Keeping a Note On Top In the Mac Notes App

If you use the Notes app to take notes while doing research or attending meetings, you should know about the Keep On Top feature that allows you to keep a Notes window floating above other windows at all times.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the Keep On Top feature of the Notes App on your Mac.
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Sometimes we use the Notes App to take notes while we have something else on the screen. For instance you may be looking at webpage and that webpage may have information and then you're using the Notes App to take notes. You may be looking at presentation in Zoom or another app and taking notes during a class or meeting. One of the challenges is finding the screen space for all of that.
Here we've got a standard desktop and I've got a window here that is taking up the entire screen showing my web browser. Now if I also want to bring up the Notes App that takes up a lot of space as well. You can see here I've really don't have enough space to see the text of the webpage and have the Note open at the same time. But if you have more real estate on your screen you can kind of adjust things like this, maybe get rid of the sidebar here and maybe flip back and forth between these two windows.
But what is nicer is that you could actually open up a Notes window that is independent of the main window here with all the sidebars and such. All you need to do for that is Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on the Notes in the list here and then choose Open Note in New Window. Or I can just double click it and it then you can see how it opens up this Note here in a second window that just has the note. I'm still seeing it over here and if I actually were to type something you could see how it appears in both places. So it is only one Note. I'm just viewing it in two different ways. The great thing is that I can have this little window over here taking up less space and then have that coexist a little bit better with a larger window with a meeting or with a webpage.
But let's say you want to take up more space with the content. Now if you're switching back and forth by bringing the Note up it is covering part of the window, if I bring the window forward it is covering the Note. While logically you have to choose one or the other there, it can be annoying to have to click in this window, to say click a link or navigate in some other way, and then have to bring the Note back to the front. You can tell this window to stay in front using a special command in Notes.
So to do that it is important to understand that this has to be in a separate window. So you can't do it if the Note is being viewed here in the main Notes window with the sidebar and the list of notes. You have to break it out by double-clicking into another window like this. Once it is in another window you can go to the Window Menu and you see Keep On Top. Notice while I have the main Notes window selected in the Window Menu there is no Keep Note On Top. Instead it's Open Note In New Window. That same command we used before by just double clicking. So you have to have this window selected. The little individual window. Not the main Notes window. Then you can select Keep On Top.
Now when I select that it doesn't seem like anything has changed. If I go to the Window Menu now I can see a checkmark next to Keep On Top for this window. So it is being kept on top. You can actually see that in action we need to try to use another window, like maybe this main notes window. If I select it notice how I've got it selected but it didn't jump on top of this window. I can actually drag this around. This main Notes window is now the front-most active window. This window however didn't go behind it like a normal window should. That's because now it has this special feature where it is kept on top. It's not the active window. You can see here that the top here is all kind of grayed out. If I select it you can see now the top isn't grayed anymore. I can actually type in the Note. So you still had to select the window to type but it doesn't disappear behind other windows.
Now if I would bring Safari back up notice how the Safari window opens but it doesn't go in front of this window. It is still the front-most window. It is still the one that's active. The one that if I were to type it would type in this window. But this window isn't hidden. So it is a little easier to see the Notes there and to go back and forth between it. Now to turn this Off you would go to Window and Turn Off Keep On Top. Now you can see that when I select Safari it comes to the front and it hides this window. So let's go and select Keep On Top again. This is a special feature of the Notes App in these little individual notes windows. It's not in other apps. Like Safari doesn't have a Keep On Top. Most other apps don't.
Now some things you should know about this. One is you really can't use the App Switcher with this. So if I use the App Switcher here and I switch to Notes you would think that it would activate this window. What it actually does is bring the main Notes window to the front. So it doesn't work very well. Except, I can close this main notes window and now I can switch between Safari and Notes with Command Tab, the App Switcher, very easily. So for using the keyboard it works very well. I can use Page Down or fn and down to page through this window. I can Command Tab back to Notes. I can move around with the keyboard in this Notes App and type something.
Now when you Close this window it is closed and if you go back to Notes here and you double-click to open this one up notice it's not Keep On Top anymore. So closing the window gets rid of this flag here. So you have to turn it back on.
Now another interesting thing is this actually works with Full Screen Mode. But there are some catches. So, let's close this here and just have Notes in the regular single main Notes window mode here. Let's go to Safari and I'm going to click the Green Button here to enter full screen. So now it is full screen. If I do Control Up Arrow to enter Mission Control you can see I've got my regular Desktop. There's the Notes window on it and I've got a Full Screen space that is Safari. So, it would be nice to be able to bring up the Floating Notes Window here in full screen. In fact you can! but it is a little tricky. So I'm going to use Control Left Arrow to go back to this space here. First I'm going to open up this window and I can move it around. I can set it to Keep On Top so it does even if I select the other window behind it. Now how do I get it over to that other space? Strangely if you were to Control Up Arrow to enter Mission Control the little floating window goes away. It's like it is not even there. I can't use that. But here's what you can do.
You can click and drag this window. You have to be dragging it so with a trackpad I'm holding down with my thumb and using my index finger and drag around. With a mouse you would be clicking and holding down and dragging. So you have to be in the middle of dragging and then with your other hand on the keyboard use Control and the Right Arrow to go to the next space. But before I do that I'm going to put it where I want. I'll explain why in a minute. So I'm going to put it here in the upper right hand corner and I'm still dragging it, still moving it around, you can see. Control right arrow and now it appears there. Now I've got a floating Notes window here in Full screen Mode with this Safari window. It behaves just like it did before. But I actually have another window here intruding on the Full Screen space. This allows me to continue taking notes even when I'm in Full Screen Mode.
Now there are some weird things about this. One is you can't move this window. That's why I positioned it in the correct spot before. If I click at the top here it won't let me drag no matter what I do I can't drag it around. So I put it in the proper place before. But it gets even weirder because you can resize. So I can grab the bottom left corner and drag like that. Meaning I can reposition the window because I can drag it like this and then drag the other corner like that and you can see I repositioned it there. I'll drag the top and then I'll drag the bottom and you can see I repositioned it there. So by resizing it in creative ways you can actually move it around.
Now strangely even though you can't drag it anywhere if you click and hold down like you are dragging it and you Control Left Arrow to go back to this space it actually will go with your pointer back to this space. So that's kind of nice. But, of course, you can also just simply close the window, like that, and still can double-click and open up another one. It also works the same way in Split View. So here I've got a Pages document open. I'm going to go to Mission Control, drag this over, and create a Split View space. So like Full Screen but two apps instead of one. I can go back here, double click to open this note, go to Window, Keep On Top, and then while dragging go Control Right Arrow and now you can see I've got this float on top Notes Window here living with both of the windows here in the Split View.
But what about Stage Manager? How does it work in Stage Manager? It actually works really well. So let's turn Stage Manager on first in Control Center here. So you can see I've got Safari, I've got Pages, and I've got Notes here. So let's go and open up this as a separate window. Then let's go to the Window Menu and Keep On Top. So now this is on top here and it behaves the same inside of this particular app set. Now, let's switch to Safari. Look what happens. The main Notes window, that goes with the Notes App Set. But the float on top Notes Window stays there on the Safari App Set. If I go to Pages it's stays there as well. So I can switch between all the different app sets and if I have a Notes Window set to float on top it stays there. This could be really handy if you use Stage Manager.
Also if you're curious you can use more than one window as Keep On Top. So I can have this window here. Set it to Keep On Top. I can go to this Note here and you can see I've got a second note that is hidden behind it because it is not Keep On Top and this is. I can set this one to Keep on Top and these two windows now jockey for position as the windows that float on top. This window is always behind both of them. So it is like I've got two different levels. The level with Keep On Top right here. These two windows and everything else underneath those.
So Float on Top is a handy little technique to know if you use Notes on your Mac a lot, particularly if you use it in conjunction with other apps at the same time. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Keeping a Note On Top In the Mac Notes App”

Jim Terrinoni

8 months ago

Consistently amazing! The amount of helpful,
clearly expressed detail you provide. I had stumbled on the Control-Arrow key command, yet not knowing why it was invoked I had ignored it. Now maybe it can be useful. Thank you for putting in the research time to help all of us.

Julie Curry

This was great to learn. I’ve been frustrated when I compose posts for social media in Notes and then have to toggle back-and-forth between abs. Thanks for this significant timesaver!

Ann MacKay

I use Notes as my Second Brain so this is a game changer for me to be able to keep a note on top as I make notes from other apps. As a long time Mac user (39 years) I continue to learn new things about the OS.

Jan

I found easier to press ^ + 1/2/3/4... representing the space, where you want the on-the-top window - this way you can drag with right hand and switch the space with left.

David Taenzer

Very interesting. I had not seen this before. Thanks.

Rod Banyard

What a great thing, thanks Gary. I find CotEditor is a great note taker and, surprise, surprise, it also has the "keep on top option".