Apple’s Notes has come a long way since it was first introduced with the iPhone as a simple note-taking app, but many users are still unaware of its expanded capabilities. Now available on Macs, on iOS/iPadOS devices, and on the web at iCloud.com, Notes has become a surprisingly powerful tool for writing, sketching, organizing, and sharing information of all kinds.
In Take Control of Notes, TidBITS Managing Editor Josh Centers provides a quick but thorough guide to this deceptively simple app, showing you how to master its many tools—and avoid or work around its limitations.
Among many other things, you’ll learn how to:
- Choose where to store notes (iCloud, IMAP, or a device) and whether or how they sync
- Import notes from other apps and services
- Apply and modify character-level and paragraph-level formatting in a note
- Make lists (including checklists and lists with multiple levels of indentation)
- Work with tables in notes
- Encrypt notes with a password
- Add photos, videos, audio, maps, and other content to your notes
- Scan printed documents into Notes and save them as PDF attachments
- Draw and sketch using your finger or an Apple Pencil
- Share notes with other users, and add @-mentions
- Use the Quick Note feature in macOS and iPadOS to start a note from anywhere
- Organize your notes into folders, tag notes, and search their contents
About Josh Centers
Josh Centers is the managing editor of TidBITS and a freelance writer who has written for Macworld, the Magazine, Boing Boing, and the Sweethome. He has been featured on Daring Fireball, the Loop, TUAW, and Scientific American, and is a frequent guest on MacVoices. He lives in Tennessee with his wife, Hannah, and their three children.
David Forsyth (verified owner) –
Thank you very much for the book Take Control of Notes. I had not used the Notes app until I read about this book and bought it. I now use Notes daily for keeping track of a wide variety of information, adding photos, etc. I was using Evernote for many of these things but found that Notes works just about as well so have cancelled my Evernote account and saved several times the cost of the book.
Thanks, David Forsyth
Mike McGraw (verified owner) –
Josh, I’m reading your Notes book to learn the tool. One small issue I’ve found is that I cannot use your method to upload phots to notes. You say “In a note tap the “plus” icon and choose Photo Library to bring up the photo browser.” However, there is no plus icon in my version of Notes. (iPhone XR, all updates installed) I have found that I can open Photos, select and copy what I want, and then paste directly into a note.