If you search the App Store on your iPhone, you'll find countless alternatives to the built-in Notes app. Some of them are free, some are paid, and a few of them are surprisingly expensive. But honestly, for most iPhone users, the standard Notes app is more than enough for just about everything that you need. The real problem is that most people have no idea just how much this app is capable of because Apple has been gradually adding features to it over the years without making a big deal about it. So, in this video, I'm going to share 10 things that the Notes app can do that I think most people don't know about. And as a bonus, I'll also show you a couple of new features that are coming next month with iOS 26. Okay, let's get into it. If you make use of folders and subfolders in the Notes app, you might often find yourself needing to jump between a few different notes, and it can be really awkward having to constantly use the back button to navigate through different folders just to move between them. There is a feature hidden inside the ellipsus menu that makes this much easier. If you tap the ellipsus menu, you'll see an option called recent notes. Tap into this and your app will show up to eight of your most recently visited notes. This updates automatically, so if you've got a few notes that you want to jump between, just open each note and then use the recent notes option to quickly switch between them without needing to go back and forth through the folder structure. It's a much faster way to move between a small group of notes. And if you ever want to reset the list, there's a clear button at the bottom of the recent notes view. You can create a searchable PDF archive in your notes app using the iPhone's print function. And the good news is you don't actually have to print anything. So for this example, I've gone to an article in Wikipedia. And I want to turn this into a PDF that I can then store in notes. And the reason that I want to do that is because PDFs in the notes app are searchable. You can search all of the content contained within the note. To do this, tap the share button down at the bottom of the screen, then scroll down and choose print. Your iPhone's native print menu will appear where you'd normally select a printer and then choose to print. But instead, we're going to look at the preview down at the bottom of the screen. You can swipe through this and see all of the pages of content that your iPhone has created from this article. Using your thumb and index finger, make a push out motion on the preview, a bit like you would if you were zooming out on a photo. That will turn the preview into a PDF that you can then scroll through like any normal PDF file. You'll see there's another share button down in the bottom left of the screen. Tap on that and then choose notes. By default, this will save to a new note. So, if you want to change it to a different note, you would choose that. You can add some text to your note if you wish and then press save. You can then press done and cancel to come out of the print menu. But if we go back to our notes app, we can see that the note that we've just created, complete with PDF, was saved. You could obviously repeat that for as many different articles as you want, allowing you to quickly and easily create your own searchable PDF archive within the notes app. By the way, do you ever find yourself watching tips and tricks videos like this and thinking, "How am I supposed to remember all of this?" If that sounds like you, you should definitely check out iPhone Essentials Plus. It's my dedicated training portal for the iPhone. More than 150 lessons with more content on the way. It's broken down into modules with each one covering a different part of your iPhone. Inside each module, you'll find lessons, and every lesson comes with a short video showing you exactly what to do, a step-by-step guide with screenshots and a downloadable PDF. So, no matter how you like to learn, you're covered. You can go through everything at your own pace or just use the search tool to jump straight to the thing that you're trying to figure out. There are no ads, no sponsors, just content. And it's all available for a single price. No ongoing subscription. That one-time purchase also includes all future updates, including the iOS 26 update that I'm working on right now. And if you've got a Mac, I've recently launched Mac Essentials Plus as well. It works exactly the same way, just for your Mac instead. You can buy either one on its own or you can bundle the two together for the best possible price. If this sounds good to you, scan the QR code that you can see on screen or check the link in the description or the pinned comment. You can link to external websites and other notes within the notes app, although it isn't immediately obvious how to do it. To link, long press anywhere in the body of the note for a second until a contextual menu appears. Press the right arrow until you see the add link option, then tap on it. A new window will appear with two options, link to and name. In the link to field, you can either write or paste a web address to link to an external website. If you want to link to another note, just type the name of that note and your phone will suggest matching notes. Tap the name that you'd like to link to. When you do this, you'll see the name field becomes a toggle. If you leave this enabled, your device will use the notes title as the display text for the link. If you'd rather use your own text, disable the toggle and type whatever you like. Then press done and the link will be created with the text that you chose. In this example, I've used this to create one link to a note within the notes app. But you could use this to create your own wiki. So let's say, for example, that you have a number of notes stored within the notes app, and you want to create some kind of directory file where you could quickly jump into each of those notes whilst using that main file as a kind of summary page for the work that you're doing. You can see how easy it would be to create this. If you prefer the old school method of jotting things down with pen and paper, but still want to keep a digital archive of your note, the Notes app on your iPhone has a couple of tools that can help. In any Note, just tap the paperclip icon that sits above the keyboard. You'll see two options here, scan text and scan documents. If you tap scan text, your phone will use the camera to recognize any text that it can see and then drop that into your note as editable computeryped text. This works surprisingly well if your handwriting is neat. Alternatively, if you'd rather save a full image of your handwritten note, just choose scan documents, then follow the steps to scan a copy of your handwritten page into the note as a PDF style attachment. Once you've saved it, give the notes app a few minutes to process everything. Provided the handwriting is reasonably legible, the app will actually make that handwritten content searchable, which is a great way to combine the flexibility of pen and paper with the convenience of digital search. It won't be perfect for every style of handwriting, but it is definitely worth trying out if you want the best of both worlds. You can add a bit of order to the chaos of your notes by making use of collapsible headings. This is a feature that happens automatically. You don't need to turn anything on. You just need to remember how it works. So here in this note, for example, you can see that in the main body of the note, I can press the text formatting button that appears in the menu bar just above the keyboard and choose heading. I can then type out a heading, press return, and the text will automatically switch back to body text. So I can continue writing as normal. I'm then going to repeat this a couple of times. So, in this note, I now have multiple headings, each with text underneath. If I press done in the top right corner and then tap just to the left of one of the headings, you'll see a downward pointing arrow. If you tap that, it turns into a right pointing arrow and the text underneath that heading is collapsed. You can then tap the right arrow to expand the text. Again, in this example, I've only got a small amount of text under each heading, but in a longer note, this is a really useful way to keep things tidy and manage your notes as you work through it. By the way, if you're enjoying the content here, you should definitely check out the proper weekly. It's my free weekly newsletter that lands in your inbox every Friday, packed with tech news from the week, content I've been enjoying, and a handy tip for the Apple ecosystem. Just scan the QR code on screen to sign up or follow the link in the description. Most people know that you can collaborate on individual notes in the notes app. Meaning you and someone else can both edit, add to, or delete content from a single note in real time. But what a lot of people don't realize is that you can actually collaborate on an entire folder. And when you do that, it means that you and anyone else that you choose to share with can work together on all the notes inside that folder, which is really useful if you're working on a shared project. To do this, you'll first need a folder that you want to collaborate on. Tap into the folder, then press the share button in the top right corner of the screen. One of the key differences when sharing a folder compared to a single note is that you don't get the option to just send a copy. Your only option is to collaborate. From here, you can choose how you want to send a link. It could be through messages, mail, or any other method. In this example, I'm just going to send it to one person, but you could share it with multiple people if you wanted to. Anyone who receives the link and accepts the invite will be added as a collaborator to the folder and from that point on all of you will be able to edit and update anything inside it. The reminders app and the notes app on your iPhone don't really integrate as well as I wish they could. For example, there's no real way to create reminders within the notes app itself. Yes, you can create bulleted lists, but they're definitely not as fully featured as proper reminders. However, you can create a reminder within the reminders app about a note, although it isn't immediately obvious how you would do that. There are two ways to do it. One is using drag and drop. To do this, you'd use the back button to get to the point in the notes app where you can see your note within the folder it's contained in. You'd then swipe out of notes, go to reminders, and open the list where you want the note to be inserted. Then swipe out of reminders. Go back to notes. Long press on the note and start moving your finger around the screen. This will pick the note up. Keep that finger pressed down and with another thumb or finger swipe up. Go into reminders and let go of the note. You'll see that a reminder is created with a link to the notes app. And when you tap on that icon, it will take you straight to the specific note that you were linking to. There's also an even easier way to do this, and that's to use Siri. Just open the note in question, then activate Siri and say, "Remind me about this." A reminder will be created in the reminders app, linking back to the notes, just like in the previous example. I'm always surprised by how few people actually make use of smart folders in the notes app. So, let me show you how to create one, and then I'll give you a couple of ideas for how you might use it. To start, tap the new folder button in the bottom left corner of the screen. Give your folder a name just like you would with any other folder. Then tap make into smart folder directly underneath. A smart folder is a special kind of folder where notes are automatically pulled in based on filters that you define. Right at the top, you can choose whether the folder should include notes that match all of the filters or any of them. Choose whatever suits your use case. Now, for the filters, there are 11 different types of filter that you can choose from, and you can mix and match them to get really specific about what kind of notes this folder should include. One of the most common smart folders that people create is based on tags. So you could tap into tags, choose any selected tag, and then select a tag like work. From now on, any note with the work tag will automatically appear in this smart folder. But here's another use case that I think more people should try. Use smart folders to catch untagged notes. In the tag section, select no tags. If you're someone who usually tags your notes, but you sometimes forget, this is a really quick way to identify the notes that slip through. I found this one really, really useful. Another example, let's say that you use QuickNotes fairly often. By nature, QuickNotes are meant to be temporary, but I find that my QuickNotes folder ends up being a bit of a mess. So, here's a way to manage it. Choose QuickNotes as a filter and then set it to include. Then, choose created, tap custom, and set it to before a date. The only minor frustration is that there's no option like before 30 days ago. So, you'll need to pick a specific date manually, but that's fine for occasional cleanup. So, for example, I'll pick a date about a month ago and then tap done. I'll name this smart folder something like old QuickNote. When I open it, I'll see a list of all QuickNotes created more than a month ago. From here, I can quickly review and either move them into a more permanent folder or delete them if I don't need them anymore. There are loads of other useful filters that you can try. You can filter for notes where you've been mentioned, notes that contain attachments, notes edited within a certain time frame, the list goes on. It is well worth taking some time to explore the smart folder options. Once you've got a few set up, you wonder how you ever managed your notes without them. The Notes app on your iPhone includes a text formatting option called Mono Style, and I think it's one of those features that tends to get overlooked, even though it can actually be really useful in the right context. To access it, just tap the text formatting button in the menu bar above the keyboard and scroll all the way to the right. You'll see an option called monoyled. Tap on that and a new text box will appear in your note. You can either type directly into the box and you'll notice that it expands automatically with each line that you add or you can copy and paste text into it from somewhere else. The first thing that you'll spot is that it looks a bit different from your usual body text. That's because this uses a monospaced font, meaning each character takes up the exact same amount of horizontal space. That's useful in a lot of situations, especially if you're working with code snippets, scripting, serial numbers, or anything that benefits from strict alignment and readability. Obviously, this isn't going to replace a full-on coding app. But if you're someone who occasionally works with technical text and just needs a clean, simple way to store it, this is a great little tool to keep in mind. You can annotate PDFs in the Notes app using your iPhone's markup feature. To do this, first create a note with a PDF. For this example, I'm going to use the PDF that we created earlier when we looked at creating a searchable PDF archive. When you open the note, you'll see the name of the PDF at the top left of the file along with a downward pointing arrow. Tap on that, then choose quick look. This opens the PDF in Quick Look where you can scroll through the document as usual. At the bottom of the screen, you'll see a pen icon. Tap on that and all of your markup tools will appear. You've got pen and pencil options over on the left. And then over on the right, you've got things like crayons, fountain pen, and calligraphy style tools. The markup tools are pretty straightforward. Tap on a pen, then use your finger to add shapes, notes, arrows, whatever you like. But one of the most useful ways to use markup is for highlighting. So, let's say that I want to highlight a particular passage of text. I'll tap once on the highlighter to select it, then tap again to bring up the highlighter settings. At the top, I can choose how thick I want the highlighter to be. And underneath that, I can adjust the opacity using the slider. I can also change the highlight color by pressing the color button in the bottom right. Once I'm happy with the settings, I'll use my finger to highlight the text that I want. Now, here's a tip that most people don't know. Instead of just letting go at the end of the passage, hold your finger there for just a second. When you do this, your iPhone will automatically neaten up the highlight for you. That's a huge help, especially if, like me, you've always found it frustrating when highlights end up looking a bit wonky. You can then repeat the process for any other text that you want to highlight. And when you're done, just tap done in the top right corner. Your highlights are now part of the PDF saved within your note. And finally, in terms of new features coming to the notes app in iOS 26, there hasn't been a huge amount added this time around, but there are two changes that are worth a quick mention. The first is markdown. Now, you can't actually write directly in markdown inside the notes app itself. But what you can do is export the contents of a note into markdown format. So, if you're someone who writes content for the web and often needs markdown files, this is something that will come in handy. The second change is only really relevant if you own an Apple Watch, and that's the fact that the Notes app is finally coming to the watch. This is something that Apple Watch users have been asking for for a long time. And in iOS 26, you'll be able to open any notes in your library, view its contents, and even create new notes using Siri and dictation directly from your wrist. So, if that's something that you've been waiting for, you don't have long to wait. So, there you go. Those are 10 things that you can do in the notes app on your iPhone that I reckon most people have no idea about. What about you? Was there anything in here that caught you by surprise or any tips that you think I should have included but didn't? Drop me a comment and let me know. And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future. See you on the next video.