15 Mac Notes Tips

Here are some tips to help you master the Notes app on your Mac. Learn how to add tags, link to other notes, resize images, highlight text and much more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some tips for getting the most out of Notes on your Mac. 
The Notes App on your Mac, and also on the iPhone and iPad, has become indispensable to a lot of people. So here are some tips on using it that you may not know. 
The main Notes window works just like any other window. If you click on a window behind it, it's now covered by that window. But you can get a note to float on top. The key is to have that note breakout into its own window first. So double-click the note in the list on the left. Now it will be in its own window. You can still work with it just like you can in the main window. But now you can go to Window and then Keep On Top. With this window set to keep on top even if you select a window behind you can see this window is still floating on top and you can work with the note inside it. 
A note can be as long as you want and have lots of different information. One way to tame it though is to collapse sections. Anywhere you have a title, heading, or subheading you can click to left of that text and collapse the section underneath. So you can collapse all of the different sections like that and just focus on the one you want. In the view menu you'll even find keyboard shortcuts for collapsing the Section, All Sections, or Expanding All Sections. 
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If you have a lot of notes it can be hard to organize them all. You can certainly create folders here in the left sidebar for that. But a better way to do it is often to Tag things. So, for instance, I can add a tag anywhere in this note by using the Pound or Hash symbol and then typing a tag and you can see it appears here in yellow. Now if I look here under Tag I'll see all the tags that I've used. If I click on one it will show me just the notes that have that tag in it. You can add as many tags to notes as you want and remove them just as easily. 
You can also Link to other Notes. You can do this by selecting any text that you want and then go to Edit and then Add Link or Command K. Then you can start typing the name of another note, like this, and it will narrow it down. You can select the one that you want and it will turn this into a link that goes to that note. A shortcut for that is to simply type the greater than symbol twice and then you get a list here. But you can just keep typing, like this, until it narrows it down to what you want and you can see you can also create a new note to Link to or select this one, like that. Now I can click here and it will jump right to that other note. You can add a link in that note back to this one if you like. 
If you want to highlight some text in Notes you can do that by selecting it and then clicking the Style button here. Click this little color dot to select your color and this will highlight that text using that color. After you do that you can select other text and use this tool here to highlight it. Now if that seems like a lot of work note that under Format, Font there's highlight and you can see a keyboard shortcut, Shift Command E. So you just select text and use Shift Command E to highlight it. 
But you can also style text directly if you like. So, you can select text here and you can use Format, and then Font and you'll see a lot of keyboard shortcuts that are used in other apps. Like Command B for Bold. But you can also use Show Fonts or Command T to bring up the Font Chooser here and you can choose any font that you want and then choose different styles, like Bold or Italic, and sizes right from this control. You can also click here and then it will bring up the Color Tools and you can use this to select a different color for the text. You can also get to that under Format, Font, and then there's Show and Hide Colors, or Shift Command C. 
Now if you have some text with the style you like you don't have to completely recreate if every time. You can Select it and then if you go to Format, then under Font you'll notice there's Copy Style & Paste Style. Remember Option Command C and Option Command V. So just adding the Option to Command C and Command V and you can Copy that style and then select some other text and Paste that style onto that text. 
Note that if you ever want to just remove the style and go back to whatever the default is under Format, Font, you've got Remove Style as well. 
Now, in a variety of different apps on your Mac you have something called Data Detectors. That works in Notes too. For instance, here I've got a date, a phone number, and an address. Notice what happens if I  move my pointer over the date. I get this little box surrounding it and this little button to the right. If I click that it will allow me to create a new event at that date and that time. If I do it with this phone number here it will go to Contacts and allow me to create a new contact. While this box is shown I can also Control Click, right click, or two-finger click and note that I can start a FaceTime call, a FaceTime Audio Call, or I can message this number. For an address here I can use the Data Detector to actually bring up a map. I can even then open in Maps or go to Directions or add the address to my Contacts. 
Another thing you can do in Notes is Math. You can type a math expression, like 1+1, and if you just put equals after it you should see the answer there. Press Return and the answer is added. You can also do complex things like this. Notice how it calculates the result with the variables. You do have some options with this. You can have it automatically insert the results. You can just have it suggest the results, like that, or you can turn it Off completely. I have a whole video on Math Notes and how you can use it. 
Let's say you add an image here by dragging it in. So I have this image here. Notice how it is pretty big. It goes all the way from the left to the right side. But if you Control Click, right click it, or two-finger click notice you can change View As to Small instead. So you can have a small representation of it. You can still select it at any time and then use the spacebar to bring up QuickLook to see a larger version of the image. 
The same is true if you insert a link here. You can do that in many different ways. I'll just do it by typing, like that, and it will make that a link. If I Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on this I can switch it to show Link Preview. Then it will come up like this. I can also take this and change it back to Small and it will be a smaller version of that or just back to a plain link.
Now you're Notes are just like any other content, like Files or Photos or things in your Mac Account.They are encrypted on the drive and that is behind a Password for your User Account. So they are pretty well protected. But if you want to add an extra layer of protection for a few particular notes you can use the Padlock here and lock the note. Now you can see a little lock there. Now you can click here again and close all locked notes or you can quit Notes and come back into it. You'll find that this note is now locked and you need to use your password to get back into it. 
In Notes Settings you can control this a little bit. You can have it use your login password so you don't have to remember a new password or you can set a custom password.
Now you have the ability to record audio into a note. When you do that, if your Mac is new enough and meets these requirements, then you also get a transcript of it. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. You can see I click Done here. If I double click it it will open this up again and you'll see the transcript right here. I can actually Copy the transcript and then paste it in somewhere or just add it to this note like that. 
Now I know people use a lot of Lists in Notes. You can setup lists to be bullet lists, dash lists, or numbered lists. So, for instance, I can change this to a Numbered List. But what a lot of people don't know is you can easily rearrange the items in here, moving things up and down. You can find these controls in Format and Move Item. You'll see Control Command Up arrow or Down Arrow will help you move items. So this second item here I can move up to the first item using Control Command Up Arrow like that. You can use it multiple times. So Control Command Down Arrow, Down Arrow to bring that one to the bottom. 
Sometimes instead of these kinds of lists you'll have checklists. With Checklists you can fill in this circle for each one with a checkmark, like that. But you can also have something interesting happen when you check an item. If you go into Notes, Settings look for Automatically Sort Checked Items. Turn that On and now when you check an item it moves to the bottom of a list. But even if you have that turned Off if you check some items and you have your cursor anywhere in this checklist you can go to Format, then below Checklist under More you can manually select Move Checked to Bottom to move all the checked items to the bottom. Or you can also choose Delete Checked to remove all the checked items. It's great for a long list where you want to move all the checked items to the bottom to separate them from what is still needs to be done or just get rid of those checked items. 
So I hope you found these tips useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “15 Mac Notes Tips”

Sheldon

2 weeks ago

Thanks bunches

Alastair Dudley

1 week ago

Hi Gary,
Another super-useful video, thank you. An a slightly oblique note, are you aware of how to persuade Notes to not behave like a 1200 baud modem when the file gets a bit large? I can type several words ahead of anything turning up on the screen which is somewhat annoying. Ditto, for deleting content having made a mistake to which the keystroke latency definitely contributed.
With kind regards and thanks in advance.

Gil

6 days ago

Great video, as always. One feature that I can't seem to find is how to highlight text with yellow while keeping the original text (black). One of the most common colors for highlighting text is yellow, but it's not even on the Highlight palette. Is there a workaround to highlight text yellow and keep the text black? Thanks!

Graeme CREED

I use notes for a shopping list. If you list all the items you normally purchase and tick them, when you want to make up your shopping list you untick them and they will sort to the top. As you do your shop you tick them and they will sort back down and leave you with the items still to purchase (or in my case the items I have missed) at the top

Gary Rosenzweig

5 days ago

Alastair: I've never seen that. So it happens for you with a large note? How large is large? Maybe divide the information into multiple notes, or consider that it isn't a "note" anymore an needs to be a document (TextEdit, Pages, etc)?

Gil: No, there's no way to customize it. I suppose the idea is to make it look like a yellow marker has been applied.