Have you ever needed to quickly save a recipe, phone number, address, or other useful information—only to forget it later or lose the piece of paper you wrote it on?
Your iPhone already includes a simple solution: Apple Notes. It is one of the most useful yet frequently overlooked apps on the iPhone and iPad. With it, you can keep important information close at hand without relying on your memory or covering your desk in scraps of paper.
Find and open the Notes app
Notes App Icon
If Notes is not on your Home Screen, swipe down from the middle of the screen to open Search. Type “Notes,” then tap the app when it appears.
You can also swipe left through your Home Screen pages until you reach the App Library. Tap the search field at the top and enter “Notes.”
Create your first note
After opening Notes, look for the square-and-pencil button in the lower-right corner. Tap it to create a blank note.
The first line becomes the note’s title, so enter something short and descriptive. A title such as “Shopping List,” “Doctor’s Instructions,” or “Vacation Ideas” will make the note easier to recognize later.
Press the Return key to move to the body of the note, then enter the rest of your information. When you finish, tap Done.
Your notes are saved automatically. If Notes is connected to iCloud, they can also appear on your other Apple devices, including an iPad or Mac signed in to the same Apple Account.
Click the pencil-on-paper icon (lower right) to create a new note.
Make a note easier to read
Apple Notes includes many of the formatting options found in a word processor. To change some text, first select it by double-tapping a word and dragging the selection handles.
Next, tap the Aa formatting button. Depending on your software version, you may be able to turn the selected text into a heading or subheading, or apply bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, and color.
Formatting can make longer notes much easier to scan. Try using headings to divide a note into sections or bold text to highlight an important date, instruction, or phone number.
Find a note again
Writing something down is only helpful if you can find it later. Fortunately, search is one of the best features in Apple Notes.
From your list of notes, tap the search field and type a word you remember. If you know that a note mentioned “pizza,” for example, search for that word. Notes will display matching results, with the most recently edited ones generally appearing near the top.
You can also ask Siri to open Notes when you do not want to search for the app manually.
Once you become comfortable creating, formatting, and searching notes, you can explore folders, pinned notes, checklists, sharing, and other helpful features. But these basics are enough to begin replacing easily lost scraps of paper with information you can find whenever you need it.