Notes

Part of The Back to Basics Series

When it comes to note-taking, Apple Notes is quickly dismissed by many for well-marketed apps like Notion, Evernote, Obsidian ↗, Bear ↗, and Craft ↗.

Apple Notes is judged as too basic or lacking functionalities for full-fledged note-taking.

This can't be farther from the truth.

While each third-party app has strengths and unique features that set it apart, we don't usually need most of these niche features for our daily note-taking.

In this guide, I'll show you how you can use this built-in Notes app on your Apple devices for basic to advanced note-taking, with real-world examples.

Even if you're already using the built-in Notes app every day, you'll take home obscure shortcuts and workflows from this guide that will help you work better with this app.

Let's start with:

Quickly jot down ideas and other information

The hallmark of a good note-taking app is how fast you can get your thoughts into a digital note.

Apple Notes excels at this.

The obvious way is to open the app and start a new note in the default Notes folder:

While this is fast enough to get ideas off your head and into written material, there's a faster way.

And that is using Quick Notes.

On a Mac, you can quickly create a fresh note by hovering your cursor on the bottom-right of your window to reveal a quick note box:

Clicking on this box opens a new note window where you can write down any information. Your note is saved automatically.

While I've been relying on the traditional method of launching the app and creating a new note for a while, I'm conditioning myself to use this approach because it's quicker — the Quick Note box appears in the bottom-right corner across all apps.

For example, the Quick Notes feature is incredibly handy for taking notes while browsing the Web.

While browsing a page, you can hover over the bottom-right corner of the screen to pop up a quick note and start collecting ideas and highlights from the page.

And if you want to add a link to the source page, you can click on the Add a link button on the toolbar to add a link to the currently active webpage in the browser:

This creates a helpful reference to the page you've collected highlights or information from, for later review.

Moreover, with a link attached, if you open the same webpage later, macOS will nudge any previously saved quick note for this webpage on the bottom-right corner of the screen:

This helps pick up where you left off last time or gather context around a webpage you've been working on.

Now:

On an iPhone or iPad, you can use the Quick Note shortcut in the Control Center to quickly create a new note by dragging down the Control Center and tapping on the Quick Note option:

This is handy because you don't have to search for the Notes app, launch it, tap the new note button and finally jot down a fleeting idea.

You can get started with one tap from the Control Center.

Once you're done typing what came to your head, you can press done and return to what you were doing earlier.

With some practice, this becomes a lightning-fast approach to jot down any incoming information or idea in a few taps.

Now, this Quick Note option isn't usually visible in the Control Center by default, but you can add it to your list from Settings:

But what about adding a reference link to a webpage like we did on a Mac?

You can do it on an iPhone or iPad, too.

On Safari or any other browser app, share the webpage and choose Add to Quick Note:

This creates a new quick note with a link to the shared webpage the same way we added it on a Mac using the Add Link option.

Then, you can type your note, paste any highlights, and save the new note for later.

This is fantastic for collecting bits of shareable information from other apps in the system without having to jump through many hoops.

But here's another neat trick:

If you're using an iPad and have an Apple Pencil, you can pull out your pencil and tap on a locked iPad screen with the tip of the pencil to start a new note:

This is the fastest way to jot down or sketch ideas in your head if you have an iPad with an Apple Pencil. There's zero friction between your thoughts and a new note.

But what about notes that follow a repeated structure, like a journal entry?

For such cases, you can create a home screen shortcut to start a new note with pre-filled information like an entry date and more, using the Shortcuts app.

You can learn more about how to create templates using Shortcuts over here.

With creating notes mastered, let's see how we can:

Present ideas and information well

Apple Notes has plenty of formatting and rich media inserts that help present even the densest topics in a pleasing way.

Let's explore the tools available in the Notes app by creating a one-page travel plan to Japan.