I recently started using Apple Reminders and was sort of shocked by how full-featured it was. It seemed to have everything I wanted in a task management app:
multiple lists
notes
image attachments
natural language date input
shared reminders with family
location awareness
reminders
subtasks
priority
smart lists
And there’s probably even a few features that I didn’t mention. iOS 17 even brings kanban view and sections.
After using Reminders I decided to jump back in to Apple Notes and see how it stacks up.
Here is my stream-of-consciousness thoughts on how good it is now.
I loaded the app on my Mac and decided to re-organize my folders first. I previously had some version of PARA implemented, but I like to have more folders quickly accessible with one tap so I decided to do more of a Johnny Decimal set up.
Once I got my folders all set up I started looking around.
The first thing is, and this is purely opinion, I can’t stand the urine-yellow color that they are using. I don’t know why, but I just don’t like it. It’s tough going from Reminders, which is very colorful, to Notes which just has this awful yellow color.
Whatever. That’s not the end of the world. The design, outside of that, is actually very clean. I mean, note-taking apps don’t need some brand new way to organize things. Don’t try and get too fancy. Just give me some folders and tags and I’ll figure it out. That’s what Apple does.
Tags
There are no nested tags, but I didn’t expect it to have any nested tags. There are a tons of PKM apps that don’t have nested tags. That’s not a deal breaker for me. It can be nice for sure, but it’s not required for me. I can work around it.
But the tags look normal. The are organized adequately. Probably not as good as Obsidian, but it’s not bad. It seems to just be a large clump of tags, so if you have a lot it can probably get a little messy.
You can use tags to create smart folders which I love. I’m a huge fan of smart folders in any application. I love Smart Lists in Reminders and I really love them here in Notes.
Tags start to pop up when you type the `#` symbol. Nice. Pretty good so far.
They actually have a pretty cool feature I didn’t know about at first with tags. When you click on a tag it brings up all the notes with that tag. But when you click on another tag it now shows all the notes that has both of those tags. And it gives you the option to show notes with ANY of the selected tags or ALL of the selected tags. That’s actually really smooth.
Linking
iOS 17 has brought linking between notes. It’s pretty awesome, but it’s missing one thing that makes it even better.
So when you are making a note you can type `>>` and it will bring up notes as you start typing. It’s a pretty seamless experience. If you are on mobile you can just tap on the cursor and it will bring up the `copy/paste` menu and you can tap over to Insert Link and it brings up the same menu.
That’s all well and good and impressive for just a stock note-taking app.
But there is just one thing it’s missing, or rather I just wish they had, which is backlinks. To me, these two features go hand in hand. If you are going to link to a note, then I want to know where that note has been referenced. Again, I know this is just a stock notes app, but still. I would love that and it stinks that it isn’t here.
It’s sort of like when you don’t expect your team to even make the playoffs and then they do. And now you want them to win it all. And when they don’t win people say, “Well, we didn’t even expect them to do this well. At least we made the playoffs.” That’s true…but you still wanted to win it all since you made it in!
With Notes, yes we got linking, but now that it’s here I really want backlinks! I can do without unlinked references, but I really want some backlinks.
And not having backlinks sort of changes how you use linking. If I had backlinks then I would create a note with someone’s name, “Johnny Appleseed”, and then link to his note any time I mentioned his name. I could then go to the note titled “Johnny Appleseed” and see all the times I mentioned his name. But without backlinks there really isn’t much of a benefit to linking to a note with his name. Again, not a big deal, and still awesome Apple has even added this.
Keep in mind, this is only in iOS 17 beta and beyond. So it’s not available yet.
But on the positive. Linking notes does work really well. It’s super easy and I really can’t wait to see what Apple does going forward with this feature.
Editor
The editor is very basic, but very smooth. They don’t try and do anything fancy here. You don’t need to.
Just give me my headers, lists, and so on and I’m good.
This is the toolbar:
It’s basic, but has everything I need.
No, there are no folding headers or toggles, but again, I didn’t expect there to be any. I would prefer a Craft/Notion style toggle rather than an Obsidian/Bear style folding too. And I just don’t think Apple is going to add this anytime soon.
Adding pictures is easy and scanning documents is fantastic. Scanning documents is one of the main reasons why I use Notes. It’s such a seamless experience and the scans can be easily exported to other apps as a PDF. It’s so simple.
You can lock notes, share notes, and collaborate on notes. There’s really a ton to do on such a small note app.
You can view notes as a list or as a gallery which is nice.
Here’s one thing that really annoys me: if a folder has another folder in it and the nested folder has notes in it, lets say it has 50 notes, the parent folder will still show the number `0` instead of `50` because it only shows the number of the notes in the parent folder and not all the nested folders. So it looks like I have absolutely nothing in that folder when in reality there is a nested folder that has a lot of notes in it. Small thing, but super annoying.
Smart Folders
I absolutely love a good Smart Folder. Notes has a fantastic implementation of Smart Folders.
There are tons of features here. I guess it’s just a basic Smart Folder but considering a lot of apps don’t have this feature, it’s great to see it here.
I’ve debated about just having one master folder and just using smart folders. I would have one folder and then have a Smart Folder that is based on my work tags `#work` and then when I tagged the note it would automatically pop in to that Smart Folder. Not sure if I would like that, but it might be a cool option.
Love smart folders here and I’m sure some people will have some really great ideas here to make some interesting Smart Folder setups.
Mobile
So here’s the great thing about Notes: it syncs with all your Apple devices and it syncs really well. It’s fast and it’s easy. It allows for a lot of features being a native mobile app:
boots up in no time
you can have a shortcut in Control Center to make a note
you can do some automation in Shortcuts for Notes
they have widgets
you can share things to Notes
There are no embeds of things like tweets or YouTube videos. I wish there was better support there.
Everything is just so baked in to Apple’s ecosystem that it…just works. It’s super reliable. For me, a fast boot up time and great UI/UX is important on mobile and Notes really checks those boxes.
Final Thoughts
Is Notes going to replace Obsidian. Heck no. It’s not trying to.
Will Notes be good enough for 99% of the population that has iPhones? Yep.
Whenever I feel like I need something complicated, I always remind myself that Cal Newport was using TextEdit as his main productivity system for a while. Complicated can be good, but so can simple.
Notes is more than powerful enough for most people. So I can gripe about backlinks and the color (it’s awful, it really is), but in the end, this was a stock note-taking app that was not very good to begin with. It’s come a long way and it’s pretty dang good now.