Notes App Mac Email El Capitan Rating: 7,6/10 86 reviews

Introduced in OS X version 10.8 (or as it’s more commonly called, “OS X Mountain Lion”), the Notes app was almost laughably bad. With one of the most ridiculous skeuomorphic user interfaces of all time, I hazard to guess no one used that app on a regular basis.

Fast forward 4 years and 3 OS versions later, and the Notes app has become much more respectable. Today Notes can proudly face-off against strong third-party options like Microsoft OneNote or Evernote. Now, that isn’t to say that Notes does everything you could ever dream of in a notes app, but it does enough to be useful to a large majority of people out there.

If you’re curious to know if Notes in OS X El Capitan is the notes app you’ve always been looking for, let me walk you through some of its features.

Notes in OS X El Capitan has a very straight-forward user interface. The 3-column UI design is found across a wide variety of apps on OS X, so it gives the app some intuitive properties that previous skeuomorphic designs lacked. Moving across the UI, I’ll explain the various sections and buttons.

Contents

  • 3 Attachments and Notes

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The Writing Environment

Notes in OS X El Capitan has a very straight-forward user interface. The 3-column UI design is found across a wide variety of apps on OS X, so it gives the app some intuitive properties that previous skeuomorphic designs lacked. Moving across the UI, I’ll explain the various sections and buttons:

  1. Folder List — This view allows you to choose between your various folders. Selecting a folder changes what appears in the Note List. From the Folder List you can do a lot which we’ll cover in more detail in a moment.
  2. Note List — This lists out whatever notes are within the selected folder.
  3. Note View — This shows the currently selected note, and is the area where you can actually write.
  4. Folder List Toggle — This button toggles the visibility of the Folder List if you’re interested in a more distraction-free writing environment.
  5. Attachment View Toggle — This button toggles the Attachment View, which we’ll talk about more in a bit.
  6. Delete Note — Sends the currently selected note into the trash.
  7. New Note — Creates a new note within the currently selected folder.
  8. Insert Checkbox — This is a new feature of Notes in OS X El Capitan, and it allows you to insert a checkbox. That checkbox can then be toggled back and forth as much as you’d like. It’s a faster and more useful way to create a quick to-do list on the fly.
  9. Heading Selector — Another new feature of Notes, this lets you assign pre-designed headings to the content in your note. There’s just enough options here to be useful, but not so many that it gets confusing.
  10. Insert Attachment — This button opens up a floating window which gives you access to images found in either the Photos app or the Photo Booth app.
  11. Share Sheet — Found across both iOS and OS X these days, this share sheet behaves as expected, giving you a list of options where you can “share” your note.

Organizing Your Notes

The Folder List view actually allows for a lot of different things. You can create new folders, re-arrange the order in which they’re listed, or rename pre-existing ones. In fact, you can take things one step further, and drag folders inside other folders to create a nested structure.

This sort of customizable folder structure really elevates Notes and lets you reasonably store a whole lot more notes than you might otherwise.

Attachments and Notes

The Attachment View is another new feature that really increases the utility of Notes. You can attach a wide variety of different file types to your notes. The easiest way to do this is by dragging and dropping the files from a Finder window into the Note View.

From the Attachment View you can get a feel for all the different attachments you have across your library of notes.

I really think that the new Notes app released in OS X El Capitan is a significant improvement. It elevates what seemed at first to be a purposeless app designed to simulate parity with iOS into a full-featured digital notebook capable of meeting the note-taking needs of most people.

Obsessed with tech since the early arrival of A/UX on Apple, Sudz (SK) is responsible for the editorial direction of AppleToolBox. He is based out of Los Angeles, CA.

Sudz specializes in covering all things macOS, having reviewed dozens of OS X and macOS developments over the years.

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In a former life, Sudz worked helping Fortune 100 companies with their technology and business transformation aspirations.

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Notes in OS X El Capitan is an electronic notepad for your Mac. A note is a convenient place to jot quick notes, recipes, phone numbers, or whatever. Some notes are shown here.

To create a new note, choose File→New Note; press Command+N; or click the button with the little square and pencil in the toolbar.

Notes is supremely flexible; here are just a few things you can do:

  • Double-click a note to open it in its own window so you can drag it around onscreen by its title bar.

    After opening a note in its own window, if you want the note to float in front of other windows so it’s always visible, choose Window→Float on Top.

  • Change text to any font, color, size, and style by selecting it and using the myriad of tools in the Format menu.

  • Search for a word or phrase in any note by typing your query in the Search box.

  • Create bulleted, numbered, or dashed lists by selecting the text and choosing Format→Font→Lists. (Ingredients is a bulleted list, and Directions is a numbered list in the figure.)

  • Create folders (Notes and More Notes in the figure) to organize your notes by choosing File→New Folder, pressing Command+Shift+N, or clicking the New Folder button at the bottom of the Folder list.

    The Notes window must be selected to create a new folder. If a note in a window is active, the New Folder command will be unavailable. So click the main Notes window if the New Folder command is grayed out.

    Mac

    Folders in the Notes application are exclusive to Notes. In other words, the folders described in the following bullets aren’t folders in the Finder. You won’t find them on your hard disk; they live only in the Notes app (and iCloud or other Internet accounts if you’ve enabled them). And also remember that folders are strictly optional. If you don’t have a ton of notes, keeping them all in a single folder and using the Search box to filter them may work for you.

  • Show or hide the Folders list by choosing View→Show/Hide Folders or clicking the Show/Hide Folders button in the toolbar.

  • Show only Notes in a folder by clicking the folder name in the Folders list, or click All iCloud to see all your notes.

  • Automatically sync notes with your iDevice by using iCloud or other Internet Accounts by choosing Notes→Accounts, which will open the Internet Accounts System Preferences pane; then click the appropriate Internet account and enable its check box to sync Notes.

  • Send the contents of a Note via the Mail or Messages apps by choosing File→Share or clicking the Share icon.

  • Print a note by choosing File→Print or pressing Command+P.

Whatever you type in a note is saved automatically as you type it, so Notes has no Save, Save As, or Duplicate commands.

Other Notes goodies include a spell checker, spoken notes, text substitutions (such as Smart Quotes and Smart Dashes), and transformations (such as Make Upper or Lowercase). You can find all these options on the Edit menu.

Finally, El Capitan introduces four new features in Notes:

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  • You can drag and drop photos, PDFs, videos, and other files into a note, something that’s never been possible in Notes before.

  • The new Attachments browser displays every external file you’ve dragged into every note in a single place, making it easier to find things. Click the Attachments button in the toolbar to see this feature in action; click the Attachments button again to go back to your notes.

  • Use the Share menu in apps such as Safari and Maps to add content to Notes.

  • You can add checklists (in addition to bulleted, numbered, and dashed lists), as shown in the to-do list in the middle of the figure, by clicking the Checklist button in the toolbar, by choosing Format→Checklist, or by using the shortcut Command + Shift + L.

Notes App Mac Email El Capitan Update

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You now know everything you need to know to use and enjoy El Capitan’s new, beefed-up Notes app!