Take Control of Notes

Unlock the potential of Apple’s Notes app!

Version 1.7, updated December 13, 2023

This book tells you everything you need to know about Apple's Notes app for iOS, macOS, and the web, from basic features like formatting to advanced features like scanning documents, password protecting notes, making sketches, and managing attachments.

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, 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