Find your notes quickly with tags in iOS 15
Do you also have so many notes in the Notes app that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find them? Then iOS 15, which will be released this fall, has the solution for you! With tags and smart folders, you will always find the right notes. The tags are also available for iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey. You may already know the principle of tags from advanced note-taking apps like Bear and Evernote.
Add tags
You can now tag your notes, i.e. a keyword that indicates what a note is about. Or multiple keywords, that is of course also possible. They work like the hashtags on social media and bundle notes that deal with the same topics. This is how you add them:
- Open a note.
- Type a hashtag – the pound sign # – and put your keyword right after it. Do this at the bottom of your text.
- The hashtag turns yellow.
- Optionally add another hashtag in the same way
Search with tags
Once you have provided a lot of notes with the correct tags, it helps enormously if you want to search for notes. This is how you do it:
- Go to the folders in the Notes app.
- To get started, tap one tag you want to search for.
- At the top you can further refine your search by selecting another tag.
- You’ll see the annotations that contain both tags.
Create a smart map based on tags
Do you notice that when you search for tags, you always tap on the same keywords? Then you can speed up the search process by using smart folders. This will put your notes that have the same set of hashtags together. You have to set this once, then it saves a lot of searching. To create a smart folder:
- In Notes, go to Folders.
- Tap the folder with the plus sign at the bottom left.
- Tap “New Smart Folder” (sometimes you have to choose between “on my iPhone” and “iCloud”) first.
- Give your smart folder a name.
- Select the desired tags by tapping on them.
- Tap Done in the top right.
The smart folder will now appear between your folders. The gear in front of it makes it clear that it is a smart folder. Every time you create a new note that matches the set tags, this smart folder is completed.