How To Add a Drawing To a Note On a Mac

It is easy to add a drawing to a note in the Notes app on an iPhone or iPad. But what about on a Mac? You'll need to add a blank image first, but once you set it up the first time it is easy to add a drawing or sketch to any note.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can sketch in the Notes App on your Mac. 
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Now more and more people are using the Notes App, especially as Apple keeps adding new features. One feature that is still missing is the ability to sketch using your Mac. Now you can easily sketch from your iPhone and iPad. As a matter of fact on the iPad you can use the Apple Pencil. But on a Mac you can't even use your mouse or trackpad to sketch. Now you can sketch if you've got an image there already. For instance in this note here I've got this image here. I can click at the upper right hand corner, go to Markup, and in Markup Tools I can use some of these sketching options. Draw shapes and all sorts of things. So I can just sketch across this here and when I click Done you can see it's now part of that image. What happens if you just want to add a sketch. Like you're taking notes in a meeting or in a class and you just need to add something simple. 
Now Apple kind of assumes that since you don't have a touch screen on a Mac, there's no Apple Pencil, there's no good way to sketch. You shouldn't be able to sketch at all. But some people are pretty good at drawing simple things with the mouse and trackpad and other people may have some sort of tablet attached to their Mac. So you may wish there is just someway just to do a basic sketch right here on the Mac like you can on the iPhone and iPad version of Notes. 
Of course the first way I'm going to show you how to do it requires that you have an iPhone or iPad with you. In that case you can go to any point in your note, click on this button right here which you would insert a photo. But notice since my iPhone and I have an iPad that are using the same Apple ID they should show up here and you can choose Add Sketch. So I'll do that and my iPhone will be taken over by a little drawing screen. I can use my finger to sketch on this and then when I tap Done then I get that sketch inserted here in Notes on my Mac. 
But the whole point here is to be able to do it just on your Mac. Not having to pull out your iPhone or use another device. So, as I showed before you can mark up an image if it is already there. So let's insert a blank image. Now if you have any graphics app, like Pixelmator Pro or Acorn or PhotoShop, you can easily create a totally white square image and just bring that into Notes. But I'm going to assume that you don't have any graphics apps at all. So there is a quick and simple way to create a blank image and you only need to do this the first time. I'm going to create a new note here in Notes. So I have this big white blank field here. I can just turn this into an image using a screenshot. So I'm going to do Shift Command 5 and use the Screenshot Tool and then click here to capture a selected portion. Then I can adjust the size here. Just grab a bit of the white field that's right here. I'm going to go to Options here and I'm going to have it Saved to the Desktop. I can have the Show Pointer turned Off or just make sure the pointer is outside the white area when you select. Typically we have Show Floating Thumbnail on. It doesn't really matter because if I do Capture you'll see it appear at the bottom right. But after a few seconds that will disappear and you'll get this file. 
Now this file right here, if I select it and use the Spacebar to Quick Look, it's just a totally blank image there. I'm going to Rename it. I'm just going to call it Blank.png. Now I could put this anywhere. Probably there is better locations than on the Desktop. You can stick it in your Documents folder. But if I drag this into Notes I can get a blank area here, like that. You can see that's the completely blank image. So now I can go to Markup Tools as before but now I just have this blank canvas that I can draw on. I can add shapes if I want. I can add text. I can do whatever I need to diagram something. Click Done and now I've got my drawing in here. I can even go back in and choose Markup and continue to edit it. So it is a little handy way to quickly add something here. Just keep this image around to use later on. 
You can go further with this. I went to a ClipArt collection and I got this file here which is this little notepad. It shows little spirals at the top and it has a grid on it. So I can Drag and Drop this in instead. Now I get this notepad here. I can mark this up and now I have a nice little grid that I can draw on which you may like. You can get, of course, ones with lines. You can make your own up if you are good with graphics. You can have these little images inserted here. You can open this up in the Preview App. I just double clicked it there to open it up. You can Resize it to adjust the size. Maybe make it something smaller if you just want a smaller image there. Maybe you have a selection of them. Have different sizes and different types to Drag and Drop into the Notes App. 
So that covers the basics. But we can use the Shortcut's App to make this a little bit easier. So you can quickly add a blank image to a note anytime you want with just a keyboard shortcut. 
In the Shortcut's App I'm going to add a New Shortcut here. I'm going to call this one Insert Blank Image Into Notes. I want to go to the details section here and then I want to set it as a Quick Action in the Services Menu that provides Output and in the Receive Section here I want to change that. I'm going to click Select All and then Deselect All so it is nothing right here because I don't want to get anything into this. But I do want to Output something which is why I've selected Provide Output here. I'm going to add a keyboard shortcut. I'm going to do Control Option Command and K. That should do it. Now I just need to create a blank image. It's a little tricky to do in Shortcuts. There are some that will do it using Base 64 encoding. There's a simpler but a kind of convoluted way to do it. If you first create a bit of text, I'm just going to type text here and just grab the Text Action and just leave that blank. So create a blank piece of text. You can then do Text to Image, so make image from Rich Text like that. I can make an image from this text, which is blank. I could have Show More. It gives me a size. So let me do like 320 by 240. Just a small image there. Then Output the image. 
So now with this setup like this I should see it in the Services Menu. Let me close it right here. Go to Notes. Then if I go to Notes, Services I'll see Insert Blank Image into Notes. There's the keyboard shortcut. Instead of using it here I'm going to use the keyboard shortcut and do it. It's going to insert the blank image it created right there. So, a quick way to add this little blank image that now you can quickly go in and markup and create these little sketches and notes on your Mac. 
Now you could alter this to actually use this image right here, that little notepad. So I'm going to get rid of the text here and Make Image From Text. Instead I'm going to drag this file in, right there like that. So it is going to link to the file. It does a really weird thing with the file name there but the link is valid. So it's going to grab that. Now I need to create an image from that. I'm going to look for Image here. If I scroll down I'll find one called Get Images From Input. I'm going to add that right here. So it's going to get the file and it's going to get the image from the file. For this I'm going to Control click or two-finger click or right click and I'm going to select the images that come out of this. So it will get the file, get the image from the file, and then that's what will output. Now I can close this and in Notes using this same keyboard shortcut it will, instead of inserting that blank image made from that blank text field, it is going to  insert the notepad that png image. The first time it is going to ask is it okay to use that file. I'll say yes and there I go. I've got it. So now anytime I want just a quick keyboard shortcut and I've inserted this image here that I can now go in and markup and add whatever I want here and illustrate something automatic without having to use an iPhone or iPad to sketch.
But the shortcut only adds little bit of convenience. If you don't want to go and work with Shortcuts you can just have these files somewhere you can easily Drag and Drop them into any note that you want. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “How To Add a Drawing To a Note On a Mac”

Sheldon

11 months ago

Thanks bunches

Gerry

Clever stuff, Gary. Could a 'Pencil', or another implement be used on the trackpad?

Gary Rosenzweig

Gerry: The Apple Pencil can't be used with the Mac Trackpad. There is something special build into iPad displays that works with it. I've never seen anyone use a touch pointer or anything like that with a Trackpad either. It is probably because a Trackpad is very different than a touch screen in how you use it. It doesn't map to the screen like that.

Many thanks for your courtesy, Gary. It can't be that simple a problem either, or some enterprising electrician would already be challenging Elon for the rights.

Ken Nellis

Clever idea. Thanx! And great seeing another use for Shortcuts. A convenient place to store the blank image might be in another note.

Vernon Fragnito

This was useful, but I was wondering if there is a way to insert a text box in a note and move it to any location within that note. Currently, it looks like any photo or file you insert can only be left justified in the note. Thanks!

Vernon: You don't really have that sort of control in Notes. If you need to design something like that, use Pages instead.