Staff Writer. But support for a popular extensions standard is one of the most important. So Apple’s making a dedicated category in the Mac App Store. Browsing for and discovering new. IA Writer ( iPhone + iPad ):- iA Writer is an outstsanding and well designed text editor apps for iPhone and iPad.This editing app has lots of unique features such as sync scrolling Markdown preview, full-text search for iCloud documents, real-time iCloud & Dropbox sync, auto Markdown formats text on-screen, beautiful preview templates with curated fonts, configurable keyboard bar, focus. Feb 25, 2017 Each year at WWDC, Apple compiles and presents the Apple Design Awards, “which reflect the best in design, innovation, and use of technology on Apple platforms.” This list of apps, which includes macOS, iOS, and watchOS, is a great place to start. Apr 21, 2020 There's a Mac app, but no options for PC users. Similar to Journey, Day One features an interface that's clean, minimal and very pleasing to the eye. Despite its simple look, it packs all the features you'd want in a powerful journal app–including search, tags, maps, photos, and so much more.
Whether you’re a new Mac user, have never used Apple Notes before, or are wondering how to do something in particular, this user guide for the Notes app is for you.
We’ll walk you through the basic features you need to know to effectively use the Notes app on your Mac.
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Contents
4 Organize notes with folders
5 Work with notes
9 Add items to your notes
10 Share your notes
11 Your guide for how to use Notes on Mac
Set up your Internet Accounts
The Internet Accounts that you set up on your Mac allow you to use apps like Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Notes. This lets you use Notes for iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, and other accounts you have.
To use Notes with your accounts, go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts. Then mark the box for Notes for each of the accounts you want.
Once you do this, each account that you mark will display as a folder in the sidebar on the left of the Notes app. To view these folders, click the Show Folders button the toolbar or click View > Show Folders from the menu bar.
Customize the Notes toolbar
Like your other Mac apps, Notes has a customizable toolbar at the top. This gives you quick access to create a new note, add a table or checklist, insert media, change your view, and much more.
To change the buttons in the toolbar for actions you’ll use most, right-click in the toolbar area or click View from the menu bar and select Customize Toolbar.
Then drag buttons from the options at the bottom into the toolbar where you want them. You can also arrange those buttons as you like. Click Done when you finish.
If you notice a button or two suddenly disappear from your toolbar, this is likely because of the window size. If the Notes window isn’t wide enough to accommodate all of the buttons you choose, you’ll see an arrow to the right of the Search box. Just click that arrow to see your additional buttons.
Pick your view
The Notes app offers two views; list view and gallery view. Click View from the menu bar to select the view you want to use. You can also use the List and Gallery buttons in the toolbar.
List view is exactly that, a list of your notes showing the title, date, and a small amount of text.
Gallery view displays your notes in a grid layout with the same information but in a larger, thumbnail view.
Organize notes with folders
Just like the way you organize files on your Mac, you can do the same in the Notes app, using folders.
Create a folder
In addition to the Internet Account folders in the sidebar, you can create folders within any of your accounts. So if you have a business account set up, for example, you can create folders for different projects.
Do one of the following to create a folder:
Select the account (folder) and click New Folder at the bottom of the sidebar.
Select the folder and click File > New Folder from the menu bar.
Click the three dots to the right of the account (folder) name and choose New Folder.
Give your folder a name and hit your Return key.
Rename a folder
To rename a folder, click the three dots to the right of it, select Rename Folder, give it a new name, and hit Return.
Rearrange folders
To move a folder to a different spot in the sidebar, select it, and then drag and drop it in its new location.
Delete a folder
To delete a folder, click the three dots to the right of it, select Delete Folder, and confirm you want to delete the folder and its contents by clicking OK. You can also select the folder and click Edit > Delete from the menu bar.
Work with notes
From creating new notes to removing those you no longer need, here’s how to work with your notes.
Create a note
To create a note, click the Create a Note button in the toolbar or click File > New Note from the menu bar. By default, the folder that is selected in the sidebar is the one that will hold your new note. But you can move notes if you need to.
Move a note
There are two easy ways to move a note.
Right-click, put your cursor over Move to, and pick the location.
Drag the note from the list into the folder in the sidebar where you want it.
Pin a note
If you want to keep a note at the top of the list, you can pin it.
Right-click and pick Pin Note.
Select the note and click File > Pin Note from the menu bar.
If you want to unpin a note later, follow one of the above methods and pick Unpin Note.
Lock a note
If you want to protect a note with a password, you can lock it.
Right-click and pick Lock Note.
Select the note, click the Lock button in the toolbar, and pick Lock Note.
Select the note and click File > Lock Note from the menu bar.
Then enter the password you want to use and click OK.
The note will remain unlocked until you lock it. To lock the note, click the (unlocked) Lock button the toolbar and pick Close All Locked Notes.
And once you lock it, you’ll be prompted to enter the password to reopen it on your Mac and other devices. If you use your Apple Watch to unlock passwords on your Mac, you have that option as well.
There is currently no way to retrieve a forgotten note password. So be sure to use a password you’ll remember or keep it somewhere safe.
Also, once you lock a note, the same password will be used automatically for other notes that you lock later. While this is convenient so that you don’t have to remember a password for every note you lock, it’s also crucial that you keep this in mind.
To remove a lock from a note, click the Lock button in the toolbar or right-click the note and pick Remove Lock.
Delete a note
There are a few ways to delete a note. Just make sure that you want to remove it completely because you will not receive a message to confirm.
Right-click and pick Delete.
Select the note and click the Delete (trash can) button in the toolbar.
Select the note and click Edit > Delete from the menu bar.
Format your notes
Notes offers up text formatting options similar to an outline with a title, heading, subheading, and body choices. Select your text and click the Format button in the toolbar or Format in the menu bar. You can also choose a bulleted, dashed, or numbered list layout.
To style your text, click Format from the menu bar. At the bottom, put your cursor over Font for things like bold or italics, Text for alignment or writing direction, and Indentation for increasing or decreasing the indent.
Sort your notes
Once you start using Notes, you can easily end up with many notes in your folders. Knowing how to sort those notes will give you a faster way to find the ones you need.
Select the folder and click View > Sort Folder By from the menu bar.
Click the three dots to the right of the folder name and choose Sort Folder By.
You can sort the notes in a folder by Date Edited, Date Created, or Title. If you pick a Date option, you can then choose Newest to Oldest or vice versa. If you pick Title, you can choose from A to Z or Z to A.
Search Notes
Anytime you want to find a note or attachment quickly in the Notes app, try the Search feature. Pop in a keyword and get your results right away.
If you click the magnifying glass in the Search box, you can choose to search all accounts or just the current one you have selected. This gives you a great way to narrow down your search from the start.
Once you enter the search term, you’ll see your results in the notes list and these results will include notes and attachments.
Add items to your notes
Whether you’re planning a trip, organizing a project, or creating a list, you can attach all sorts of items to your notes.
Add media to notes
You can insert photos from your Mac or scanned documents, photos, and sketches from your iPhone in your notes. This is a great way to keep those types of references to your notes all together.
Right-click inside the note body and pick an option towards the bottom.
Select the note and click the Media (image) button in the toolbar.
Add attachments to notes
Along with the media mentioned above, you can attach files, maps, audio, and videos to your notes.
The easiest way to add an attachment is to drag it from its current location into your note. You can also add these items to your notes with a reverse action. For instance, if you have a file open in Pages, you can send a copy to Notes.
Browse attachments in Notes
You can see all of the photos, files, and other items you attach to your notes in one spot. Click the Attachments (paperclip) button in your toolbar.
From there, you can pick one of the tabs at the top for the type of file you want to view and browse for it. You can also use the Search box at the top of Notes to find items with a keyword.
Add tables to notes
If you use tables to keep your items organized, then you’ll be glad to know you can use them in Notes too.
To add a table, click the Table button in the toolbar or Format > Table from the menu bar.
To add or delete columns or rows, select the table and then click the three dots at the top of the column or on the left of the row. This will highlight that column or row. Then click the arrow for it and pick an option.
To delete a table, select it and hit your Delete
Add checklists to notes
A checklist in Notes gives you a great way to create a to-do or shopping list. To add a checklist, click the Checklist button in the toolbar or Format > Checklist from the menu bar.
To add an additional list item, just hit your Return key after you enter an item.
Share your notes
You can share notes with other people or different apps. This lets you collaborate easily in the way that works best for you.
Add people
If you have a specific note that you want another person to view or be able to edit, this is simple.
Click the Add People button in the toolbar or File > Add People To from the menu bar and select the name of your note.
Select the method you’d like to share the note with that person, like Mail, Messages, or AirDrop.
Next to Permission, choose either Only people you invite can make changes or Only people you invite can view.
Complete the Add field if applicable and then click Share and follow the prompts to invite your friend to your note.
Use your Share Menu
To send a note using your Mac Share Menu extensions instead, click the Share button in the toolbar or File > Share from the menu bar.
Choose your app or service and then follow the prompts to send or share your note.
Your guide for how to use Notes on Mac
This user guide for how to use Apple Notes on Mac should get you off to a solid start with the app.
Are you going to jump right in and start using Notes on your Mac now? If you run into trouble or have a question, feel free to comment below!
And remember to connect with us on social media! You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!
Sandy worked for many years in the IT industry as a project manager, department manager, and PMO Lead. She then decided to follow her dream and now writes about technology full-time. Sandy holds a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology.
She loves technology– specifically – terrific games and apps for iOS, software that makes your life easier, and productivity tools that you can use every day, in both work and home environments.
Her articles have regularly been featured at MakeUseOf, iDownloadBlog and many other leading tech publications.
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Interface design is a valuable skill to possess. Every decision you make, be it something as major as a color scheme or as minor as a stroke width, can potentially have a huge impact on whether or not people decide to use the application, website, etc. We designers know this better than anyone because we tend to be interface snobs, meaning we flat out refuse to use an app with poor design, even if the functionality is stellar.
The next time you’re faced with the task of designing an interface, why not learn from those who have already succeeded? Below we’ll take a look at the interfaces of ten beautiful and fairly new Mac applications and discuss what went right.
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Wunderlist
The wizards at 6Wunderkinder are quietly taking over the productivity app industry with a killer combination: great design, simple functionality and an unbeatable price tag (free). Both their iPhone and desktop app look just excellent.
The key to the awesomeness of the Wunderlist interface is something extremely simple that we just don’t see enough of in Mac application interfaces: customization. Wunderlist comes built in with a whole bunch of gorgeous backgrounds like the wooden one shown above. Since the UI elements are actually fairly minimal, swapping out the background changes the entire personality of the application!
Why spend hours scratching your head wondering what your users will like the most when you know that every user is different? Providing your users with a number of equally attractive but very different options is a solid way to increase customer satisfaction. One important hint: make sure it’s easy to switch between the options. As a rule of thumb, if you have to write a tutorial on how to do it, it’s too complex. Wunderlist simply provides a row of icons at the bottom of the window. When you click on one, the background changes. It’s that simple.
The one killer feature that I think would make this even better is if users could use their own images as a background. Sure, plenty of your users will choose something hideous but there will also be a ton of users who come up with something that’s actually better than the built-in options.
I’m making a prediction that lots of developers will follow in the footsteps of 6Wunderkinder and begin offering users the ability to personalize their application interfaces to fit their unique personalities.
Reeder
Reeder for Mac is making a big splash in the Mac design community. Most of us have used NetNewsWire for ages and are definitely sick of the stagnant and boring interface. By contrast, Reeder is a breath of fresh air offering a notably clean and non-cluttered looking interface for an RSS reader.
The awesome thing about Reeder is that it represents another growing trend you can expect to see on the rise in the next few years: Apple iOS design on the desktop (Reeder began life on iOS). The iPhone lit a wildfire under interface developers who began churning out buttery smooth interfaces unlike anything we’d ever seen. This fire has recently been lit anew with the arrival of the iPad and innovative new interactive experiences like Flipboard.
Gradually, we’ve been seeing these design trends trickle back to the Mac. Even Apple has realized the benefits of iOS-like interfaces and is incorporating many of these benefits into OS X Lion, the next major release of Apple’s legendary desktop operating system.
Sparrow
I hesitated to add Sparrow because it is quite controversial among designers. The reason for this is that it represents a shameless ripoff of the UI of another popular application: Tweetie for Mac.
On one side of this debate you have legitimate claims that Tweetie has been stagnant in development for quite a while now and will likely stay that way because of its acquisition by Twitter (who really just wanted the iPhone app). Designers on the other side claim that it’s pretty uncool to rip off another man’s interface no matter the circumstances.
Regardless of which side of the debate you’re on, Sparrow is an interesting example for one important reason. It took a format that we were used to in one category (Twitter apps) and sought to apply it in a completely different context (email). This type of thinking is a stellar source of innovation. Take a look at all the apps you use every day, now take a look at the competing apps in that category. Chances are, they’re all about the same because someone innovated the category and everyone else simply followed. If you want to create something truly different, ask yourself how you could take the concept of that app and fit it into the structure of an app from a different category. You might just revolutionize an entire category.
Kiwi 2
Though the functionality still doesn’t feel quite as smooth as Tweetie, Kiwi has to be one of the most attractive desktop Twitter clients on the market.
As with Wunderlist, the key element here is customization. Kiwi offers users a number of themes to choose from that radically alter the appearance of the application. Wunderlist takes the simple route and offers different backgrounds, but in Kiwi, everything in your stream changes. This includes the shape and color of the tweets, the background and the appearance of the icons. Even the functionality alters pretty dramatically from one theme to the next. For instance, one theme simply shows you a list of usernames and hides the actual tweets until you click on a user to see what they said.
The execution here is very important. Kiwi doesn’t require you to choose a specific theme or walk you through some advanced setup process. The app has all the default settings worked out for you. In fact, if you never poke around in the preferences menu, you could use Kiwi for quite a while before even finding the customization options. They’re not exactly hidden, power users will find them in the first place they think to look. However, users who want a simple experience aren’t being hit over the head with intimidating decisions that they’re not prepared to make.
The lesson here is that customization should be both simple and optional. Don’t force your users into it or they’ll close the app and turn elsewhere. Let your users love your app for what it is and work their way up to making it look how they want as they become more familiar with how everything works.
DaisyDisk
Daisy Disk is the most attractive hard drive storage visualization I’ve ever seen. The retro futuristic charts look so good you’ll want to print them and use them as office art.
The important question to ask here is whether or not you have to sacrifice usability in your quest for aesthetics. The crazy pie chart shown above looks quite complicated and is probably enough to scare away a lot of users. However, the implementation is actually quite solid. Next to the graph is a simple list showing the types of data on your hard drive and how much space is being eaten up by them. All the information you need is in this list. It’s simple, straightforward and easy to understand. The visualization is there for visual thinkers like us designers who are crazy enough to favor this representation over a list.
Most importantly, the two representations of the data are linked in an interactive way. When you hover your mouse over the “Applications” line item, that part of the chart begins to glow. So even if you don’t remotely understand the chart at first, it will suddenly begin to make sense as you hover over each item in the list and see how the proportion of glowing space relates to other sections.
The lesson here is that eye candy isn’t for everyone. If you want to set your application apart as the one with crazy beautiful visualizations, go for it. But don’t neglect the users who would rather use Excel than Photoshop. Make sure your attractive graphics have a strong foundation in easy-to-use controls and understandable communication methods.
Transmit 4
Transmit 4 is the latest update to the reigning patriarch of Mac FTP clients and represents one of the most significant aesthetic boosts to the application to date. I never thought I would drool over an FTP client but Transmit now has a ton of really nice screens, animations, buttons and more.
The most noticeable tactic used here is increased contrast. FTP clients are notably bright and white; every screen, every list of files, nothing but white and, if you’re lucky, a little gray and/or blue. The folks at Panic decided to tackle this monotony with a number of really beautiful dark screens for setting up servers, navigating favorites, etc.
The important lesson here is that they really didn’t mess with the meat of the app too much. The file lists are still on a white background and function just like they always have. Anyone familiar with FTP software will be able to pick the app up and run with it immediately. Any time you want to update a UI to give it some visual flair, don’t be afraid to be extremely choosey about what parts do and don’t get updated. If you’re working with a product made popular by its simple functionality, keep it that way. Instead, take the time to focus on all the little details that really polish off a UI and make it feel like a major step up from the competition.
Courier
Courier has to be the most beautiful tool on the planet for quickly sharing multimedia files using social media. Would I ever pay $20 for a Facebook image uploader? No way. Has this one made me seriously consider changing my mind? Yep.
The lesson here is one I’ve discussed countless times in a web design context: visual metaphors rock. The first thing RealMac did was focus on core functionality. They made sharing files to all kinds of networks at once a ridiculously easy task powered by the drag and drop experience Mac users know and love. With an unbeatable workflow in place (always make sure to focus on content first!), they were able to wrap the whole thing in a beautiful and appropriate theme: the daily mail. This takes a fairly technological task and brings it into a very real and familiar experience for the user. Suddenly the mundane task of uploading files looks and feels like a virtual mail-sending video game where you can choose what envelope you want to use and where to send it.
1Password
Open up Keychain Access on your Mac. This is a typical password manager, designed by none other than Apple inc. It’s quite usable but also quite boring. Now take a look at a very different visual approach to the same basic functionality in 1Password.
Quite the difference no? 1Password possesses a simply outstanding interface for managing your logins, passwords, form data, etc. I don’t know about you but this makes me question every single database application on my hard drive. Why has the norm become to make such plain presentations of database information? What if applications like Evernote (already one of the more attractive database apps out there) looked a little more like 1Password or Bento? Would that be so bad? I submit that it would not.
Great aesthetics don’t complicate usability, they improve it. Believe it or not, you can present tables, rows, cells and fields of information in a really attractive manner without adding so much superfluous fluff that it ruins the functionality. If you don’t believe me, download 1Password and give it a shot.
SweetFM
In contrast to all this discussion of adding visual interest to your your interfaces, SweetFM, a wonderfully simple Last.fm client, does the exact opposite. Just take a look at how compact and attractive it is!
Now, compare that screenshot you just saw to the official Last.fm client for Mac:
Admittedly, many people will like the official client better. It seems more robust and puts everything in front of you at once (a highly efficient approach). However, there’s definitely something to be said for drastic simplification. Back to a point that we made earlier, blindly following the UI conventions of a given category is no way to innovate. Sometimes you can snag a ton of users that no one else is targeting simply by stripping out everything but the absolute bare necessities. Take a page out of Chocomoko’s book, sometimes less really is more.
Cockpit
Cockpit is an awesome menu bar app that you can use to control all kinds of stuff on your Mac. It’s not only super functional though, it also happens to look pretty stellar.
In this case, I’m not sure where the developers are drawing their inspiration from. The typical textures are here: metal, glass and rubber. Yet, the iTunes controller above doesn’t look anything like iTunes and it sure as heck doesn’t look like any other menu bar app I’ve ever seen (it looks more like a Dashboard widget). There’s a lot to be said about drawing inspiration from all of the examples you’ve seen today, but always remember that there’s no substitute for blazing your own path and intentionally trying to be completely different than anything else you’ve seen before.
Most Beautiful Mac Apps Writers 2017
Pull up Photoshop, crank some music and spend a few hours dishing out ideas as they come to you. Instead of focusing on what’s been done elsewhere, try to discover what hasn’t been done and explore the possibilities with that goal in mind.
Most Beautiful Mac Apps Writers List
Conclusion
I hope the ten awesome applications above have both provided you with a few new apps for your Mac and taught you a thing or two about interface design. Mac developers and designers continually wow me with their ability to continually push the envelope for the level of beauty we expect from desktop applications. You guys are my heros.
Most Beautiful Mac Apps Writers Free
Leave a comment below and let us know what you think of the interfaces above. Also be sure to point out any other new Mac apps you’ve come across that serve as an excellent example of UI design.