Quick start with Notes

The Notes landing screen is where all your pages meet. The tabs at the top take you anywhere in a second: All, Recently opened, Favorites, Shared. Has the note you want disappeared into the crowd? Type its title or tag into the search box, then thin the list out in one move with the Status and Tag filters. Better still, you can look at the same notes through three different lenses: a clean List, a Grid of covers, or a drag-and-drop Board. The choice is entirely yours.

Tap Add note and a blank page is waiting for you. Give it a title, then pick an icon for it; use one of the ready-made icons, or upload your own image and give the note a personal touch. Add a cover across the top that catches your eye: a ready-made gradient, an image you upload, or something you turn up in search. Right under the title, give the note a status and a tag, and link it to a calendar event while you are there. Notes saves quietly in the background as you write, so you never have to wonder whether you saved it.

The block editor is the heart of Notes, and a single key unlocks it: type / on an empty line and a whole menu of blocks opens up. Text, headings, to-do lists, callouts, tables, images, code blocks and plenty more, all one tap away. If you like to work without ever leaving the keyboard, the markdown shortcuts are made for you: # gives you a heading, - starts a bullet, and [] starts a To-Do List. Select some text and a toolbar appears so you can bold it, color it or add a link; and whenever the mood strikes, grab a block by the handle on the left and move it somewhere else. The page is yours from top to bottom.

As your notes pile up, order becomes your best friend, and Notes makes that part easy. Give each note a status (To do, In progress, On hold, Done) or define stages of your own. The best bit is Board view: your notes line up in columns by status, and the moment you pick a card up and drop it in another column, its status moves with it. Tags cluster your notes by topic (and those same tags are shared with your calendar), while sub-notes let you open a level underneath any note and go as deep into a subject as you like.