Apple notes is a note taking powerhouse

 Intro 

Throughout my digital life, I’ve tried dozens of different note taking app, including Obsidian, Notion, EverNote, Bear, UpNote, and that’s not even third of the list. However, I noticed that I always come back to Apple notes. So, one day I decided to use it as my ultimate note taking app. Let’s breakdown why I think it’s the best and how to make it work for you. 

Why Apple notes

Simplicity 

All note taking apps have one thing in common - claim to simplify your digital life. To take all your thoughts, ideas, references and put it all in one single place. To make it accessible. And the key to make it accessible is simplicity. Some note taking apps, packed with overwhelming amount of features like Notion are designed to be your ultimate productivity app, but fail in simplicity. To jot down thought you need to deal with electron UI, which isn’t very responsive and has a lot of unnecessary things. However, Apple notes is designed for simplicity. To take a note you simply press a button and there you go. All of this with a beautiful and smooth interface. 

Pricing

The pricing of Apple notes is what makes it standout the most. It is free, just free, not freemium, not a one time purchase, not a subscription. It is a pre installed free app everybody can use. You don’t need to monthly pay for a note taking app, when it’s all ready on your device. 

In depth review

Formatting

While Apple notes doesn’t natively support markdown, you can integrate it with an extension called ProNotes for free. But it only works on MacOS. However, after using Apple notes for a long time on IOS I pretty much got used to its formatting approach. Also, now with a Liquid Glass update Apple notes natively supports exporting notes as markdown, so maybe, we will see full support in the near future. 

Links

Apple notes makes saving links so much easier than in other apps. To save it you don’t need to paste URLs, you need to share the link to Apple notes, and there you go with a beatiful quote on your note, rather than plain URL. It is an important feature and helps me a lot. 

Handwriting 

Apple notes supports handwriting better than any other note taking app. And the approach is very straightforward. If you got Apple Pencil and want to sketch something quickly Apple notes will handle that easily. 

Organizing notes

Features for organization 

Apple notes supports both smart folders and basic folders. You can use smart folders to put all notes with a link in there, or set custom filters. Basic folders will also handle your needs with something like pinning notes and you can even lock them to make your sensitive documents or other things private. 

PARA method

In terms of organization system, I recommend using PARA method. This is a method for organizing notes, which uses action ability as its main tool for doing that. Basically, the most actionable notes like writing a new blog post are at the top, and the least actionable like a 2 year old photo are at the bottom. It is very simple and straightforward, once you understand how to use it. 

Conclusion 

As you can see Apple notes isn’t that bad nor too simple. It can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. There always will be more shiny options out there, but this one is just the most reliable and tested by time. 

Thanks for reading, see you in the next post.