0:00 I used to chase the perfect note-taking app, but now I only use Apple Notes. And if you think it's basic, you're probably just using it wrong and don't know all of its capabilities. So, in this video, I'm going to show you how to get the most from Apple Notes and my exact workflow on the iPhone and the Mac. So, before we talk about some of my favorite tips and tricks that you probably didn't even know about with the notes application, I first want to talk about some new iOS 26 features because I have covered the notes app here on the channel before. But now with iOS 26, there are some new features I wanted to briefly mention. So, first off, we do have the adaptive toolbar right here. So, toolbar is new. It has that liquid glass design and you can see it just stays down here on the bottom left until you tap and then it pops up like this and you have that right there with all your different options. Now, also we do have a new markdown option for
0:46 exporting. So, you can now export a note as markdown. You can also import as markdown. And if you have an Apple Watch, we now have the Apple Notes application on the Apple Watch where you can go into here and view all of your notes and also create new notes using your voice. And then for the iPad, we have the new read pen for calligraphy. So, this is a cool little pin addition for iPad OS. But let's go back to the beginning because I want to give you a full breakdown of Apple Notes and really how to get the most out of it because again I just feel like so many people don't get the most out of the notes application even when they think that they are. So let's start from the very basics just the very front screen right here where you have your folders and you also have iCloud right here if you do save your notes to iCloud which I would highly recommend. That way it shows up on all your devices. We have that right there. You can see at the bottom we do
1:32 also have our tags. I'll touch more on tags in a moment. Up in the top right, we have the option to add a new folder. And from here, we do also have the option to make that into a smart folder, which we will touch on here in a moment. We have our edit option right here where we can move our notes and we can also remove our notes if we want to as well. If we tap on these three dots, you can delete them. You do also have some other options right there as well. Down at the bottom, we do have a search field and then we do also have the option to create a new note right there. Now, if we go back to search, if you go into search, you can see that right once you go into search, you do get some suggestions. So you could search specifically for notes with tags, notes with drawings and so on. And when you do search, you will have different sections like top hits, notes, and attachments. You can also search for attachments using the search field. Now, it's good to keep in mind that these folders up
2:18 top are all pre-made folders. So we have folders for quicknotes, math notes, call recordings, and shared. But down here under iCloud for me, these are all folders that I've created. So things like scripts, house, voice notes, business ideas, so on. All of those have been created by myself. And I would highly recommend that if you're going to use Apple Notes, you should organize everything into folders. So even if you go into a folder right here, you can see you will have notes in there. However, you could also create a folder inside of a folder by going into a folder and tapping on the three dots up here. You do have the option to add a folder. And when you do that, it will pop up right here up at the top. And you can kind of go, you know, more nested into folders and really organize your notes very well. So, inside the K folder, I have workouts. And inside workouts, I have my
3:03 workout note. Now, if I go back, you'll notice that some of these have the folder icon. Some of these have the gear icon. And if you're wondering what that is, the gear icon is simply just a smart folder. So, if you go up to the top right here and tap on the three dots, you can see that we do have the option for editing that smart folder. So, if I go to edit smart folder, it will show me the name. I can change the name of it. Now, if I go to manage smart folder, this is where I can choose the filters that, you know, makes certain notes go into this folder. So, for example, I have it set to be a tag. So, if any of my notes are, you know, tagged with the hashtag house, that means they will automatically be entered into the folder called house. And you can really add on to this as well. So, you do have your other filters. So, if I wanted this to be, you know, even more specific, I can
3:48 make it say, you know, with the hashtag of house and also created within the last 3 months. Then all of a sudden, you know, if I go ahead and do this, you could see if I go ahead and do that, it will not have a note anymore because that was a note from 2023. But if I go into here, I go to the smart folder and I go ahead and do, you know, if I do it instead of all of the filters, I do any of the filters, that means it can match either, you know, house or it was created in the last 3 months, then all of a sudden it will show up with all my other notes, you know, because it does have the house hashtag, if that makes sense. So, I will have to go in here and turn this off. And then I could I could keep this at any or I can keep that at all. It really just depends on how many filters you want to add. I think for most people it should just be all of the filters. That way you can get specific with your folders. And you could also
4:33 convert an existing folder into a smart folder. So, if I go into my scripts right here and I tap on the three dots, we have these options right here. And one of them is to change to a smart folder. So, if I go down here, it shows convert to smart folder. You also have the option to always view attachments. You can group by. You have all these different options. That makes a lot more sense when you have all of your notes here. So, if I go into the K folder, for example, you can see I have a bunch of different notes here. If I tap on the three dots, you can change how these are sorted. So, if you go to sort by, you could sort this by the date edited, the title. You could do oldest first, newest first. You could really change this to your liking. I think most people are going to do the date edited. That way, anytime a folder or a note is edited, it will show up at the top. But one thing you might want to change is group by date. So if you don't want it saying
5:19 like today 2024, things like that, you can turn that off. That way it just shows all of your notes right here and there's no type of date association with them. So that could be useful in some cases. But if you want to keep that on by default, you know, that is how you do it right there. And I talked about tags. So creating a tag is really just as simple as putting in a hashtag and then typing out whatever you want that tag to be. You just add that to any of your notes. And now when we go back, so if we go into the house folder again and we go to edit this smart folder. So when you go to create the parameters for this, I can go ahead and put in the new hashtag, the new tag right there, story. So now it can include all of these. So I'll just do any of these. So it can include either one of these two tags and now it will show up inside of this smart folder. So you'll see that it will appear right there. Now here's something
6:05 else that's really cool inside of notes that I think a lot of people don't realize you can do. You could actually link notes. So, for example, if you have like an itinerary for a country and you're going to different cities and you want to have a different note for each city instead of one big long note, you can actually link those two together. And to do that, it's very simple. You just do this right here, two greater than signs, and you'll get this prompt where you could actually select a different note that you have right here. So, let's just do the discovery for example. And now that note is linked inside of this note. So, now when I tap on it, it will take me straight into that note very quickly. And let's say I want to link back to the other one. I just type in the two over right there, the two greater than signs, and I can go ahead and select that note. So now I can go back and forth between these two notes just like so. And for me, that personally beats having a big long note
6:52 that's really jam-packed. I like separating different notes. And when doing this, when linking notes, it makes it so much easier. Now, you might have also noticed the formatting in this note right here. So take a look at the highlights. And also take a look at this. Since these are headers, I can collapse these. So if you want it to really be organized, I can collapse these headers right here. That way it only shows the two headers. And if I want to see more information, I can go ahead and click on that dropdown and it will show me everything. And also the highlighting is really good at making sure you can visually see, you know, what you're about to look at. And to do that, it's very simple. All you have to do, let me just show you how to do a new one. So we'll just call this one the journey. So this is the journey just like below. If we go ahead and select this, all we have to do is click on this icon right here, this little pencil with the underline. If we tap on that, it will go ahead and change the color. And if I go ahead and tap on it again, we'll
7:38 change it to orange for example. So now the text is orange and it has that little background right there, the little highlight. So if you want to change this to a header as well, you could do that. So we go and swipe over and go to the two A's. If we go and tap on the two A's and change this from body to title, that will create the title. Now, you'll also notice that you can have the highlights from this option as well. So if I go ahead down here, let's just create another one. So we'll just call this one test. If I go ahead and select test and tap on the two A's right here, this will allow me to also not only highlight. So, we'll go ahead and do a heading right there. Actually, we'll do a title. And right here, we also have the option for highlighting. So, if we tap on the color, we'll just do this one as mint. You can see that now we have a mint one right here. And also, this is a header. So, anything underneath of it will be collapsed when
8:24 I go ahead and press on this little down arrow right here. But that's not the only cool formatting you can do. And notes. We also, if we tap on these two A's right here, we do have the option for a block quote. So, take a look down there in the bottom right. If we tap on that, that will create a block quote. So, if you maybe have a report that you're doing and you have an interview or something or you're quoting somebody, you could have that in a block quote, which shows this little black line over here on the left. Now, also, we can do a different type of formatting as well. So, let's say let's select this right here. We'll get turn that off and we're going to go over here to the right to the right of body. We have mono style. So you can create a mono style right there as well. And that is what that looks like inside of notes. Now, here's a pretty cool feature that I honestly don't know how much you'll use, but it is pretty cool to have. So this is called math notes. And this allows you
9:10 to solve math problems and equations by simply drawing or typing them out. So if I type in like 5, six, I'm just going to type in all these numbers times, you know, 76, whatever. I'm going to type all that in. And then I put an equal sign, you could see it will automatically show me the result right there in yellow. I could tap on this or I could just tap on the space bar and it will auto input that math. So that is pretty cool. You can do that in here. You could also do it with like the divided by sign. So if I just go ahead and do this and I go ahead and do this / 6 equals, you can see it will turn that into, you know, the result right there. However, if you are using numbers and you don't like that, you don't want that to be a feature, you could tap on the three dots right here and you go to math results and you can turn that completely off if you don't like it. So, if I go ahead to off, it will turn that feature off and it will no longer work. So, if I
9:56 go ahead and do equals right here, you can see it doesn't do anything. Now, easily one of my favorite features in the notes application is going to be document scanning and being able to view inline PDFs. So, if you go here and you go to the little paperclip icon right here, you will see multiple new options. So, not new options, but you will see multiple options here that you have available such as record audio, attach file, you have scan documents up at the top, and you have all these other ones as well. So, if you go to scan documents, this will allow you to simply scan a document that you have in front of you. And you will have the option to add a markup to it as well if you want to sign a document or anything like that. And once you have that document scanned, it will actually show up in line as a PDF. So, you can see it's kind of multiple pages like this. It's really, you know, it looks good inside
10:43 of the notes application. And you will also have a fillable form in here as well. So, it does recognize this as a PDF. You have all these options right here. You can also fill out the form automatically. So, it will use your data that it already knows. If I go ahead and tap on this right here and I go to this down in the bottom right, you can see it will auto detect the fields that need to be filled in. If I tap on the plus, I can add my signature or add a text form box. So, if I want to add my signature, I have my different signatures right there. Now, you could also access signatures very easily from the markup tool down here. So, if you tap on this and go to the plus, this is where you can get to your signatures right there. You can also add or remove a signature very easily as well. And you can resize it. You can also make it thicker by tapping on this. If you want to make it much thicker and maybe a different color, you could do that there as well.
11:28 Now, let's say that you have a note with some sensitive information in it. So, maybe it has like some passwords or some really personal information that you don't want anybody getting access to. You can actually lock your notes very easily as well. So if we tap on the three dots up here and you go to lock, this will lock your notes. Now keep in mind you cannot lock a note with tags. That is one thing you have to keep in mind. So now that I removed the tag, I can go up here and go to lock and you will have to enter your password to, you know, be able to lock this note. Now keep in mind this password is separate from your iPhone's password and this is actually a setting. So if we head into our settings and go to notes, we'll search for notes down here. If we go down into notes and go down to password, you can see they could use a custom password instead of your device passcode. You also get the option to use or not use Face ID. Now, another feature
12:16 that's very useful in notes is the ability to share and collaborate with others. So, this is going to be very beneficial if you maybe have an itinerary for a trip and it's maybe you and your significant other or you and some friends and you want to be able to have access to that note and everybody have access to that note at the same time. you can share that and collaborate with each other. So, all you have to do is tap on the share up here and then all you have to do is go up to the top where it shows collaborate and make sure that's on collaborate. You could also send copy if you don't want them to be able to add anything. If you just want them to be able to see it, you could just send a copy. But if you want them to be able to collaborate on this note with you, just keep it at collaborate. And you can go ahead right here and you can change some of these options. You can have, you know, anybody with a link has access or only invited people. and also if they can view only or if they can also make changes and if they can
13:03 invite other people. So I'm going to keep all of those as they are. And then from here all you have to do is either copy the link or just go ahead to messages and send them a text so they can collaborate with you on this note. And when you're in a shared note you will see up there in the top right it does show that little person icon with the checks. And if you tap on that it will show all these different options. So you can see the activity. So anytime somebody added something or edited something you will see it right there. And also if you go ahead to show highlights, it will show exactly what was changed and when. And it's cool because you can also start chats straight from this note. So you can message from here, you can FaceTime or you can FaceTime audio everybody that's in that note straight from the note itself right up here at top. It will also show the latest updates if there was something recently updated. And also every time somebody makes an edit in a shared note, you will get an update in
13:49 your messages application. And you'll also get a notification that this note has been, you know, adjusted. that has been edited. And then here's a good example of a note that's written out with the collapsible headers like I mentioned before. So if you go ahead and do that, you could see kind of how that works in practice right here. And you could also, you know, tap on these dates. So if I go ahead head out of here and go back in, you could also tap on these dates and you could add that to the calendar reminders, invites, showing calendar or copy the event straight from notes as well. Now, I also wanted to go over some tips and tricks that you're probably just going to start using immediately after watching this video because they're so useful. And as somebody who uses notes on a daily basis, I use these all the time. So the first one is if you have a bullet list right here, like I create bullet lists pretty much every single note. I'm just a really like bullet person. But one way to create an indention or a sub bullet
14:37 point. Let's just say, you know, you want to have get some sun underneath of get to the park. So I go ahead to right here. I just simply do a swipe over like this. So I'll just go and swipe over. Take a look at that. It indents that bullet point. You can do that for this as well. You can see it will indent that and kind of create a subtask or a sub bullet underneath of it. That is very useful and it's kind of hidden because Apple doesn't show you that that exists. Also, a lot of people don't realize if you swipe over on a note, you do have quick access to the share, move, and delete. And if you swipe all the way over, that will delete it. And also, if you swipe over this way, you can pin notes as well. So, a lot of people don't realize you can pin notes to the top of folders. So, if I go ahead out out of here and unpin that, you can see that right there. So, it's really nice to be able to pin important notes so they're always up at the top underneath of
15:22 folders, of course. Now, here's something else I use all the time. So, if you're in Safari, if you're in the news application, if you're in any type of application where you want to save some text in the notes application to reference later, you can select it and then go to share and you can go ahead to share to notes and you can, you know, save it to your notes and it will save it as normal text just like so. However, there's a better way to do that. So, if you select this text right here and you swipe over and go to new quick note. So, if we create a quick note out of this, take a look at how that shows up. The formatting is so much better. So, now if we go back to our notes right here, take a look at how much better that note looks when you do it like that. So, it shows the quotes. It just has this image to it that looks so good. You can tap on that and it will also take you into that, you know, web page that you saved that from. And it will also highlight
16:07 it. And also, the note shows up down here as a quick note. Now, you might notice that my quick notes has a very different look than my regular notes. It's not a list. It's more of just these little grid views. You can actually change that as well. So, if I go back into my K folder right here and I tap on the three dots, you'll see up top that we have view as list. And if we don't have that, we have view as gallery. So, you can change the view very easily there as well. I find the the grid, the, you know, gallery to be useful on the Mac, but I like the list on the iPhone since you are limited on space. I also like to drag and drop on iOS and the notes application. A lot of people think you could only do this on the Mac, but you could also drag and drop on the iPhone. So, if I pick this note up right here, if I want to add this into my workouts folder, I just simply go ahead over top of workouts and drop it in. And there we go. I just put that folder or I
16:52 just put that note inside of a folder via drag and drop. It saves me some time. Oh, and by the way, you might have wondered how I did this little checklist view right here where I can check off the things that were done in that location. Let me show you how to do that. All you have to do is tap on this icon to the right of the formatting option. So if you go ahead and tap on that, it will create into a checklist. So now these are checklist. I can simply tap on that as well. If I want to automatically sort it, I can I can check on that and it will complete that task. So you can go ahead and select or deselect it right there. And it does give you haptic feedback as well. That's very beneficial for like itineraries. Now let's say something is in your note and you're wondering kind of how it got there or maybe you want to know more about it. You can go ahead and select that text right here. And if you go down, we do have the option to search web. So we do have translate as well. If
17:39 you go to search web, it will search whatever's in there. And maybe you can access and find out more information about something that's inside of the note. Now you might have also seen something else in here that's called writing tools. We do have writing tools, but down here we have add to playground. So this is pretty cool because it will create an image based on the text. Now this would be a better note to do that in. So if I go ahead right here and I go to add it to playground. Take a look at this. So it will say the style is sketch and also it picked up on different themes from this little paragraph here. So mythical forest, dreamers, legends, and caution. I can go through the different ones that I like or dislike. You could add an AI created image to your note based on everything that was written. So now that shows up there in the notes to give you a visual to what you just wrote out. That's something
18:24 pretty cool as well. And now that you have an image to go along with your text, let's say you want to print out this note. You can do that very easily by tapping on the share icon right here and then going over to more. And from down here, you do have the option to print. And you can do that right there. And it will print very easily and it will show you the layout down here as well. Now, let me show you my workflow for notes. And basically how I use this on a daily basis. So really the quickest way to create a note on iOS is going to be through the control center or the action button. So you can press on the action button to create a note, but I really like having this in the control center. So if you go ahead and tap on the plus up in the top left and you go to add a control and just simply search for notes, you do have two different options. So we have a quick note and also just notes in general. So I like quicknotes because that allows me to create a note really easily. So I swipe
19:11 down right here and I go to create a quick note. You can see it will just pop that up right away and I can access that right there. Now if you want to do this from the lock screen, which can be very convenient, that's very easy as well. So, all you have to do is go to customize your lock screen and replace one of these with a note. So, we'll replace the camera right here. We're just going to search for notes. This is actually what I have on my main device right here. If I go to quicknote and now, if we go to quicknote on the lock screen, we tap and hold on that, it will launch a quick note straight from the lock screen. And it makes it very easy to jot down your thoughts or use dictation, which I do all the time to create a note very quickly and easily. And speaking of dictation, there's also something else that's kind of hidden in here. If you go to the little close pin right here and you go to record audio, this will actually record your audio. So sometimes if I'm, you know, having some
19:57 thoughts and I want to be able to reference this later, reference what I said, I will actually do this right here. I'm going to record my voice talking because when I go ahead and tap on pause and do the check mark right here, it will show me a transcript. So it will show me everything that I said and I can also get a summary of everything that I was said that was said in that note. So, I do that sometimes when I'm walking and I want to, you know, get my thoughts out while I'm walking. I will do a recording and then I have the transcript. And from here, I can copy this text and, you know, add it into a separate note if I want to. You can also tap on these three dots up in the top right and you can copy the transcript, add transcript to a separate note. You can save it to files, you can share the audio, and you can also find in the transcript. And by the way, when you are looking for something, so if I search for sometimes for example, and I go to the little dropown right here next
20:44 to the magnifying glass, I can choose whole words or match case. So if I do match case, for example, we have that option right there. And then on the Mac, you can do this really easily by going down in the bottom right corner. That's actually default. And that's one of the very few things on the Mac that I keep as default. So when I go down to the bottom right corner, that will launch the quick notes. And I use that almost every single day on my Mac. It's a really quick and easy way to get a quick note pulled up and just start jotting down your thoughts. And again, here's a good example of how I format my notes specifically. So, you can see how it is with the drop down right here with the dates and also with the checklist. This is kind of how I do things in my personal life or, you know, anything in the notes. This is kind of how they look in practice. And keep in mind that your notes will also sync with your Mac, your iPhone, and also now your Apple Watch.
21:30 So, it's very convenient to have. This is really one of the other big reasons to use Apple Notes over some of these third parties is because we do also have the ability to sync, you know, in real time pretty much with all of our devices at once. So, Apple Notes, in my opinion, is just so feature- packed. I didn't even touch on every single thing in the notes application in this video, but I did cover quite a bit. So, if you guys appreciated this video, I would appreciate if you give it a thumbs up and just let me know your thoughts down below, what you think about Apple Notes and basically how you use it in your everyday life. But that was just a quick look at my workflow and kind of how I use it. I really like to use it in the control center. Sometimes I will set it to the action button as well. If you want to do that, by the way, just go into your settings and then go into general and then down here to action button and then go into action button
22:15 right here and go to controls and set this to be notes. So if I go to quicknote right here, now when I press on the action button, it will launch a quick note right there. So if it's something you do, you know, very consistently on a daily basis, you will be able to do that very quickly with the action button. that we don't need to do it from the lock screen or the control center. But anyways, that was a quick look at the notes application. Not really quick, but that was a in-depth look at the notes application. I will have more to share as well. I do have a lot, you know, that I can cover with notes. So, if you guys want to see more videos on notes or if you're interested in just me going deeper in the notes application, all of the Apple applications like reminders and calendar as well, let me know in a comment down below and make sure you are subscribed so you don't miss those videos. But anyways guys, thanks for watching and I'll see you
