Okay, the search is over. If you've been looking for the best note-taking app to help you become the most productive, I find that Apple Notes is the program that I often use to help me become the most productive and to get my work done. So, today I'm going to share with you eight features that I frequently use in my everyday work. And if you stick around to the end of this video, I'm going to share with you a feature that I wish Apple Notes had and how I managed to get around it. So, let's get into it. So, a feature that I really like to use is pulling up a quick note uh when you're when you just want to jot something down uh really quickly uh but don't want to have to unlock the device like a iPhone or an iPad to pull up a note for you to write on. So, as you can see, I have my iPad uh screen here and it's on the lock screen like this. But without actually having to unlock the screen if you have an Apple uh Apple Pencil like this, you can just tap on the screen like that with your pencil and then you just get a fresh blank slate uh where you can you can write notes on and and pull up a quick note like that. If you happen to have your device unlocked, you can pull up a quick note by dragging from the bottom right corner like that. And then you have a note that you can just quickly write on like that. And once you once you have the note uh done, it would uh create a quick note section like this on your screen. If you go to quicknotes, that's where your note would be saved. So if you want to open up a quick note from your iPhone lock screen, you can just drag from the top and then you you'll see the uh quick note icon here and then you can just unlock And there you go. Now, if you don't happen to have the icon here for a quick note, you can actually add uh press this button for an add and add a control. And you can select the quick note icon here for you to have quick access to a quick note next time. Now, another neat feature that I like to frequently use is uh collaborating on notes. It's when you share a note uh with another person where they can see lifetime what you're what you're adding to the note and uh and they can add uh their writings and their notes uh on it as well. So, a good use case for this would be if you have team members that you want to collaborate with that you want to work on the same document or for someone like me who has a a background in teaching and would like to tutor virtually and you want the student to be able to share the same uh sheet as you're working on. So, I'm going to show you how you can collaborate on a note. So, you can see here on my screen that I have a note that I want to work on together. If you look at the top right corner here, there's going to be the share button. So, if you click on the share button, there's the collaborate and you can invite people based on uh different uh methods like an airdrop uh by messaging them or even just a simple link that you can invite uh the person to collaborate with you. Another useful feature is securing or locking a note. It's kind of the reverse of collaborating on notes. it's that you don't want other people or anyone else to be able to open this particular note. This could be particularly useful if you happen to store important or or sensitive information on a note that you don't want people to be able to look at. Kind of like passwords. Not that anyone writes passwords on notes. I don't do that. Let me show you how to lock a note. Now suppose you have a note here that's called passwords that you don't want other people to open. You would tap and hold on that particular note and you would have the option here that says lock note. So if I type click lock note there it will automatically create a lock on that note. If you want to lock that note you can just click the lock button there and it says this note is locked. Now, when you view the note, it's going to ask for Face ID, in which case only you uh would be able to open that note. Again, if you don't use a Face ID to open the note, it will eventually ask for uh a passcode that you use to unlock your iPhone or your iPad. On the same topic of doing math on Apple Notes, it's got some powerful features that are built in. So, earlier we did I wrote down this equation of y is equal to 2x. If you just tap on the equation sign there, it'll give you uh it actually gives you an option to be able to insert a graph. And what it actually does is it inserts uh the graph of the equation that you just uh provided it. Not only can it graph, but it actually can also do uh math computations as well. So if you do uh things like 3 + 1 and equals uh it will actually solve the act the math equation for you in addition to being able to do uh mathematical computations. Uh it can even convert certain units like uh USD to other currencies or uh measurements from imperial to metric and things like that. Let me just show you how. So if I wrote down something like uh 1 USD is equal to and I ask it to solve it'll actually convert it into a $137 CAD in Canadian dollars. If I were to write something like 1 foot is equal to I would ask it to solve and it would actually uh turn it into meters for me as well. Now the next feature I want to show you is pretty simple and that is the ability to be able to insert videos and pictures within an actual note is I frequently do like to journal just to uh record and uh remember the things uh that I want to remember and I do keep a physical journal like this where I can handr write things but one limitation of these things that I find where I have taken pictures of that event that I wrote down but I'm unable to actually put it into a physical journal. So, I started journaling within Apple Notes. Let's say like today uh I had a great uh day with my kids at the park. And I might have taken a picture of uh being at the park that day that I can insert here that I can now commemorate and just remember not only with words, but also to be able to remember by inserting videos or pictures. Uh if I go up here, I can attach a file here or attach photos by clicking on this uh icon here. You can attach a file. Um and you can go ahead and attach files that way if or or photos and you can attach photos like this. Or if you happen to be working on an iPad or an iPhone, you can tap on this paper clip up top and pick uh the option of either choosing a photo or video or actually taking a photo or video to attach to your note. So, I'm going to take a screenshot or I'm going to take a photo of let's say this keyboard u saying this keyboard um was useful today and I'm going to take a photo and that will automatically sync to all of my other devices as well and it'll show up on my computer um and be saved properly in the Apple Note. And this is a great feature uh to be able to take videos. And I'll show you how the video feature works as well. Um, so same thing you click on the paper clip here and you can uh choose either choose a photo or video or you can take a photo or video. So here I can either pick photo or video. So if I pick the video, I can go ahead and record the video and it would save uh the video in my notes. It'll al also sync in other places uh throughout all the other devices as well. Now, call me cheesy, but I actually have a physical journal for each of my kids that I share with them uh where I make entries uh and I write uh a summary of my thoughts and feelings of the day that we spent together and I share it with them for them to read my entries and for them to also uh write in response uh for them to share their thoughts and feelings with me with me in writing. And what I plan to do with Apple Notes is for me to start journaling uh within the actual note and for me to start inserting pictures and videos that I've taken uh that day that that we've shared together and in addition to uh me journaling and to then collaborate that file with them for them to then uh in turn uh put their entries into the journal for us to share. And what I hope is that uh this would just be a bank of uh memories for them to look back on uh when they grow up and for them to uh to have fond memories of our time together. So that would be one I guess very personal use case uh that I plan on using the collaboration feature and the uh insert uh feature for. Now, of course, any standard note-taking app, you would want it to have some kind of organizational system to put put into folders or to be able to highlight or to be able to kind of embed headers or subheaders into the note. So, in Apple Notes, you have the ability to be able to have uh embedded notes like this where you can have a cascading uh cascading folder effect uh in your notes. Of course, here on the bottom left corner, you can create new folders here like I've done here for personal work and uh kids notes. But within the actual note itself, uh you can uh build these types of arrows where it can hide the content underneath titles or headers. So, in order for you to do that, I can call this one like a a title. And you would highlight this. And you would click on this aa button and call it, let's say, a heading. And anything that comes after that, like hide this text under the title. Now, if you go next to the title, you'll notice that there's a little arrow there where you can hide the content of that, you can hide that note under that particular title. Now, another way to use an organizational system in Apple Notes is to use tags and smart folders. Uh, let me show you what I mean. So, I have a note that I've made. If I want to organize using tags, I actually have tags that I use here uh with hashtags, but I can type in uh #YouTube. And what that does is it allows me to uh uh to group these particular sheets together or these notes together by being able to search them up by uh tags that I've labeled each of these sheets. So, if it's got YouTube content, then I can tag it as YouTube. So that's one other way that you can organize your notes uh by using labeling your uh your notes with hashtags. Another way you can organize your notes is with smart folders. Uh you can see that in the screen you have regular folders with the folder icon here, but there are other folders here with the gear icon. And that's because this one is a smart folder. And what smart folders does is uh instead of uh you having to drag and drop each note that each new note that you make into their respective folders, if you just give it a filter or a criteria in which uh you want the folders to contain, it'll just auto automatically uh pull those particular notes into the folder for you. For example, if I were to start a new smart folder called YouTube, I would go down here to create a new folder. I would call the folder YouTube and then click here on this uh uh button that says make into smart folder. And you would have the options of being able to uh to select which criteria you want the folder to be able to pull uh your notes from. So I want the folder to collect all letter all notes that contain certain tags uh all selected. And which tag I want is the YouTube tag. So any note that has the YouTube tag on it, this folder will it'll automatically start putting it into this particular smart folder. I'll press okay. And right away you'll notice that the folder is made called YouTube. And it's already pulled in two uh notes within it. Another great use case for the tags in Apple Notes and the smart folders would be things like keeping track of business expense receipts or business cards that people tend to give like physical uh business cards that people give. You can just tag it as business cards and take a picture of it and not have to remember where to keep a business card. And uh for better yet for businesses when you have to keep record of physical receipts or just receipts for your expenditures, you can hashtag it or tag it with business expense and take a picture of it, tag it, and it'll automatically shuffle them all into one folder for you. Now, a neat feature that I admittedly don't use very often, but I can see that it could be very useful in uh very critical times is being able to take audio transcriptions of phone calls. Uh now, I have featured the audio transcription and audio recording feature of Apple Notes uh in another video. So, I'll put the link to that video uh in the description below so that you can check it out if you want to see how that works. But I just wanted to highlight today on how you can actually record a phone conversation and have the same feature of Apple notes trans a trans transcribing and taking notes uh of the phone conversation that you had. A particular good use case for this would be if you know that you're going to be going into an important phone call like a phone interview or a conversation with a doctor or a lawyer for uh very important conversations that you just don't want to miss anything about. um then you might want to record that particular uh phone conversation and have the phone and have Apple Notes take notes for you and then afterwards you can use Apple AI to be able to summarize or give you a summary of the most important points of that phone conversation. So let me show you how that works. And once you're in a phone call like this, you should be able to you'll then be uh you'll see this icon here on the top left corner uh where you can record. It will warn the person that's in the phone conversation with you that the the call is being recorded so that they know that uh they are being this conversation is being recorded. And then once the conversation is over, you can press stop. And then you'll see at the top here that uh you that a note was taken about the phone conversation. And then you can even see the transcript of what was said in that particular phone call. Apple notes actually has Apple AI built straight into its user interface. So if you look at the top middle section here, you'll see the Apple AI icon up top here. And what if you click on that you'll see several options where Apple AI could either proofread, rewrite uh in certain tones like friendly, professional and concise. And it could even summarize or give you a list of key points uh in the text that you are uh providing it. This is the uh this is a an idea page that I just briefly put together uh with audio uh on all the type types of features that I wanted to cover in this particular video. And as you can see, it's just me rambling on um and there's no structure to it whatsoever. But if I were to highlight this particular text and uh click on the Apple AI symbol uh and if I click list, it will generate a quick uh point form of all the points that I've actually made um and list them in a nice concise manner that I can just quickly see and see what points that I should be speaking to in this particular video. I'll revert that back. Uh, another option for Apple AI uh would be key points. So, it wouldn't just give me uh like point form, but it'll actually uh summarize key points of uh this particular uh par uh paragraph and uh give me a little synopsis. It may not be as powerful as other AI tools that are out there at the moment, but this is something that's nicely built into its user interface. Now, if you stuck around to the end of this video, I wanted to share with you one feature that I wish Apple Notes had, and that is to be able to have a template that I can use or pull up uh on a reoccurring basis. There are certain notes that I would like to be able to have repeated over and over again without having to retype it over and over again. So, for example, I do uh my YouTube scripting on Apple Notes and with my YouTube script, I like to have the same structure uh every time I script it. These are things that I uh repeatedly uh have to type in. So, I wish that Apple Notes had a template for things like this or even study notes with a highlighter legend. Uh but I want to make sure that I use the same colors in highlighters for the same meanings. Now, since uh Apple Notes doesn't have a built-in template feature, I just created uh notes and called it a template, um and kind of a workaround for it is that for example, if I wanted to make a YouTube script, I would just rightclick on this and duplicate the note. And once it's duplicated, I can go ahead and and re uh retitle this. And then I can go ahead and type in my idea for the video title. I type in a thumbnail idea or insert a photo for the thumbnail uh and start typing in here and I can hide those pieces uh and pull them up whenever I need to. But this would be a workaround for Apple Notes not having a template feature uh to just create a template of your own and just duplicate that note uh uh so that you don't have to repeatedly uh type in the same thing over and over again. I've tried a lot of note-taking apps to help me become more productive. And I used to think to be the most productive, I had to use programs like Notion or OneNote. I found myself using them as just very basic tools because the learning curve was so steep to get into the most advanced features of those tools. Not only is Apple Notes an absolute powerhouse of a tool, but I find that it's so userfriendly that I could actually use its advanced features or many of its features for that matter on a regular basis. And the best part of it is if you're an Apple user like a like an iPhone or an iPad or Apple computers, it already comes pre-built into those devices. It's absolutely free and it syncs seamlessly between your devices if you have multiple. If you found this video helpful, please hit the like and subscribe button below and leave a comment and let me know what you found to be the most useful uh feature that you would like to try in your productivity system. I genuinely want to thank you for spending your valuable time with me today and I hope I will see you in the next one. Five.