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Apple Notes - how many do you have and how good is it ?

J

jamin100

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 22, 2008
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I’m looking to move from Evernote so am seriously considering Apple notes. I’m probably a light to mid range users and my usage is

1. Going paperless - I scan documents (household bills, receipts etc) and save them digitally for easy retrieval later

2. Make basic text notes with few images and maybe the odd attachment

I need to be able to access notes on my Mac, iPhone and windows pc (iCloud.com will do)

That’s it. Nothing more complicated than that

I tried exporting my 410 Evernote notes into Apple notes and although it worked it made the iCloud version of notes unusable. Even typing was extremely laggy

I’m wondering if the import was dodgy or the old notes DB corrupt. Anyway I’ve deleted it all to start again.

So, of you Apple note users, how many notes do you have?

Is there a limit where it just isn’t feasible and too slow?

Does the application do what you need or do you need the advanced features of something like Evernote etc

I’d only have 2 folders, inbox and archive, with 99% of notes living in archive, is the search feature good enough (as it is in EN)
 
Uhh I have about 40 different notes 9with photos, without, etc..)
Apple Notes is ok, but I have had problems with it updating/syncing between my phone, ipod, ipad & computer using iCloud,
& some notes have disappeared,
also, typing & editing can be a pain,
mainly, my complaint is that there is no real good Undo feature,
plus, iCloud doesn't hold many of my notes before getting full (maybe 50, (but they are really long notes)

otherwise, I have no major complaints,
but try testing 3rd party to find something better...
 
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StellarVixen said:
Then this message wasn't necessary in the first place. Telling me that you do not want to tell me anything is equal to telling it.
Click to expand...
No, I WANT to say it, but I am just bored @ work, & I will bite my tongue...
...I just thought of a few comebacks that made me laugh
 
I had about 1300 notes in Apple Notes. Syncing worked great between iMac, iPhone and iPad.

Since iOS 10 however, Apple changed the sort order of the search results. Now the search results appear in a seemingly random order. With so many notes, finding back a specific note became a hassle for me.

So a few months ago I swichted to IA Writer on my iMac and 1Writer on iOS. These apps fill my needs very well.
 
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Two alternatives that you may wish to examine are Simplenote (currently free) and Bear (annual subscription). I have had as many as 200 notes in Apple Note and encountered very few issues. Presently, I use Bear.
 
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Wow, thanks for making me aware of Bear! Sadly Microsoft To-Do is not on OS X and I was looking for something a little more than Apple Notes!
 
I have hundreds if not over a thousand notes. There are a lot of power features if you look for them: note collaboration with others, image scanning, drawing tools, tables. And the formatting now includes checklists, text styling. Also, you can drop a PDF or other file right into a note and it'll sync just fine. Speaking of sync, it's very reliable and I never have issues with the iPhone, Macs and iPad that I have.

I used Evernote for a while, but it was frankly too complex and cluttered for what I needed. I'm very happy I made the switch.

On the other end of the spectrum, I used Simplenote for a while but found it a little too basic. I like being able to embed files and images and use text styling. It's a cool app, though, and has a great little hidden feature that lets you take any note and instantly publish it publicly to the web.
 
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I preferred OneNote for years over EverNote but over the past couple of years I have found myself using Notes more and more. It opens faster, has improved formatting tools, and syncs reliably with my iPhone and iPad. Notes is not as powerful as OneNote in terms of formatting and handling embedded PDFs and images though, unless I am missing something.
 
I am going over to Notes ( from EveryNote). I have set up a folder structure ( need to do on the computer) and it works well. There are a few things it lacks but I’m hoping Apple continues to improve it. I was disappointed that they didn’t do any work on it for the ios12 and Mojave release.
 
I currently have 388 in the Apple Notes app, syncs to iCloud rather well (only have issues occasionally with this app) and everything is available on all of my devices except Apple Watch, of course. I have many notes that contain images, document scans, links, etc and they all seem to be okay when accessing Notes from my iPhone, Mac and iPad.

I have tried multiple other note apps over the years and always come back to Apple Notes because of the fact that the software is native on all Apple devices, which typically keeps things operating properly. I used to be a big third-party software user, but over the past several years I have returned to native apps quite a bit for this functionality.
 
How do you guys find out how many notes you have total?

I've been using Apple Notes for awhile. I like it other than the fact that it is iOS only. The syncing has been fairly reliable for me except for a small period of time during iOS 10?

Like another poster, I much prefer iA Writer on Mac OS and iOS. It is super light weight, I can type a lot or a little, and search is great.

The older I get the less features I want and the more stability, cross platform, and reliability I want. Bear is great, but again, Apple only. I use Bear for my personal thoughts and iA Writer on Mac and UltraEdit on Windows for my text based notes/logs/info. Day One is for my journal.

Apple Notes is like my post-it board. I have a TON of notes there - things I need to remember. So easy to pull this up on my phone when I'm out and about. It is a temporary holding place for everything my brain.

If I had to guess I have some 300 notes, most are text so the size isn't huge.
 
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Tajhad said:
At the top of your notes “ in icloud” - it will have a number next to it ( in my case 220).
If you want to organise them better - make folders ( do that on your computer).
Click to expand...
Thank you. I completely missed that. I’m always inside folders. Lol. 230 for me. Way less than I thought I had.
 
thanks for the replies so far..
I'm going to have a clear out of evernote and get everything left over to Apple Notes

I move my organization structure away from folders in evernote to tags and realise that Notes dont have tags, so I may have to go back to folders if i cant figure things out
 
It's overkill and I probably need an intervention, but I use Apple's Notes for personal use, Evernote for Business use, Bear for personal short-form writing and iA Writer for longer-form writing.

I used SimpleNote extensively in the past for personal use (before adopting Apple Notes for that purpose instead).

The one Notes app which I never warmed up to was OneNote. Many like it, I know - I just found the GUI to be cumbersome and counter-intuitive. As with most things, YMMV.
 
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Rique said:
It's overkill and I probably need an intervention, but I use Apple's Notes for personal use, Evernote for Business use, Bear for personal short-form writing and iA Writer for longer-form writing.

I used SimpleNote extensively in the past for personal use (before adopting Apple Notes for that purpose instead).

The one Notes app which I never warmed up to was OneNote. Many like it, I know - I just found the GUI to be cumbersome and counter-intuitive. As with most things, YMMV.
Click to expand...

I could never get used to OneNote either. I did like the syncing - though it drained battery on iPad/phone badly... across mac and windows. Nice to see another iA Writer user - I am using this for almost everything now - Apple Notes is my alternative.
 
With thousands (?) of notes, I have found that Notes becomes non-responsive, particularly on IOS devices. I select a note and just get the spinning gear, sometimes for minutes. My assumption is that it is choking downloading all of that data.

So my everyday note taker is Evernote. Always responsive, and I find it easy to use. Almost all of my Evernote entries are via Web Clipper, usually from Safari. Saves the page URL along with the page contents so I can easily go back to the original page. Not as easily done in notes.
 
HDFan said:
With thousands (?) of notes, I have found that Notes becomes non-responsive, particularly on IOS devices. I select a note and just get the spinning gear, sometimes for minutes. My assumption is that it is choking downloading all of that data.

So my everyday note taker is Evernote. Always responsive, and I find it easy to use. Almost all of my Evernote entries are via Web Clipper, usually from Safari. Saves the page URL along with the page contents so I can easily go back to the original page. Not as easily done in notes.
Click to expand...

This really upsets me. I mean we have these advanced computers yet they can't handle a few thousand notes without choking. :(

I think best on paper but every app I've used tends to get sluggish after 1500 notes (Keep even).
 
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BigMcGuire said:
This really upsets me. I mean we have these advanced computers yet they can't handle a few thousand notes without choking. :(

I think best on paper but every app I've used tends to get sluggish after 1500 notes (Keep even).
Click to expand...

I had over 1300 notes in Apple Notes and performance was still great: fast search, sync, note entry etc.. Maybe it slows down with more notes, but I think we need more real life examples to draw conclusions. In the past Apple Notes had a bug which made it slow down even with only a few notes.

I am now keeping the same amount of notes in IA Writer and 1Writer and both apps perform great.
 
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