My iPhone Notes Were a Complete Mess Until I Started Using This Clever Trick – Here’s How You Can Use It Too

Use Tags in Notes on iPhone

If you haven’t used tags with Apple Notes, don’t worry—it’s pretty easy to do so. But before that, you should keep a few things in mind.

When creating a tag in Apple Notes, you cannot use spaces between words in your tags, but you can use hyphens (-), numbers, or underscores (_) to connect multiple words, like #cat-lover or #cat_lover.

Don’t worry about capitalization; the system will automatically convert everything to lowercase for consistency. Therefore, #Cat-Lovers, #cat-lovers, and even #CAt-LOvErS all become the same tag: #cat-lovers.

Let’s create a tag to see how easy it is.

• Open the Apple Notes app on your iPhone.
• Create a new note or open an existing one.
• To add a tag, simply type the “#” symbol followed by a keyword (e.g., #work, #school, #grocery).
• Once you type the tag, it will turn yellow, indicating it has been recognized as a tag.
• If you go to the “Folders” page, you should see the newly created tag in the “Tags” section at the bottom.

Real-Life Example: When I was in school, I used to tag notes for different subjects, such as #math, #science, and #history. This way, when exam time comes, I can quickly find all relevant notes by searching for the specific tag.

View Your Notes with Tags

Looking for a note can be overwhelming, especially if you have tons of them. Scrolling through all your notes takes time, and using the search feature requires entering a specific word from the note.

Instead, you can use the Apple Notes’ tagging system to quickly and easily filter your search.

• Open the Notes app and make sure you’re on the “Folders” page.
• Scroll down to find the “Tags” section.
• Tap on any tag to view all notes associated with that tag.

Real-Life Example: Imagine you have hundreds of notes on your iPhone and need to find a specific family recipe you saved years ago. Instead of scrolling through all your notes, you can quickly find them using the #familyrecipe tag you added to relevant notes, saving you time and effort.

Combine Tags for More Specific Searches

While a robust tagging system offers flexibility, you might encounter situations where tags overlap slightly but aren’t quite similar enough to be merged.

But don’t worry, you can easily add multiple relevant tags to a single note. This allows you to combine these tags later for a more precise search.

The beauty lies in the ability to select multiple tags during your search. This powerful feature helps you narrow down results and find the exact note you need quickly and efficiently.

Here’s how it works.

• From the Folders page, scroll down to the “Tags” section.
• Tap a tag, then select other tags from the list tags at the top to filter notes containing all the selected tags.

Real-Life Example: You might have notes tagged as #grocerylist and #family. If you want to find grocery lists specific to family events, you can select both tags to see only those notes. Pretty cool, huh? But that’s not all, the next tip is my favorite.

Organize Notes with Smart Folders

Creating Smart Folders based on tags can boost your productivity and help you stay organized.

While folders are perfect for sorting notes into categories such as work or personal projects, Smart Folders take it up a notch. They act like dynamic filters that automatically gather notes based on tags you’ve assigned.

Your notes stay in their original folders, but Smart Folders provide a quick way to access and organize them based on specific criteria.

This means you can easily find and reference important notes like journal entries, favorite recipes, or essential work documents without manually sorting through everything.

Follow these steps to create Smart Folders based on tags.

• Go to the “Folders” view, tap “New Folder” on the lower left, give it a name, and choose “Make Into Smart Folder.”
• Set parameters for the Smart Folder, specifying whether it should match all or any of the selected filters.
• Select the filters for your Smart Folder, such as tags, when a note was created or last edited, etc, and then tap Done.
• Tap Done again to create your Smart Folder.

Real-Life Example: During the day, when something comes to mind, I quickly jot down a note without much thought, planning to review it later. This happens often, leaving me with many untagged and disorganized notes. To manage this, I created a Smart Folder that automatically collects all untagged notes. Later, I can take my time tagging them and keeping everything organized.

Tag Multiple Notes Retroactively

Organize your older notes by tagging them retroactively. This feature helps you bring order to your notes, even if you’ve been using Apple Notes for a while.

• Select the folder with the list of notes.
• Tap the More button (three dots) in the upper right, then tap “Select Notes.”
• Select the notes you want tagged, then tap Tags at the bottom of the screen.
• Choose from existing tags, then tap Done.

Real-Life Example: If you’ve been using Apple Notes for a while, you can go back and tag older notes to organize them better. For instance, you can tag all your previous grocery lists with #grocerylist to have them all in one place.

Bottom Line

With its intuitive tagging system, Apple Notes offers a powerful tool for efficiently organizing and managing your notes.

Whether you’re a student, professional, or busy parent, tags can help you stay organized and on top of your tasks.

If you loved this iPhone productivity tip, you should check out how to create a distraction-free iPhone home screen that will change your life. It’s a game-changer.

Let me know if you have any questions down below.