10 Ways To Take Notes On Your Mac

[@ranjansvivek]

Your videos are absolute gems! Thank you for your incredible contribution to the Mac community. You're not just a KZbinr; you're a digital wizard! Your dedication to helping Mac users is commendable. If I had a magic wand, I'd make Apple buy your channel or appoint you as their Mac brand ambassador! Keep spreading the Mac love! Lots of love from India! 🍎💕

[@OvertheGarage-wv1wn]

One of your most useful videos thank you!! I'm an old techie born in the 1960s. While notes are helpful for anyone, we all know that as you enter your latter years, your memory doesn't work as well as it used to. That is particularly so in my case. Third party apps are fine but through the years and my long history in tech, I found that using default apps as often as you possibly can really is helpful to your computer and its performance. If you junk up your PC any update can cause problems that were not there before and troubleshooting the problem when you are loaded down with third part apps is not easy. Finally it is a shame more older people who have been computer users don't continue to embrace tech as they get older to help them as they age.

[@demodrift8605]

I always hit the like button before even watch the video. Gary is the best MAC guy!

[@mickcolips]

Gary…. The one often forgotten for important notes is the secure note in the keychain. Still the best channel for Mac users.

[@KurtPapke]

You mentioned stickies at the very end, but you omitted using the stickies built into Freeform. By using them there, you can combine with pictures, etc. and they sync in iCloud across all devices. That also allows them to be grouped in Freeform documents, not possible with the baseline stickies app.

[@macmost]

The element you mention inside of Freeform is just another type of text element in a Freeform board. That's useful, certainly, but very different from stickies that appear as separate windows.

[@rst33079]

One important option for me is to make handwritten notes and scan it into the note apps. This is very useful for me and I use it often. It is very intuitive and fast. And I can think better at the writing on paper and sketching around.

[@javtimestwo]

Another terrific video. When you mentioned "stickies", it brought me back when I first started using a Mac. I constantly used stickies but then realized there are better options for notes/reminders. Still fun to see and maybe I can revisit those sometime. I have a lot of notes to update now that I have seen this video. Thank you!

[@Trackhoe075]

For me pages is still the best cause it’s available on all devices I would probably use text edit however if it wasn’t just on the Mac As usual you provide us the best info for us Apple users

[@QuizzicalEarth]

Your videos are great, worth much more than my Patreon donation. It still surprises me that you don’t have >1M subscribers with all the useful information you provide on such a regular basis.

[@AWopBopaLoo]

You had me at Voice Memo - recording and taking notes simultaneously. Thanks Gary!

[@tobiasander2741]

For me, taking notes has always been the easy part. Storing and organizing them in a way that makes it easy to find them when I need them is a totally different story though... 🙂

[@j.scottanderson4417]

I am hopeful that Apple's will announce some GenAI functionality that makes using all of the information we collect on our computing devices more useful.

[@gregggullickson]

I’m a fan of using Numbers for notes. I put the subject/entity in the first column and the related notes in the second column. This allows me to sort the subjects/entities alphabetically. Sometimes I’ll add a date column also so in the future I can sort by date if that useful. Thanks for another useful video Gary.

[@indikaudayasaranga988]

useful facts as always. Thank you

[@carolinebarlow4795]

Thanks very much, Gary, for this informative video! Some great ideas here. Didn't know Stickies was still around 🙂

[@garudasomanna]

Beautiful video once again. Recently I have started using Stickies and found it similar to text edit: it can be saved to any destination.

[@ThePeterasd]

Simple but useful. I use numbers to take notes. It provides sorting options. And pivot.

[@Canadian_Living_in_Mexico]

@thepeterasd interesting. i like the pivot idea. do you have an example of using pivot to organize your notes?

[@stephanedresler6241]

Excellent advice as usual. 🙂

[@susanweber6861]

You are changing my life - truly.

[@ikramzamri]

U are a hero in our mac community❤

[@ahs4494]

Keynote is really a bonus.

[@callmesumant]

The content of the videos justifies the name of the channel. They help to get most out of the macs and other apple devices so that users don’t unnecessarily go for buying other third oart apps. Love your videos Gary.. ✌️

[@karansmittal]

Always well created videos. You are doing great work

[@arizona5253]

Thanks great as always. I have two questions. First, is there an easy way to change font color and highlight color of a cell in numbers like in Microsoft excel? When you are working on the spreadsheet in Excel You just go right up there and click the color and pretty much one click unless you have to change the color. But every time on Numbers you have to go change it from no fill, then drop down then the color palette opens up, and then you have to close the color palette. Do you have a video on doing this? I guess now a third question, does Text edit sync to my iPhone, somehow?

[@macmost]

Yes. In the Format sidebar, under Text, you'll see Text Color. For the cell color, it is Format, Cell. You don't need to change from No Fill. Just click on the color chip to the right of the word Fill and select a color.

[@chezchezchezchez]

Very good tips, as usual

[@peteruzek]

Hello Gary, is there a way to turn voice memo into text? It should be easy as macis natively supports speech to text. Thank you.

[@macmost]

No. You are right there should be. Lots of third-party apps and services do offer it though.

[@jaymeez]

I’m waiting for the Mac Studio to come out with M3 but Apple is taking their sweet time. I’m currently using a MacBook Pro from 2015 with 8gigs of Ram. It is running painfully slow and I’ve watched two videos of your on how to speed up a slow mac but it didn’t work. I do have a 4tb external drive attached to the computer as a back up. I deleted ALL extensions from Safari. I have 3 extensions in use in Chrome. I have plenty of room on the internal SSD & the external HD. I just think the machine is old and tired. I don’t want to buy a M2 Mac Studio especially since M3 has already been out so long and I like to keep my machines for a long time. Thanks for all the great content

[@macmost]

Not sure why you are commenting this on a video about notes. I have this video that talks about buying a new Mac. Take a look because it explains a little of why you may not want to worry so much about M2 vs M3. The difference between M1, M2 and M3 aren't as big as you think. The difference between normal-pro-max-ultra are bigger. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5_ZXoVne9dlfq8

[@carlupthegrove262]

As usual....very helpful

[@stingray9905]

Thank you!👌

[@maheribrahim3554]

Hello , and thanks for your important channel . can we make recall to any mail we already sent, after one hour using mail app. thanks with best regards Maher,

[@macmost]

Once an email is sent, you can't recall it. That's not how email works. There is an Undo Send feature that works for a smaller amount of time, but it does it by simply delaying the send.

[@j.scottanderson4417]

Gary, great video. Just wanted to point out that I think you may have done Stickies a disservice. You said that Stickies has limited screen real estate. However, that is not true. While it doesn't have the obvious buttons, all you have to do is click-drag the bottom right-hand corner to resize the window to any size that will fit on your screen. That said, I can't see using it for regular note-taking for business meetings or classes or any other regular heavy-duty job. Apple has pretty much ignored this great little tool and, in my opinion, insulted it by adding a quick note feature to Apple Notes.

[@loisskiathitis8926]

A very useful and very informative video tutorial today! Thank you, Gary! 👏🏻❤️

[@mygeekdom4414]

Is it possible to link all of these notes together. Say with hashtags? It can get confusing… which app has that note?

[@macmost]

Not really, across apps. Notes has that function for the notes inside Notes. But for files it gets complex: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f2mzcoqMjNJsnpo

[@dunnahoo]

Hookmark from Hook Productivity will do this on the Mac. Very useful if you need to link files or notes or other items to each other. For example, create a note that’s a “table of contents” with hooks to all the items you want to have easy access to.

[@GoodHomeInspection]

When you share Contacts with someone, can they read your notes or are they personal?

[@macmost]

What do you mean by share contacts? There is no such thing as shared contacts with iCloud. What action are you taking exactly? Maybe you are just sending them a copy? I know the menu is called "Share" but in reality it is just making a copy in a vCard format and sending that copy. If this is what you are doing, then you control whether notes are included in Contacts, Settings, vCard.

[@GoodHomeInspection]

Contacts or Contacts cards can be shared via text or email. Sharing contacts. Bottom right corner of the screen is a share icon.@@macmost

[@GoodHomeInspection]

I just tried an experiment with my wife's phone, and the notes on the card I tried did transfer with the contact info included. So be careful about what and with whom you choose to share Contacts info.

[@macmost]

@@GoodHomeInspection Did you switch it off in Contacts, Settings, vCard though? And how did you transfer them, exactly?

[@Joebnx1]

I Echo others here. There isn’t anyone in the KZbin Universe that has and provides the info you do. If there were Oscar presentations in that Universe, I dare say you would have a shelf load! I’ve used several of the note taking ideas you listed here. The one thing I cannot seem to master is note taking using my iPad and an Apple Pencil.

[@grahamdefreitas1424]

I have found Notability very useful for note taking using Apple Pencil and it can record the speaker’s voice too. It syncs with IPhone and Mac

[@j.scottanderson4417]

Besides Notabliity as mentioned by @grahmdefreitas1424, GoodNotes is a great great app to use with the Apple Pencil. It is much more intuitive than using the pencil with Apple Notes.

[@BijanIzadi]

When will audio memos auto transcribe!

[@macmost]

I know, right? Until then, lots of third-party apps.

[@glootfrootswoot]

Still waiting for Apple to bring Stickies to iCloud and in turn ecosystem-wide

[@macmost]

The problem there is Stickies is all about little windows. iOS and iPadOS don't have windows. So I wouldn't expect Stickies to become part of iCloud.

[@glootfrootswoot]

Microsoft has done a pretty good job integrating their stickies solution into the OneNote app on mobile! check out their implementation if you can, I've had countless instances where i jot something down on a sticky and was able to pull it back up on my phone in a pinch.@@macmost

[@ПотужнийНезламізм]

Like 👍👍👍

[@unclefart5527]

Watching an old notes post, the interface really is flat and dated. It's plain ugly. I rarely use the app. I'd rather nest text edit files which I have been doing. However each file chips away at your memory. Remember Apple only sell us 8GB base.

[@macmost]

Memory? Maybe you mean storage? Either way, text edit documents don't use much memory or storage.

[@pedropuckerstein4670]

Nice - but i wish you didn’t disable the ability to use duck duck go player instead of youtube player …..

[@macmost]

Not sure what you are saying here. You can watch the videos at KZbin or at my site. I don't know what the Duck Duck Go player is. I use the DDG search engine but I don't know about the DDG "video player." I certainly didn't "disable" it. If you want an alternative to KZbin then watch at my site. No ads thanks to MacMost's patrons.

[@pedropuckerstein4670]

The Duck Duck Go browser has a built in player that for other KZbin videos, seems to "remove" the ads by skipping over them. While I prefer to use Safari, I did create a shortcut on my MAC to open Duck Duck Go Browser with KZbin as the home page. Your video wouldn't play in the player and the error message suggested you disabled it. I appreciate your website and understand your business model. There are many KZbin videos that get bogged down with ads, this is just an alternative.@@macmost

[@macmost]

If you want to view my videos without ads, you can. That's how they are at my site. Perhaps this DDG thing requires that the videos be "embeddable?" I had to disable that for my KZbin videos for a completely unrelated reason.