Learn how to organize your notes in the Notes app with tags and smart folders on the iPhone.
In addition to organizing your notes in folders, in the Notes app on the iPhone, you can also tag them! This was introduced in iOS 15. With tags, you can add multiple tags to a note, and you can create smart folders that include multiple tags! Learn how to add tags and smart folders, and why you may want to, in this video for Notes on the iPhone.
Video TranscriptIn this video, we’re going to look at tags in the Notes app, as well as how we can create smart folder for our tags. This was introduced with iOS 15. Let’s go to my iPhone.Let’s open up my Notes app. Now with our Notes app, what we’re able to do is place our different notes into folders. So you’re going to see I have a number of different folders here. Let’s open up my Travel folder. I have four notes here. Now what we can also do in addition to placing these into folders, what we can also do is tag these. When we tag these, it’s almost like placing them in a folder. What we’re able to do is select that tag and we’ll see all of the notes that incorporate or include that tag. So it’s like a folder of that tag. Let’s see how we tag notes and then see why we may want to tag them as opposed to using folders. I actually use tags and folders, a combination of both.
Let’s first look at how we tag them. To tag them, all we have to do is just put in the # with the tag, the word. So I have here four notes. Let’s go and tag this, this travel blog. This is for Florida. So I want to tag this with Florida. I tap on it, and now I just go with a # sign. And I type in Florida. It does have to be one word so I can’t add any spaces in here. But once I type in that one word, in my case, Florida here, I type in a space. When I do type in the space, it tags it. The notes app realizes that that is a tag. So it’s # sign with the word. We can see it changed the color. So we know that this is a tag.
Let’s go and add a few more. I go back over to Travel. Let’s go over to Things To Do. This is in Florida as well. So I’m just going to go with the # sign again, and we type in Florida. Again, what I need to do is I need to enter in a space. Now it is a tag. I go back over to Travel. We’re going to do this two more times. Restaurants here, the Stinking Rose. This is in San Francisco. So now I go #sanfrancisco. And remember how I said it had to be one word? You’re going to see I typed in one word here. Otherwise it would just use the word san as the tag. So I’m gonna type in a space here and we can see sanfrancisco is now the tag because it is typed in is one word.
I go back up to Travel. And we got one more here, Packing List. Now this particular note could be used in both tags. I could use this in Florida and San Francisco. So I’m going to add two tags to this. This is where tags can come in handy. You can apply multiple tags to a note. So I tap in here we go #florida, space, and now I could either enter in a new line or I can just keep typing. I’m just going to keep typing. Here we go #sanfrancisco. Again, all one word. So now I have two tags there.
see where we can find these tags. I tap on Done. We’re going to go back to Travel and let’s go back over to my folders. If we look down at the bottom, we now have Tags. I want to see all of my notes. I have the Florida tag. I tap on Florida and there are my three notes for Florida. Let’s go back. I want to see all of my notes for San Francisco, tap on sanfrancisco, and we can see my two notes. I want to see all of my notes that have both tags. Well, then what I do is I just go up to the top here and I can tap on Florida, and it’s only going to show me that one note that incorporates both of these tags. So here’s my packing list. That includes both of those times.
So that’s why we may want to add multiple tags to a note. We can have that note show up in multiple places. Then we only have to type in the note once, but we can have it show up in several different places.
Now let’s take a look at how we can create a smart folder. With smart folders I no longer have to tap on these tags here. I can actually create a smart folder that incorporates my search.
To do that we just go back over to my folders and then we tap on our new folder down at the bottom. I want to create a Smart Folder that includes both of those tags. So I tap on New Smart Folder. We’re just going to call this Trips. I tap on the two tags and now when I tap on Done, I’m going to have a new folder and it is called Trips. In this folder is going to. be my one note.
If I go add another tag to a note, let’s go back over to my folders here. We’re just going to quickly add a new tag to these Travel documents here. Let’s say I wanted to incorporate San Francisco into the same travel blog. So now I just tap on this. I add a new tag. We just go a #sanfrancisco.
You also see shortcuts for any tags that you’ve created above the keyboard. Once you start typing a tag that shortcut will show above the keyboard. So you can just tap on this to enter in that tag as well.
And now I have both of those tags in there. Now when I go back and I tap on Trips here, what do you think you’re going to see? My two notes, my Travel Blog and my Packing List. If I were to remove one of those tags, it would automatically remove it from the smart folder.
So that’s how we use tags in the Notes app on the iPhone.
Now the Reminders app also uses tags, but these tags in the Reminders app are not shared with the Notes app. So I just wanted to clarify that if you create a tag in the Notes app, that tag will not show in the Reminders app and vice versa, you create a reminder in the Reminders app with a tag, that tag will not show up in the Notes app.
To create a tag, you just open up your note, type in the # sign and then type a word. It does have to be a single word, no spaces. So if it has two words, what you may want to do is combine those two words without a space. Once you type in that word, tap a space. And that tells the Notes app that that is a tag. You can include multiple tags in a note. You’ll find all of your tags underneath your folders. You can also create smart folders, which include specific tags.
So that’s how we use tags in the Notes app on the iPhone.