How to Use Mac Notes In 5 Minutes

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you the basics for using the Notes App on your Mac. 

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So Notes is a productivity app that comes with macOS. It's great for typing some quick text and saving it, taking notes during a meeting, or a phone call, or even at school. When you launch the Notes App you should see three columns here. A list of your Folders & Accounts, a list of Notes that are in the folder that is selected, and then the note to the right. If you don't see the list of Folders & Accounts here on the left go to View and then you've got Hide & Show Folders. Also note that if this window is too small then that column will be hidden. The notes are usually saved in a Cloud Account. Go to Notes, Accounts and it will take you to System Settings and right to the Internet Accounts Section. So you can look in an account here like for Goggle and see Notes and whether it is turned On or Off. But using accounts other than iCloud are going to limit what you can do in Notes. Not all features are supported outside of iCloud. 

So, I'm going to assume that under iCloud you've got Notes turned On and that is the only account you're using for Notes. 

Now I've started a new note here. You can create one by clicking the New Note button at the top or going to File, New Note, or Command N. The first line of any note is also going to be used as the title. So whatever you type there can be seen here in the list very easily. It's also going to be assigned a nice Title or Heading style. Then the lines after that will just be plain text. But you could format text in a variety of different ways. You can select some characters or words here, click the Text Format button here at the top, and you've got Bold, Italics, Underline and Strike Through. Or you can use the common keyboard shortcuts like Command B for bold. You can also set a style for the entire paragraph. So if I wanted to make this a different style I can select that and you can see the whole paragraph changes. So you have various styles here that you could use. It can't be modified in Notes. You have to just use the default settings. But if you do want to do some advanced formatting you could select some text like this. Use Command T to bring up the Text Inspector. Even set a custom color for that particular piece of text. 

Now one of the most common things you may want to do is use a List Format. Use the Checklist button here at the top. When you do that every line is a different item in a checklist. You can even check an item there and it gives you the ability to sort that list based on what's already been checked. But you can also go and use the Formatting Style of a Bullet List, Dash List, or Numbered List. Then you can get more traditional lists. If you add an item here and then use Tab to indent you see how the numbering goes to a second level or even a third level and so on. You can do Shift Tab to have it go back. You can use Control Command and then Up Arrow and Down Arrow to move the item up and down in the list. 

There are other things you can include in a note as well. For instance you can drag and drop any image into your note. Once the image is in there you can even click here and mark it up using the standard macOS Markup Tools. You can drag other files into a note as well and actually embed that as an attachment inside the note. You can also include links in a note. You can just type out the link and it will recognize it as a link, or you can drag and drop a link from Safari into the note. You also have the ability to import from an iPhone or iPad. So if you have an iPhone or iPad using the same Apple ID and it is nearby you can use it to take a photo or scan in a document or even sketch using the touchscreen. 

You view notes in the List in the second column here. It reflects whatever you have selected here in the first column. So if you've created a customized folder like this one you can organize your notes by dragging and dropping a note into a folder. You can create a folder with the button here at the bottom or File, New Folder. You can also view notes in Grid View here and you see them like this. But when you're using List View you can Sort By the date edited, created, the title, and then in either order and you can also group by date. You can also, of course, use the powerful Search feature here to search for words in the title and text of your note. 

Another way to organize is by adding Tags. A tag would start with the hash or pound symbol and then you could call the tag whatever you want. Then you'll see a list of tags here. You may have to click on the little disclosure triangle to reveal it and you could view the notes that just have that one tag applied to them. You can Share a note in a variety of different ways. You can choose whether to collaborate or send a copy. When you send a copy it is going to export it as a pdf. Then you could send it by Mail or Messages or AirDrop it. But if you choose to collaborate you can set it up so that they can make changes or view only. Then they can work on the note at the same time you can. You'll both see each others edits. It is a great way to do collaborative meeting notes. You can also Export any note as a pdf. You can also import notes from a variety of formats like text files or even Evernote files. 

One last tip. There's something called Quick Note which will allow you to quickly start a note without having to even launch the app. You can access this on the Mac by using fn and then Q. It brings up a little notes window right away and you can start writing something down. Then when you're looking at the regular Notes window you'll see all of your Quick Notes here at the top, in its own section, and you could just drag and drop one into a regular folder.

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.