I know what you’re thinking – by ditching Notability, I’m working myself even more comprehensively into the depths of Apple’s walled garden. The fact that Apple does the job for me saves time and solves the problem of disorderly written notes.Īll I have to do is remember to treat that first written line as a note heading – simple! The potential problem That means I don’t really have time to write the contents of the note and remember to manually add a coherent note title. My written notes typically only happen off-the-cuff and during calls. It all comes down to time (or the lack of it). Without a clear heading that can be picked out easily among a sea of other notes, an important idea, plan, or checklist could be lost forever.

Key to this is the aforementioned note title. What used to be a mess of incoherent scribbles, references, and random meeting notes, is now neatly and intelligently filed away in my second brain (more on that in a moment).

When it comes to note taking, 2022 will go down as the year during which I learned the benefits of keeping everything as organised as possible. It’s why I don’t leave files and folders strewn across my desktop and why I’ve invested time recently in pairing down my iPad Air productivity setup. Why this mattersĪlthough I’m not the most organised person you’ll ever meet, I do like to maintain some kind of order within my digital life. Sometimes, it really is the simple stuff that matters. This Notes feature has prompted me to remove Notability from my iPad mini dock and go all-in on Apple Notes. This has always frustrated me and resulted in far too many notes missing meaningful titles. Notability doesn’t do this you have to remember to type in a title for your note or leave it as the nondescript default (which can be customised, but will be the same each time, minus the date and time stamp). It is blindingly simple, obvious, seemingly foolproof, and utterly brilliant. With Notes undertaking the job of creating the title for you, there is no need to manually type in a note title alongside your scribblings.

When you use the Apple Pencil to write a new note in Apple Notes, the app will use some AI trickery to ‘read’ the first line you write and automatically turn it into the Note’s title. That title is what you see within the list of notes. That is, until now, because there’s one feature I’d completely overlooked in Apple Notes which has prompted me to completely ditch Notability. In fact, it is still Apple’s most interesting iPad, despite the fact we’ve been ‘treated’ to new devices in that range this year.Ĭombined with the second-generation Apple Pencil and a Paperlike, the iPad mini is a beast of a tablet.įor me, it’s mainly a digital note-taker, and I’ve been flitting between Notability for written notes and Apple Notes for my second brain. Simple, quick, and extremely useful, not to mention satisfying.I revisited the iPad mini on my YouTube channel recently and revealed why it remains a great buy in 2022. You click on the + icon to add a new shade, and then you save it as a highlighter to use in your digital notes. Finding such a highlighter has been a dream of mine, which in Notability became a reality. However, what stands out for me is the ability to create your shade of pen or highlighter and then save it as a standard color for easy access. Like with other note-taking apps, Notability offers a great variety of tools to resemble the stationary ones used in their physical notes closely. Notability seems to be following Apple’s idea.Īn anesthetic interface won’t be the only reason one chooses Notability over other similar apps. One of the things I love about the IOS system is how easy it is to find how everything works. Given how nicely all this is displayed and the friendly environment, Notability has s massive advantage in the battle, especially for new users. Dividers, making for a well-organized digital bookshelf.

Notability tips