointing up. If I tap that now, I can choose the notes app and it'll automatically paste that whole article into uh the note. Let me cancel out of that. But let's say I just want to copy a portion of that. If I push and hold on any of the uh words, I can select using the selection arms, I can select uh an area of that. And now if I tap on this arrow, I'll get an
13:11 option to share. And if I tap on that, the share sheet comes up. I can tap on notes and it immediately pastes what I selected inside the notes app. As you can see, there are plenty of simple ways to start a new note without the hassle of opening the Notes app every time. Whether you prefer tapping your lock screen, asking Siri, or swiping a corner of your iPad, there's a method that fits your style. Try one or two of these options and see which feels most comfortable for you. The Notes app is a powerful tool for staying organized, remembering important details, and capturing inspiration in the moment. So, let's make it as easy as
13:58 possible to use. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.
