How to Make the Most of Apple Notes

Apple Notes is one of those apps that you can use daily without ever making full use of all the different features and functions it has to offer. That’s where this specific guide comes in. The idea is to point out some of the lesser-known but very useful tricks that Apple Notes can do.

I’ll focus on the mobile app, but you’ll find that most of these tips also apply to the desktop version of Apple Notes on macOS.

Maybe you have two separate but also related notes – one note for planning a trip, for example, and another listing various sights you want to see. Apple Notes lets you link the two.

Open one of the notes. At the point where you want to insert the link:

• Press and hold the insertion point. From the pop-up menu, select Add link. (You may need to touch the > to see more options.)
• Start typing the title of the note you want to link to and select it when it appears.
• To switch off Use the note title as the name if you want to enter a different title for the link.
• Touch Doneand you will see your note entered.

Another way to insert a link is to type >> where you want to place the link. In this case, you will simply see a pop-up menu listing the available notes.

Now, you can tap the note link to quickly access it. To delete it, tap and hold the link and choose Remove link.

Notes can contain PDFs, which can be read and annotated if necessary.

To add a PDF from another app (like Mail) to a note:

• Tap the PDF thumbnail in your email or other app.
• To choose To share (usually in the top right corner) > Grades.
• Select which note you want to embed the PDF in by tapping the field below Save to. You can also start a new note by selecting Create new note in the background.
• Touch To save.

When you have a PDF inside a note:

• Tap the down arrow next to the PDF name.
• To choose Quick look to view the PDF in full screen mode. (You can use pinch and zoom to move it.)
• Touch See as to change the size of the embed in your note.
• Choice To share or copy of to send the PDF elsewhere.
• Touch Delete to remove the PDF from the note.

You can doodle on PDFs with the pen tool to annotate them, and select and highlight text within a PDF just like text in a regular note.

You can bring some order to the chaos of your scribbled (but not typed) notes by placing lines or a grid on top of everything.

• With a note open, tap the three dots (top right).
• Choice Lines and Grids and choose a style.
• To set the default style for new notes, choose Grades and then Lines and grids in the iOS Settings panel.

By default, new notes will start with a title in a larger font at the top, but this layout may not be something you want to use. To change how new notes are formatted:

• Open the main iOS Settings panel.
• Touch Grades > New notes start with:
• Now you can choose between Title, Header, CaptionIt is Body.

If you need to jot something down as quickly as possible, you can quickly create new notes in Control Center.

• In Settings on iOS, tap Control Center.
• Make sure Quick note option is added to active controls.
• The Quick Note shortcut is now available when you swipe down from the top right corner of the screen. (Its icon looks like a squiggle inside a box.)

Your iPhone’s lock screen should keep notes well protected from prying eyes, but you can add extra security for particularly sensitive notes. (Note that some notes — for example, those with video, audio, tags, PDF, or file attachments — cannot be locked.)

Within a note, tap the three dots (top right) and then To lock. By default, locked notes can be viewed using the same password or biometric authentication that you use to sign in to your iPhone. If you prefer to set a different password for Notes, tap create password when the Lock notes the screen lights up.

Folders are a way to organize your notes, but tags offer much more flexibility because each note can have multiple tags. To tag a note, simply type a hashtag symbol (#), followed by the tag you want to use.

In the main Folders screen inside Apple Notes, you’ll see tags listed at the bottom: tap any tag to see corresponding notes, or All tags to see each note with a tag attached. Notes lets you search for specific tags or combine notes with multiple tags.

Notes can be shared – just make sure you choose the note with the shopping list and not the one where you recorded your innermost thoughts.

To collaborate on a note you’ve opened:

• Tap the share icon in the top right corner.
• Make sure Collaborate is selected at the top of the share sheet.
• Touch Only invited people can edit (below Collaborate box) to set your options. You can choose the contact you want to collaborate with on a note or make the note accessible to anyone with the relevant link. You can also define whether changes can be made by other people.

Changes to notes are tracked, so you can see which collaborator made which changes. Tap the collaborate button (which looks like a person and a plus sign) at the top of a note to modify the amount of tracking information shown or to stop sharing a note.

Tables within notes can be useful for keeping information organized. When you have a note in edit mode, tap the table button above the keyboard to insert a table. (It looks like a simple grid.) If the toolbar above the keyboard isn’t visible, tap the + (more) icon right above it.

• Tap inside any cell in the table to make changes.
• Tap the handle (the three dots) at the top or side of a table to select an entire row or column.
• Tap the handle again to delete the row or column or to insert a new one.

Once inside a table, you can tap the table button again to delete, share, or copy the table, or convert it to plain text.