hey everyone I'm Brooke and welcome back to my channel so there are a ton of note-taking apps out there and over the years especially when I was a student I'm pretty sure I bought every single one and tested everyone like Evernote notability good notes all to find the best note-taking app well guess what the best note-taking app is actually 100 free Apple notes has gotten so good over the years that it is now the only thing I use for note taking and quick captured notes now as Apple notes the fanciest note taking app out there no not even close but I do think it's its Simplicity and ease of use that just makes it so awesome to use especially for everyday use and best of all did I mention it's free now when it comes to a good note-taking app something that's super important is organization because if the app is cluttered messy things are all over the place I personally get overwhelmed and will not enjoy using the app so so thankfully Apple notes organization is pretty simple but it gets the job done Apple notes lets you create these smart folders which basically allows you to group notes by filter or by parameter that you've set so on the left hand side you'll see all of the folders and smart folders that I've already created anywhere you see the gear icon is actually a smart folder so how you would set this up is from the bottom left you would click the new folder button and this is where you would create both a normal folder and a smart folder you can name it and then at the bottom you'll see make into smart folder by selecting this that is where you will choose or select the filters or parameters you want for this smart folder so for example I've created smart folders for things like all my PDFs so regardless of which folder I've created a note that has a PDF they're also all going to show up in the a smart PDF folder the biggest way though I probably use Smart folders is with tags anytime I write a video script I'll hashtag script and then all my scripts automatically go into this smart folder so they're easy to find now another great feature for organization is the ability to pin notes within their folder so for example I use these for notes that I want to access frequently or easily I'll pin them to the top of the folder so that they're just quickly accessible and the best thing is with iCloud all of these changes or notes organization that you create syncs across all of your devices and pretty instantly I have to say so if I'm starting a note on my iPhone which is what generally happens because I always have my iPhone with me everything syncs and I can find it so it's really easy to start on one device hand off and continue on the other my last big organization tip and this is not an Apple feature this is very much a me tip something that I do and like is using emojis and if you follow the channel for a while you've probably noticed my love for emojis I am a very visual person so I just find the like the visual cue of an emoji to be incredibly helpful especially when you're looking at your notes in the menu all in a list all the titles look the same you can't really add Bolding or any special anything to just the title of the note so I find using emojis is super useful when you're trying to pick out or group different notes now another huge thing for a note-taking app is how easy it is to actually take a note because when I have an idea or I want to write something down I honestly have about 15 to 30 seconds to write it down before I forget it so I need to be able to access and create a note super super easily so if you ask actually open the app it's super easy in the top right to just create a note that way but if you want to be even faster about it you can use your control center on either your iPhone or your iPad to create a quick note and if you don't already have this enabled you can do so in settings and control center it's super easy to add quick note as an option and then when it comes to actually writing the note you have all the formatting options you need nothing too fancy or too crazy but all the essentials so things like adding a header Bolding underlining strikethrough indenting you can create bulleted lists numbered lists again all the basics but you can also do things like create a checklist super easy or even creating a table now this next one is something I've come across actually fairly recently but I've been absolutely loving and that is the ability to change the background of the page page and what I mean by that is if you press the three dots in the top right you'll see lines and grids and by pressing that you can actually change the style of the page so when I'm on my iPad using my apple pencil sometimes I really just feel like writing out a note as opposed to typing it so I'll choose the lines as opposed to a blank page so that when I'm writing out by hand it's way straighter and neater than if I was just if it was a free-for-all and then if you're doing something maybe writing math formulas or charting something out you have a graph paper option if I was a student I'd be using this all the time in class I do find the iPad Apple pencil combo is awesome for notes I will say though that writing with a pencil on the glass of the iPad is not the smoothest experience like the glass is definitely a little bit slippery so I've come across this brand called paper like which make a screen protector for the iPad that is a little bit grippier and paper like is their whole thing so it makes that experience that writing experience a little bit better a little bit smoother and then they also have more recently introduced these apple pencil grips so it just makes it a little bit more comfortable to write with the pencil especially for longer periods of time and I'll add links for the screen protector and the pencil grips down below now this one's a bit of a hidden feature so anytime you need to draw a shape whether you're using your finger or you're using an apple pencil I personally am not an artist will never claim to be an artist so when I try to draw a shape my circles the lines don't touch it looks more like an oval whatever it's just it's not pretty so a hidden feature to just clean this up a little bit is after you've drawn the shape you can hold it until highlights and then you'll see an option snap to shape when you click snap to shape it'll turn my imperfect circle into a perfect circle or it'll turn my pathetic attempt at a square into a perfect square so that's just a nice little feature that helps keep your notes clean and orderly I also think the search ability and the privacy of note taking helps make an app really great and the search function in Apple notes is incredibly powerful so it'll give you a list of suggested searches which are very useful and awesome but it can do way more remember those emojis I mentioned I like to use in the titles of my notes I can just put in the one emoji and it'll pull up all the notes with that emoji it can even find words from my handwriting so any of the handwritten notes I've taken if I search one word It'll recognize it from the handwriting I've done and populate that in the search it'll take words from PDFs even so it's not just looking or searching from the text in and out it's literally searching everything within that note which is incredible another great feature is the ability to lock notes so any note that maybe is a little bit more sensitive or private you can actually lock and so the only way to access that note is with a password or you can even set it up to use with Touch ID and face ID to do that it would be really easy you would take any note and in the top right hand corner you would hit the three dots so the same as you see the pin note option to the right you'll also see a lock note option and even any time you're viewing the note if you need to quickly lock it because maybe you're in class or you're on the subway and someone's you know all of a sudden sitting next to you you can just really quickly hit the lock at the top of the menu bar to re-lock the note and hide it from view this is just a little feature that I find is incredibly valuable for any of that more sensitive content if it's health information or anything like that you're storing in notes that added level of privacy is definitely nice to have so I'm happy to say that the search for the best note-taking app is officially over because Apple notes honestly has you covered it's pretty intuitive it's easy to use it's free and it syncs across all your devices there's not much more you need in a note-taking app so if you found value in this video please give it a thumbs up and if you're not already subscribe to the channel for more have a great day bye foreign