Apple Notes Review

Simple but effective

Deep iOS integration makes this native app a perfect choice for friction free note taking. Basic back linking and tags can create surprisingly complex note taking system. Getting better every year

The most essential app on the Apple ecosystem

I can’t complain about this app. It’s my most used app by far and the most consistent when syncing between my phone, laptop, and iPad. If I were to be honest with myself, it would be the only app that I actually NEED, especially when you consider it’s free and fast. It’s simple, effective, free, fast, clean, and not neglected. You can’t ask for anything else.

Apple Notes lets you get to work

With the latest updates to Apple Notes, I've noticed myself being drawn more and more to the application. This is all for one simple reason. Apple Notes gets out of the way and let's you just get your thoughts on the page. There is little to no customization to the app. Just a focus on the notes. This isn't to say that Apple Notes lacks features. It has a beautiful minimalist layout. It syncs seemlessly across devices and is really quick. It has multi-media support, allowing you to store all kinds of information for easy recall with their search function. Apple has also recenlty added linking, collapsable headers and audio recording with transcription. Another benefit I love as someone fully entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, is the ability to integrate both typed and handwritten notes. All of this comes with the low, low price of free. There is only one feature I wish would come natively in the app and that is Markdown support. If you install ProNotes however, this issue is easily rememdied. Apple Notes may not be a fully-fledged all-in-one option like Notion or Obsidian, but I've personally found my productivity has improved by switching to the simplicity of Apple Notes.

Great at capturing multi-format data

My main use case for Apple Notes is actually scanning PDF receipts and other forms of documents. I store any PDF that I find on the internet onto Apple Notes because then I can access it later, especially flight tickets or any interesting articles that I read. It has a classic folder system which helps me sort things out, as my brain is designed that way. But definitely not scalable in terms of being only the PKM application that we use, but definitely useful for handling other formats. This is because the iOS share sheet is really effective with Apple Notes, whereas some other applications may have some nitty-gritty, not-so-user-friendly way of saving things, and it's just much faster saving to Apple Notes than other software.

Simplicity just beats everything else.

If you have an Apple Device, and if quick capture is a huge part of your workflows, nothing beats Apple Notes. Even though I have a PKMS in Notion, quick capture there just isn't fast enough. So anytime I want to jot something down quick, Apple Notes is just there, and does the job. It can later be processed to move anywhere I want. Design and features maybe a little limited. But it does the most important thing of quickly capturing notes exceptionally well.