Apple Notes - Power User Tips & Hidden Features

Apple Notes just keeps getting better .

Here's a relatively new feature .

I want to scan some text from a book directly into my notes app .

All I do is I choose scan text , hold the phone relatively still and press insert .

I think this is super cool .

Let me show you some of my favorite Apple notes , hidden features and give you some power user tips .

We'll start simple in case you're new to Apple Notes .

My first tip is that you can create different folders .

You see that there is a default notes folder over here , but you can create separate folders , let's say for you , personal and work are very distinct , very separate .

You can go ahead and create a new folder and call it work well , not work but work .

And then you just go to a note and you swipe left on it .

You press the folder button and you move it into the work folder .

Next consider using hashtags here I am in a note where I scan some recipes from a cookbook anywhere in the note .

But I like to do this at the bottom .

I can insert a hashtag just by typing a hash and then a word , for example , recipe now it's great right now .

But when you hit the space bar , you'll see that it turns yellow and that means it turned into a hashtag Now I can add multiple hashtags to a note .

For example , I can call these ones .

Uh I get this breakfast .

Now , if I tap done and I swipe to the main screen and I scroll all the way to the bottom , I can tap recipe to see all my recipe notes , but I can also filter down even more by also tapping breakfast .

And now I see all my notes with the breakfast and recipes tag assigned .

Now , when should you use folders and when should you use tags ?

Here's an example .

Let's say I have an IKEA receipt right here .

I could go over and create a folder and call it receipts .

I can go to the note and I can move it into the receipts folder so I can see it there .

But what if I want to split out my work and my personal receipts ?

Well , I could create a separate folder called work receipts .

But then what if I want to see all my notes at once ?

This is a case where tags work better .

So I'm actually going to remove this note from this folder , delete the receipts folder and I'm gonna go back to this note and all the way at the bottom .

I'm going to give it the hashtag receipt and also the hashtag personal over here in the main screen at the same button at the bottom left .

I can type a new smart folder .

Now , a smart folder allows you to see all the notes that have certain tags assigned to them .

So for example , I can call it personal receipts and I can say show all notes that have the hashtag receipt and personal done .

Now you see a smart folder , it'll have a little gear icon .

I tap it and here are all my personal receipts .

You can also turn a regular folder into a smart folder .

So I've got this health folder over here and let's say I've got some notes in here on my health .

What I can do is tap the ellipses at the top , right ?

And I can tap convert to smart folder .

What's gonna happen is it's going to add the hashtag health to every single note in this folder , move those notes back to the main notes folder and then it's going to create a smart folder that shows all notes with the health tag assigned , but you cannot undo this .

So I'm going to tap convert and now health is a smart folder and every single note in here has the health tag .

Any new notes that I create that I add the health tag to will also show up in the smart folder .

Now , one thing to note is that hashtags work across folders .

So for example here at the bottom .

If I tap the hashtag template , I'll see results from my notes folder as well as from my coaching folder .

Next up .

Let me show you how good Apple Notes is as scanning documents .

Meaning you don't need a separate scanner app or a physical scanner on your desk .

I'll show you this on my desk over here .

I'll grab a note and I'll just tap scan documents .

I put a document on a nice contrasting background here and scan it like this .

Now , this document is a quick start guide for a piece of recording gear that I have after I've got it scanned , I can do a couple of things .

I noticed that it didn't quite capture the entire document .

Usually it's pretty good at this , but in this case , it didn't do it .

So on the bottom left , I'm gonna tap the crop tool and I'm actually going to change the crop over here just to make sure you might need to fiddle around with this a little bit to make sure that you get the correct edges and then tap done .

Now , what I can also do is I can change the color .

So either it scans it in color or in gray scale in black and white or as a photo .

In this case , I think gray scale is pretty good .

I can also rotate the document .

But in this case , I don't need to , I'll tap done if I want to , I can scan more pages , but in this case , I don't need to .

So I'll tap save now after I tap save notice what happens , this document becomes an attachment inside the note and it'll automatically be converted to a PDF .

And this PDF has a title , the title currently says at the top Solid Arm because that's the biggest text that apple nodes found inside the document .

Let me just rename that for it to be a little clearer and save it .

Now , if I want to share this document with someone , all I have to do is just tap it , tap share and it'll get sent as a PDF and I can send it to whoever I like .

Now .

One really cool feature of apple notes is that text inside attachments is automatically searchable .

For example , this attachment over here includes the word over Titan .

If I search for over Titan , you'll see that it shows up and it shows me the right note so useful .

Now sometimes you'll have several scanned documents in one note like I have over here and it just becomes a bit difficult to see which ones are all in there .

So what you can do is just hold long , tap on one of them and then choose small images to see them as small images .

Now let me give you another tip about the scan text feature that I showed you at the beginning of this video .

If I just start scanning in a note .

Apple notes will detect some text and I'll choose insert but see how it's all formatted in a really messy way .

Change the formatting to body text before you do the scanning .

Now , if I do scan text , it gets imported as nice body text and it's really easy to share a note .

Let's say I want to share this youtube video plan note right here .

I'll just long press it and choose share note .

I'll choose Apple messages to send the actual message with the invitation .

And let's say I want to share it with my girlfriend .

I'll choose her and I'll send it over .

Now , what I can do is if I go inside this note and I press the sharing button up here and I go to manage shared note , I can go to share options and I can say , hey , I actually only want other people to be able to view this note and not make changes .

Now , what if you want to share the contents of a note or if you want to share the note with someone who doesn't have an icloud account ?

Just go into the note , tap the ellipses menu and tap , send a copy .

You can also share an entire folder .

This is a great use case actually for creating a separate folder rather than using tags .

Let's say I want to share my entire work folder with all the notes inside of it .

I just long press it , choose share folder and go through the same process .

Now , Apple Notes also lets you lock notes very handy for when someone sends you a Saucy photo and you don't want it floating around your photos app , just move it from the Photos app to your Apple Note .

And then inside the note , press the ellipses icon and press lock .

Now the first time you do this , you're gonna have to set up a password .

But because I already did this , it just asks for a face id .

All I have to do to lock this note is press the padlock icon at the top .

Now you'll see that this note is locked .

One thing to note is that the title of the note is still visible here .

You see it says Peter diving , but when you tap on it , you won't see the contents to unlock .

It's really easy .

Just go view note , use face id or touch id or enter the same password .

If you've got multiple notes , you want to lock , all you gotta do is look at the bottom of your screen when you're viewing a folder where it says lock .

Now press that and all your notes are locked very handy when you have to give your phone to someone and you don't want them poking around your private information .

If you have a note that you'd like to refer back to frequently , you might want to pin it to the top of a folder just swipe to the right on any note and tap the pin icon and you'll see that it's pinned to the top .

You can pin multiple notes and unpin them again just like that .

Now , each folder has its own pinned notes .

You'll see that here .

I've got mass five rules of drinking stories pinned .

But if I go to a different folder , like my coaching folder , I can pin a different note .

Now , here are some tips for browsing your notes just the way you want to .

If you have a lot of visual notes with attachments , one thing you can do is tap the ellipses when viewing a folder and just choose view as gallery .

If you want to select multiple notes , for example , to move multiple notes to a different folder , all you do is go to the ellipses , menu press , select notes , choose a couple and move them to whatever folder you'd like within each folder .

You can also sort your notes differently so I can tap the ellipses icon and I can sort my notes from oldest to newest , from newest to oldest by title by date created or date edited , which can be very handy if you've got a series of notes on the same topic .

Next , let's take a look at some notes app settings that we can customize .

Let's just go to the settings app and then scroll down until you find notes and you'll see that there's a bunch of things you can change .

You can for example , have the default sort order for your notes be different .

You can start new nodes with a title heading , subheading or body , depending on what you're into , you can automatically sort checked items in a checklist .

So if you keep a checklist and some of them are checked off , they'll get sorted to the bottom and you can also automatically save any documents that you've got inside a note to your photos app .

If they're photos .

Now , let's look at search to access , search , just pull down anywhere and tap the search box .

You can search for , for example , a phrase like receipt or you can use the smart searches that are suggested like all the shared notes that you have or showing all the lock notes or for example , showing all notes with scanned documents .

Next , let's look at checklists .

You can convert a series of lines into a checklist by selecting them all and pressing the checklist button .

After you do this , you can indent items by simply swiping to the right and one of them and out dent them again by swiping to the left .

If you hold your finger over the circle as I'm gonna do with the second circle right now , you can also rearrange items in the list .

There are a few ways to create new notes other than by simply pressing the new note button inside the notes app .

One of them is sharing something to the Notes app from another app like Safari .

Let's say I'm browsing and I see a cool car and I want to remind myself later that this was one of the cars that I thought was cool on the page .

I can press the share button .

I can find Apple Notes and I can either save this to a new Note or by tapping over here .

I can search for the cars .

I like note , tap save .

And if we go back to the notes app , you'll see that under cars .

I like it got added to the note that already existed .

Now , you can also create new notes with Siri .

Hey Siri .

Take a note that I should take my pills twice a day .

Ok ?

I created a new , let's take a look .

There it is .

If you're on your ipad and the screen is off , you can start taking a note by simply taking your apple pencil and tapping on the screen and starting to write whatever you want to write .

If you want to print a note , you don't first need to send it from your phone to your Mac or anything directly from your iphone or ipad .

You can simply tap the ellipses and go down tap print and just make sure that your printer supports apple's air print .

Want to access your Apple notes on the windows device .

That's pretty easy .

Just open any browser and go to icloud dot com and click notes .

There you go .

If you learn something new , you might also like my other video on Apple notes in which I go into a bit more detail about why I've got it set up the way that I have it set up .

Or you might like to watch some of my other videos on Apple and Mac stuff .

Either way .

Thanks so much for watching .

Please hit that like button on your way out .

Have a great day .