Apple Notes Features Ipad

To start another line of text in the cell, touch and hold the Shift key and tap next. When you reach the last cell, tap next to start a new row.

Get started with Notes on iPhone

You can choose from a variety of Markup tools and colors and draw straight lines with the ruler. After iPhone scans the page, you can save it in the note, mark it up, and even add your signature.

The availability of features may vary depending on your language and country or region.

Create and format notes on iPad

To start another line of text in the cell, touch and hold the Shift key and tap next. When you reach the last cell, tap next to start a new row.

WWDC 2023: Notes and Reminders to Gain Significant Productivity Features This Fall

Every WWDC, I look forward to what Apple’s Notes and Reminders teams have in store for the next version of the company’s OSes. Notes will add several new features this fall, including PDF tools, linking, new formatting, and Pages integration. Notes will be able to detect fields in a PDF, so you can fill out forms with an enhanced version of AutoFill using data from the Contacts app too.

As you draw, annotate, type on, or add stickers to a shared PDF, Apple says the changes will appear immediately on your collaborator’s device. It doesn’t automatically add backlinks to the source note the way an app like Obsidian does, but you can do that manually if you’d like, and I expect one-way linking is plenty for most users. I don’t use them as frequently as I used to, but students, teachers, lawyers, and many others who depend on PDFs as a core part of their work, should get a much more robust solution for adding them to their note-taking setup with Notes this fall.

I’m especially fond of Reminders’ Siri integration, which makes adding items easy as I stare into an empty refrigerator. This fall, Reminders will be able to organize your groceries into categories like Produce, Dairy, Eggs, & Cheese, Frozen Food, and Breads & Cereals.

I spent most of last year using Reminders, and one of the biggest friction points was lists that got so long that they were hard to scan quickly. Notes and Reminders have been mainstays of Apple’s OSes for a long time, but in the past few years, the apps have really distinguished themselves with more advanced features and refinements that make them more flexible than ever.

Create and format notes on iPad

To start another line of text in the cell, touch and hold the Shift key and tap next. When you reach the last cell, tap next to start a new row.

Get started with Notes on iPad

Add sketches and more Tap , then draw or write with Apple Pencil or your finger. You can choose from a variety of Markup tools and colors and draw straight lines with the ruler.

After iPad scans the page, you can save it in the note, mark it up, and even add your signature.

Use Notes on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Search can also find specific text inside scanned documents or images, like receipts or bills.

Apple Notes Review 2023

The app comes preinstalled on all Apple devices, making it easily accessible for modern notetakers. The current version comes equipped with a variety of tools to help you write, store, and share your notes.

The good news is that it’s completely free, and there aren’t even any in-app purchases with upgrades. You’ll have access to every feature of the app, as long as you have an iPhone, iPad, or Mac to use. We also recommend picking up a screen protector by Paperlike for a more natural writing experience. For long writing or planning sessions, you might also consider our Pencil Grips for maximum comfort. The latest updates have turned Apple Notes into a strong contender for digital notetakers. Improved organization, advanced searching capabilities, functional tools, and the ability to scan documents are just a few of the new features Apple has added in recent years to upgrade Notes into a more powerful app.

With the latest iOS 16 update, you’ve also got the ability to add filters to your smart folders for even better organization. OCR can locate your search terms in text, handwritten notes, images, and scanned documents. However, this view changes based on whether you hold your device vertically or horizontally while working in notes. List View is ideal when you need to keep track of multiple topics at once because you’ll see more notes on your screen.

For users who like a compact workspace, List View will allow you to pack as much onto the screen as possible. But keep in mind that making sense of List View requires better structure and organization for your notes because there isn’t as much to see when searching from the main screen.

By tapping the ellipsis button on the far right, you’ll have the option to increase or decrease the size of each note thumbnail. If you’re a more visual person, this view allows you to quickly see what’s in each note, especially if you’ve attached a picture or document. #caption#Apple Notes comes equipped with a standard selection of drawing and writing tools. Implements featured include three pen types, pencil, marker, highlighter, eraser, lasso, and ruler.

While the Apple Notes toolbar might seem small when compared to other notetaking apps, it offers more than enough functionality to get the job done. #caption#While Apple Notes comes with some great formatting options, you’ll have the best experience and better access to this functionality by activating Shortcuts in your keyboard settings.

If you’re a big fan of typed text, Apple Notes also comes with onboard handwriting conversion via the Scribble feature.

You can also disable Scribble in the Settings menu, which is useful if you want to combine handwritten and typed text inside a single document. However, keep in mind that Notes will keep the text and handwritten sections in separate blocks on the page, so intermingling the two is somewhat limited. If you’ve updated to iPadOS 16, you now have four different types of pens, a pencil, and a marker.

Only available if you have Scribble enabled, but it’s designed as a convert-to-text pen and doesn’t allow you to write freely. #alt#Image of squiggly lines written in each of the writing tools (Marker, Monoline, Pencil, Fountain, Watercolor) with labels. Though similar in features, it’s worth remembering that the Pen and Pencil are two separate tools. The lines created by the Pencil look grainy compared to pen strokes, and this is by design. It’s easy to shade or darken a line by tilting your Pencil or adding pressure. The Pencil tool responds to pressure sensitivity, has no lag, and offers a realistic drawing or writing experience. Keep in mind that writing and sketching on a digital notetaking app can be challenging due to the glass screen. While Apple Notes does its best to offset this challenge, a Paperlike screen protector can make the surface of your iPad feel like real paper, immensely improving your experience.

Five lines are drawn on the page and are numbered in accordance with the default thickness settings in the tool selection menu. Like the Pen and the Pencil tools, the Highlighter comes with five preset thicknesses and an opacity slider. Unlike some of the other notetaking apps, Notes doesn’t allow you to resize or rotate your selection. Recent updates do allow you to use this tool to straighten your handwritten text, which is pretty neat if your handwriting tends to slant or wander on the page.

As you move your drawn selections, keep a close eye on the little tab marker on the left side of the document (pictured below). The separator on the left margin will show you the current boundary of your handwritten work. You can adjust the placement and angle of the Ruler and draw a straight line along the edge.

Black, blue, green, yellow, and red are default, but you can use the palette to create custom colors too. You can format your text, add lists or tables, and import photos or documents (more on this below) by clicking the appropriate icon on your toolbar. Once you’ve done that, tap the pen icon to access your Markup tools for annotation.

This isn’t terribly different from how Apple Notes handles images or scanned documents. The document or image you import will also be treated as an attachment rather than a note, but, depending on the file type, some editing may still be available.

You can annotate and mark up an image file (JPG / PNG) inside Notes in the same way as a PDF, by tapping on the attachment and then selecting the pen button at the top of the page. Other apps like Goodnotes or Notability allow you to automatically backup to Google Drive, Dropbox, or Microsoft OneDrive.

Additionally, because Apple Notes uses raster ink, exports can make your PDFs look blurry. Also, Apple Notes are vertically infinite, which means you won’t have any idea where your pages will start and end.

Once everyone is signed in, it’s possible to tag other users, highlight important sections of text, and collaborate together to build a better document. You can send invitations to collaborate through Messages or FaceTime, and everyone on the thread will automatically be added to the note. Most notetaking apps don’t allow you to create a checklist or table unless you draw them yourself, but it’s possible to do both using Apple Notes. With Apple Notes, you can create an interactive checklist that allows you to mark off items as you complete them. You can add or delete as many columns and rows as you need, and you can make your text bold, underlined, or italicized. These two features help set Apple Notes apart, especially if you’ve been creating these items by hand in other apps.

While serious notetakers may find Apple Notes lacking in certain areas, this app has many great features that make it perfectly functional and unique. By using Apple Notes, you’re taking advantage of a robust operating system and all of the apps associated with it. Organizing and navigating through the system is simple and intuitive, and the advanced search and sharing capabilities give this app the important features every notetaker needs.

#alt#Image of a lined sheet of paper with an iPad and Apple Pencil on top of it and the word, “FAQ.”

However, Apple Notes contains a lot of great tools that certainly make it worth trying out before paying for advanced features that you might not use. You can also check out the 11 Best Notetaking Apps for iPad for some good alternatives if you don’t feel Apple Notes has everything that you need.

With iOS 16, macOS 16, and iPadOS 16, Apple recently launched a new app called Freeform that’s designed for visual collaboration and brainstorming. Instead of a place to take notes or jot down your thoughts, it’s built like an infinite, flexible canvas for drawing, writing, and connecting ideas. Apple Notes doesn’t handle mixing text and handwriting very well, but Freeform allows you to drag and drop any kind of content onto the board in any location. While Apple Notes lacks a Windows version, there are a couple of ways you can use the app on your PC.

We recommend using the iPad Pro, and you’ll also want an Apple Pencil if you plan on taking any handwritten notes. If you prefer handwriting your notes, our screen protector gives friction to the surface of your iPad, so that it feels like writing on paper. Whether you decide to test out Apple Notes or prefer one of the other digital notetaking apps, you can still improve your experience significantly by using a Paperlike. The Paperlike converts the slick, glass surface of your iPad into a texture that feels the same as writing or drawing on real paper. This screen protector is a must-have tool for artists, notetakers, and creative professionals looking to enhance their performance on an iPad.

Write This Down: 17 Things You Didn’t Realize Apple’s Notes App Could Do

The Notes app built into Apple devices has long offered people a quick and convenient way to save lists, thoughts, and other random items. And while Apple initially shunned the bells and whistles found in the top note-taking apps, it has slowly beefed up Notes over time. In 2022, Apple kicked in several enhancements with iOS 16 and iPadOS 16, such as the ability to add a quick note on your iPhone and protect a note with a passcode or biometric method. In 2023, the Notes app gained a few more features with the jump iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, including an option to mark up scanned documents and a way to add links in notes.

Before you get started, make sure you’re running the latest version of the OS on your iPhone or iPad. You’ll be told that your OS is up to date or prompted to download the latest update.

Those running macOS 12 Monterey or higher can also create Quick Notes on your Mac. Head to the More Controls section and tap the + icon next to Quick Note. To create a Quick Note, swipe down from the top right corner to access the Control Center. You can also create a Quick Note from an app, such as a website in Safari, a link on a specific webpage, or selected text on any screen. To do this, open the ellipsis menu in the note and choose Lock. When in List view, your notes appear by default in descending order with a title and the first few words visible.

To do this, tap the ellipsis icon in the Notes app and select View as Gallery from the menu. A variety of commands appear, including scan, pin, lock, delete, share, send, search, move, format, and print. Press down on a note or folder and drag it to a different location in the list. The new subfolder will then be hidden from view until you open the parent folder. Open the folder, tap the ellipsis icon, and select the Sort by option. You can share notes and folders with other people, giving them permission to just view or also make changes.

Decide if you want other people to make changes or only view the folder and its notes. You can then share the folder via a text message, email, another app, or by copying a direct link.

As long as you’re running iOS/iPadOS 15 or higher, you can add hashtags to notes anywhere in the text or title in order to better organize them. The tag can’t contain spaces, but you can include hyphens or underscores. You can create smart folders based on your tags and other criteria. Such folders are dynamic in that they change to automatically include any notes to which you add a specific tag.

Whenever you create a new note and use that tag, it automatically gets added to this folder. Type the entry and tap the Return key to create another circle and repeat the process as needed.

The first time you do this, you’re asked if you want all completed items to move to the bottom of the list. Tap the Aa button above the keyboard to choose a style, apply bold or other attributes, and set up a bulleted or numbered list. Create a new note or open an existing one, tap the ellipsis icon, and select Scan. Then tap the markup icon in the lower right and choose a drawing tool.

At the next screen, add the URL for the webpage to include in the link, then tap Done. The Notes app works with Apple Pencil in iPadOS 14 and higher to offer a Scribble option that converts your handwriting into editable text. To try this, just start scribbling characters in a note, and your handwriting will be converted to text.

The Ultimate Guide to Apple Notes – The Sweet Setup

If you were to rank all of Apple’s stock apps that receive the most number of updates on an annual basis and poll the experts, I expect you’d find Messages, Maps, and Notes coming in the top three more often than not. I’ll provide a few simple quick tips of things I’ve built that make my Notes experience that much better.

We’ll start at the bottom and work our way up the Notes features ladder.

If you’re adding just text though, you will find a vast number of formatting options in the Aa menu in the top navigation bar of each note.

Where this level of formatting is quite important is in one of Notes’ latest features in iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma: Convert to Pages. As a rich preview, if you add the link from the link-addition button in the top navigation bar.

If you’re not interested in either of the visual media, you can also drag and drop audio recordings into a note or use the share sheet from the Voice Memos app. This is especially powerful for students who may want to keep all their education material in one app on their devices and still maintain other first-party functionality, such as Apple Pencil sketches.

The scanner works surprisingly well and quickly, enabling you to move to an increasingly paperless world and store everything inside the Notes app.

Finally, Notes can store sketches made with the Apple Pencil, third-party stylus, or your finger. Sketches can be stored in-line with any other file type or text and can be part of any document you send over to Pages in the latest versions of iOS and macOS. It can be your synced storage depot for storing scanned receipts, hand-written notes from your iPad’s home screen, screenshots and snippets you find from around the web, and even voice memos that you want to have in-line with your other work.

Putting Messages aside, perhaps no app benefits more from this walled garden than Apple Notes. In iPadOS 17 and iOS 17, Apple has provided a way to quickly convert any note you’ve previously created into a full-fledged document inside Pages. Because Pages provides all the features you’d expect of a document processor, whereas the Notes interface is caters more to capture, storage, and quick forms of memorabilia. By converting to Pages, you gain the ability to paginate your document, provide additional formatting for print, and more. Monospaced text appears differently in Pages, as there’s no grey-scale color behind the font. Notes is one of the biggest benefactors of this text recognition — Notes can recognize words and numbers in your handwritten text, can provide tappable launch links for phone numbers and addresses in photos or scanned documents, and more. For example, if you’re a student, there’s very little stopping you from lifting your iPad or iPhone up at the end of a lecture and capturing the entirety of the screen or board from the instructor in front of you. Later, when it’s time to study, you can search for terms written on that screen or board captured in a photo and you can quickly find what you’re looking for.

Using an Apple Pencil, you can tap a locked and sleeping iPad and immediately bring up a fresh note. Instead, you get a somewhat-barebones version of a fresh note that lets you to instantly capture your inspiration. These sorts of first-party features can quickly become engrained in any workflow and make it hard to supplant. And, where a third-party app may leap ahead in one category or another, Apple often tends to “sherlock” or copy the feature in their own way.

In iOS 17, macOS Sonoma, and iPadOS 17, Apple Notes gains the ability to edit PDFs right in the app. On Mac, this is as easy as using the Command key to select multiple notes, secondary-clicking for the contextual menu, and choosing the desired tag. Tags can be chosen on the bottom of the left navigational sidebar to filter your note list.

Where tags can be applied quickly and easily, Smart Folders take a little extra thought to create, but yield incredible results for unearthing stored notes later on. This provides the ability to jump into a folder and tag or categorize all untagged notes, much like the inbox in a GTD system. This provides the ability to jump into a folder and tag or categorize all untagged notes, much like the inbox in a GTD system. There are other Smart Folder-like organizational features already built into Apple Notes from the start. This new back-linking feature is sure to kick-start Apple Notes as a personal knowledge management app, and I’m curious to see where those organizational elements go in the future.

Apple Notes has a strong search platform, bolstered by its excellent text recognition features.

The fact so many millions of other users have an iPhone, iPad, or Mac ensures there are loads of people who have access to Apple Notes. Collaboration leapt forward in iOS 16, where users could view an activity log of others’ actions on a shared note. If you do this through Messages, you’ll be given a dropdown in the composer field to determine if you want to send a copy or collaborate on a note.

You can share notes in a variety of other third-party apps on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It has quickly become an easy and default way for contributors here at The Sweet Setup to work on an article together in real-time. FREE Webinar 🎉 The Focused Writer: Improve Your Workflow If you ever find that your “Deep Work Time” is filled with distractions, procrastination, or the blank page… then join Shawn Blanc for this free class. + The 4 steps of an organized writing workflow that will remove stress and procrastination from your creative process.

With all these excellent sharing features, it’s imperative Apple Notes can be stored safely, securely, and privately. Enter that passphrase, and choose whether you want to allow Face ID/Touch ID for authentication to your locked note.

This is a bit unsettling — perhaps someone is able to claw their way into your Mac and learns your login password. To avoid this, go into Apple Notes’ settings and check the box at the bottom where it says Use Touch ID. Secure notes on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and iCloud website are end-to-end encrypted using AES-GCM with a 16-byte key derived from the user’s passphrase using PBKDF2 and SHA256. The secure session is opened with a passphrase, Face ID, or Touch ID and closed when the user taps the Lock Now button, Notes is switched to the background for more than 3 minutes (8 minutes in macOS), or the device locks. Notes without a tag are stored in chronological order based on the date created in the Smart Folder, and I’ll jump in occasionally to triage as many as I can. Once in the Smart Folder, it’s easy to select multiple like-notes and quickly apply a single tag.

This means you have to navigate back into the Inbox Smart Folder to find the next note for tagging and triaging. But I want to double down on the power of Quick Notes, because they add this overarching layer across the entire operating system.

Case in point: Navigate to an article on any of your favorite blogs in Safari and create a Quick Note — either by dragging up from the bottom right corner with the Apple Pencil on the iPad or hovering in the right corner on your Mac — type in the title of the note, and click on the Add Link button in the toolbar. Super simple quick tip here, but it’s going to save you countless time searching through a large notes database.

For instance, I coached a tee ball team this summer and all the important information came in an email. Then, whenever it was time for tee ball, that pinned note was right at the top of the list.

It’s hard to overstate how powerful Apple Notes has become over the last few years of major iOS, iPadOS, and macOS iterations. Notes has gone from a skeuomorphic nightmare to perhaps the most powerful built-in app on an iPhone or iPad in a short period of time.

Apple has also taken advantage of its integrated hardware and software and provided features no other app could ever dream of having. This combination of features makes Apple Notes a powerful and compelling app for all sorts of users. Each year, there’s less and less reason to look for other note-taking apps thanks to the growing power of Apple Notes. I recommend you give it another shot if you looked over the app a few years ago — I guarantee it’s changed enough to reconsider.

15+ New Apple Notes Features for iPhone and iPad That Will Finally Make It Your Go-To Notes App

Apple Notes started with humble beginnings as a scratchpad of sorts, a place for us to stash some simple text for later. It’s received many upgrades over the years, but Apple’s latest iPhone software update is a game-changer. The upgrades make collaborating on notes even more useful than before, give you more control over fun elements such as stickers, improve the attachments experience, let you create your own wiki-style network of information, and more. Just press Command-K on your keyboard after selecting the text, paste the URL in, and hit “OK.” But hyperlinking has always been missing on iOS and iPadOS — until now.

Tapping it will open in your preferred browser, and you can long-press it to preview the webpage, add it to your reading list, copy the link, or share it. On iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma, you can now use the same process for hyperlinking text to create links to any of your other notes.

Full Guide: How to Link Your Notes Together on iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma Full Guide: How to Create Links to Notes That Don’t Exist Yet on iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma Long-press a thumbnail to get the same options as in Quick Look, including rotating, inserting, and deleting pages. For PDFs, click the more option (•••) next to the PDF’s name, choose “Attachment Display,” and pick between small, medium, and large views.

Stickers inserted outside the sketch area will be regular images, while those inside can be moved around. You can drag it around to where you want it, tap a corner and swipe in or out to decrease or increase the size, or place two fingers inside the perimeter and twist to change the orientation.

For PDFs, you can add stickers in its inline view or tap its name and select “Quick Look.” You can drag it around to where you want it, tap a corner and swipe in or out to decrease or increase the size, or place two fingers inside the perimeter and twist to change the orientation. But for some reason, Notes on iOS and iPadOS always omitted the crayon from the writing tools. For example, someone could be typing out a checklist while you’re highlighting a PDF and another person is adding photos — and you all would see it on the screen as it happens. For another example, you could be annotating a PDF in a note on your iPad with an Apple Pencil, circling things that need attention, and another person could be adding stickers, shapes, or photos to the document at the same time. Tap that, and it will appear as a filter in the search bar, and you can type a keyword to narrow the results.

Before, searching for a PDF and a keyword would show you Top Hits, Notes, and Attachments in that order. There are now undo and redo buttons for notes in the top bar on iPhone and iPad, which makes it easy to quickly take or add back any text you’ve entered without shaking your device or using swipe gestures.

In portrait orientation on iPhone, the formatting tools (text style, bold, italics, bullets, etc.) Instead, it became available in the Pages 13.1 update in the App Store a few months ago, so it also works on iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura. Don’t Miss: Your iPhone’s Weather App Is Getting a Huge Update with 12+ New Features