Inside iOS 9: Apple's Notes app is greatly enhanced with drawings, lists, pictures, links & more
Apple's native Notes application has received a major overhaul with iOS 9, allowing users to sketch ideas, insert pictures, include links to external apps, and more, making it a fully featured note taking solution.
In iOS 9, Notes users can tap a sketch button at the bottom of the screen on their iPhone or iPad to begin drawing. This brings up a series of digital drawing tools (pen, marker, and pencil), along with a ruler for drawing straight lines.
On the iPad, or when drawing on the iPhone in landscape mode, Notes in iOS 9 also has a range of color options when drawing: black, gray, dark blue, light blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. There's also an eraser tool.
Notes also has a dedicated camera button at the bottom of the screen, where a user can insert an image from their photo library, or capture a new picture.
There's also a new option for creating lists in Notes. To save screen real estate on the iPhone, this capability is accessed by hitting a gray "plus" button that rests atop the QuickType keyboard.
The expanded menu also includes a variety of different font options: title, heading, body, checklist, bulleted list, dashed list, and numbered list. Text can also be displayed bold, italicized, and underlined.
On the iPad, the bullet and font options are located on the keyboard to the left of the QuickType suggestions.
Finally, Notes in iOS 9 also gains the ability to import links from other applications. For example, open a destination in Maps, tap the Share Sheets button, and export the location to Notes where it will show up as an address, icon and link. The same can also be done for URLs in Safari.
In iOS 9, Notes users can tap a sketch button at the bottom of the screen on their iPhone or iPad to begin drawing. This brings up a series of digital drawing tools (pen, marker, and pencil), along with a ruler for drawing straight lines.
On the iPad, or when drawing on the iPhone in landscape mode, Notes in iOS 9 also has a range of color options when drawing: black, gray, dark blue, light blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. There's also an eraser tool.
Notes also has a dedicated camera button at the bottom of the screen, where a user can insert an image from their photo library, or capture a new picture.
There's also a new option for creating lists in Notes. To save screen real estate on the iPhone, this capability is accessed by hitting a gray "plus" button that rests atop the QuickType keyboard.
The expanded menu also includes a variety of different font options: title, heading, body, checklist, bulleted list, dashed list, and numbered list. Text can also be displayed bold, italicized, and underlined.
On the iPad, the bullet and font options are located on the keyboard to the left of the QuickType suggestions.
Finally, Notes in iOS 9 also gains the ability to import links from other applications. For example, open a destination in Maps, tap the Share Sheets button, and export the location to Notes where it will show up as an address, icon and link. The same can also be done for URLs in Safari.
Comments
It's about time too. Apple's had the tech since the 1990's. This is so much like Notes in NewtonOS.
Apparently so did you. That's orange, not yellow.
Even though some Apple apps are clumsy at times, they all have that Apple integration and ease of use that Apple is so famous for.
And although there were similar, more powerful apps available, I tend to use Apple's and just wait till Apple improves them.
The Notes update is much appreciated. I've tried Evernote and few others but they are either too "powerful" and feature rich for me to learn or they are pretty simple and don't sync to other devices.
I stayed with AppleWorks, Pages/Numbers, iLife/iWork, iWeb (now defunct), AppleMail, the Podcast app, Maps, iTools through MobileMe to iCloud, from infancy to maturation.
All of them seemed easier to use than anything Adobe, Google or MS ever put out.
Best.
Apparently so did you. That's orange, not yellow.
Funny!
All of them seemed easier to use than anything Adobe, Google or MS ever put out.
Free vs. $200 for Adobe's Ink & Slide.
I'll take free.
Free vs. $200 for Adobe's Ink & Slide.
I'll take free.
Nothing's free, Bro.
Edit: I missed your point. I understand now.
Meh..Same thing..bright yellow orange color on white background is still looks terrible.
So I'll continue to use that for grocery lists and making temporary lists of short-term options trades I want to remember to close out prior to expiration. But I'm the only person with those two use cases.
But this new Notes app might be suitable to replace EverNote, as long as it's features are also available on the Mac. EverNote is available for, and I use it on, Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
This is a step in the right direction. I've dragged .jpegs and .pdfs into Notes for quite a while. Synching between iPhone and mac with no Evernote fussiness is a killer feature.
I wonder if Apple could do a full fledged sketchpad app. I use the Grab utility for screenshots along with and Preview to markup pdfs, currently. however, Grab only saves as .tiff and many third party apps do not support that format. So, I need to convert to .pdf...sigh!
I wonder how a Grab/Notes/TextEdit/Preview mashup would work. Using TextEdit, Notes, Preview, and Grab (and Pages) all seem like a little too much fragmentation. Those are several of my most-used apps and would love to not need to switch through five different apps to get all the functionality I need.
Does anyone know if Notes supports sharesheet sending to the above apps?
Great to see them get some love.
I wouldn't say it's worthless, there are definitely times a recent note is good to have quick access to, but I think you're right, alphabetical sorting would also be nice. Someone also mentioned folders, I haven't used Evernote, but I think categories or groups would be nice (which is somewhat like folders), as long as they could be accessed on a single page (inset type rather than having a link into the folder).
Overall, I'm really liking where they're taking this : )