Contact the OS X El Capitan Note app
OS X El Capitan shares a number of new features with its little brother, iOS 9, and one of them is the Notes app, redesigned from head to toe to be more versatile and useful assimilating many of the advanced features commonly offered by third-party apps like Evernote. So, after our contact with Notes for iPhone, it’s your turn to the desktop version with an article that I hope will help you get the most out of the app.
The first novelty of Notes is the possibility to create folders to organize our ideas in a more structured way. To which we believe, All are added, with all notes sorted chronologically regardless of the folder in which it is stored, and Recently Deleted which, in the line of the Photos app, stores for 30 days any notes that we delete. By dragging a note from this last folder to any other folder we can restore it while deleting it again, we anticipate its expiration date by erasing all traces of it.
By the way, a good idea to organize ourselves better can be to create folders like «Work» or «Personal», but surely there will be as many possible divisions as users. Find the one that best fits you.
Add other types of content
Another important novelty is that Notes now allows us to add different types of content to any note, such as photos, videos, sketches, voice notes, maps, web pages or even documents such as PDF files. In most cases it’s as simple as drag-and-drop, while in some cases like maps or web pages, the easiest way to do this is through the Map sharing menu or Safari by selecting the new option to send to Notes.
The only strange point at the moment (and it’s important to remember that we’re talking about a beta) is that, unlike the app for iOS, Notes for OS X El Capitan doesn’t seem to have any drawing tools, although it does synchronize and visualizes the sketches you make from iPhone or iPad.
With so many attachments, it may be the case that we want to search for a specific content and do not remember the note in which we add it. Lucky we have a section to visualize them by type. Right-clicking on any element will find options to open it, launch quick view, save it, share it and yes, also go to the note that contains it.
Going back to the notes in themselves, these have completely left behind their old condition as plain text and now offer us various formatting options, such as headlines, headings, numbered lists, with dots or dashes and, duplicating some functionality of the Reminders though in a different context, lists of tasks.
It’s very convenient and easy to switch from one style to another using keyboard shortcuts, and if you’re clear about how you want to structure the content of your notes, you can even define through the Format menu how new ones you create will start.
Conclusion
The next version of OS X will bring us a revamped Notes app that, while still behind some commercial alternatives, meets the needs of most users, is included as standard on every Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and syncs without esfi’m using all our devices through iCloud.
