Imagining Beyond the Note: Five Inventive Ways to Use Apple Notes on iPhone and iPad

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The Five Distinct Methods

1. Having XO games with pals

It’s a very amazing and entertaining way to hang out with pals. Press the three dots to create a new note. Select “Lines and Grids” to select an appropriate template for the newly created note. We’ll select the largest grid cells we can for this game (you may also use a small-cell grid).

Then, all we need to do is invite our friends to work alongside us on it by sharing the message with them. In this manner, you and your pals may play XO on this new grid design.

2. Highlights from the Book

I had no idea that Notes could accomplish this, but it can! You can sync all of the highlights from your Kindle books with other services like Apple Books, Kobo, and others by using apps like Readwise. However, these services are dependant on subscriptions. For individuals who would like a free substitute for recording all of their book highlights, I have discovered a workaround.

This is what you have to do. Select “Scan Text” after opening a message and tapping the camera icon. This displays the viewfinder for the camera, which is located in the lower portion of the screen. Either aim this at the paperback or Kindle ebook you are now reading, then hit the “Live Text” icon located in the lower right corner of the viewfinder. After that, you may pick and select the text you like to highlight, and presto!

Notes now has your book highlight available. I have never had an issue with highlights scanning from books I’ve read, and the OCR functions flawlessly. For me, this Apple Notes method has changed my life!

3. Journal of Podcasts

When you need some background noise while working on anything else, podcasts are a terrific option. However, occasionally you may find something in the podcast that piques your curiosity and you will want to save it right away. Notes is here to save the day once more, though.

You may choose, copy, and append the live transcript that is now included with Apple Podcast to an already-existing note. I start by choosing the text I want to copy from the podcast’s transcript and pasting it. I then return to the podcast player, choose “Share Episode,” by tapping the three dots. I use the Notes app and the “Podcast” folder I made for all of my podcast highlights from the Share option that appears. I then just copy and paste the selection to a new or existing note of that Podcast Channel.

4. A Guide to Travel

The Notes app provides a tool to organize your next trip, even though it’s not the ideal method for creating a travel guide. Using your iPad, you may quickly identify tourist destinations and enumerate their primary draws. When you share the location, Apple Maps and Google Map connections work seamlessly with the Notes app.

5. Tracker for Habits

Though there are plenty of habit-tracking applications available in the App Store, Apple Notes’ ease of use and convenience are unmatched. You may love it or you may detest it, but I decided to utilize Apple Notes to record my guitar practice sessions and the number of strings I play (as well as my skill level).

Using Notes as a Habit Tracker with a Shortcut

For this, I created a shortcut (just like the one I created on my Mac), and all I have to do is say how well I played each string; the session notes and the current date are then appended. The formatting isn’t quite neat and organized, but it gets the job done, which is why I use Notes despite this small drawback.

I use my iPhone and iPad to utilize Apple Notes in a few different ways. As you may have noted, though, I’m not quite sure that I can use Notes for every task. Because Apple Notes does not allow vector ink, the Travel Guide approach I described becomes irksome when you start utilizing markup in addition to other written text or links.

Vector ink is used, however, by Freeform. I’ve been using Freeform for a few weeks now to create the infographics I require for my Medium posts. It features an endless canvas for all kinds of markups and written annotations, making it incredibly versatile. What then is the distinction between Notes and Freeform? When I started using it a month ago, this is what confused me, and this is what I believe.

The fine line separating Notes and Freeform Quick Take: In my opinion, Notes and Freeform ought to have been combined into a single program.

I have been waiting a long time for Apple Notes to come with vector ink. I had to start using Notability when I received my iPad Air at the end of 2020 since the delay was so long. However, Freeform was introduced by Apple along with iPadOS 16. An Apple program that works similarly to Google Jamboard and lets you utilize vector ink on an endless canvas. I was upset that this wasn’t just integrated into Notes, but as I used Freeform more, I gradually came to see why.

Canvases made using vector ink require a lot of storage space.

Vector ink would cause Notes’ note sizes to expand by 10 times or more, which would eventually cause them to fill up all of your valuable iPhone/iPad storage (assuming you don’t utilize iCloud). Alternatively, you may decide to activate Freeform just when you think your presentation will require that much markup capability.

However, when precisely do you need it?

For situations when Note’s built-in Lines & Grids template isn’t suitable, you would want the capabilities of Freeform.

when you need to write around a recently dropped web link or annotate, say, a picture.

or if you like to utilize a flowchart for an infographic.

There are a ton more examples like this, but we’ll discuss those in a different Freeform article later.

The main idea is to use Freeform instead of Notes if you feel that it is being too restrictive while utilizing Markup. Because continuing to use Notes will just make you less productive.

In summary

Every time I figure out a new method to use Apple Notes to store information and turn it into my second brain, it surprises me even more. We had so much fun the last time we looked at all the interesting uses for Notes on Mac, that I felt compelled to share with you all my experiences with Apple Notes on iPhone and iPad.

One of the primary reasons that utilizing an iPhone app is practically necessary as a second brain is because iPhones are so simple to take out of your pocket and utilize. Additionally, there was just Apple Notes on the iPhone prior to Notion, Roam, and Obsidian. It’s becoming harder for me to look beyond it because this is what first motivated me to use it. Heck, even though I was aware of Apple Reminders, there was a moment when I utilized it as a reminder software as well (using checklists).