Organize your Notes with Tags on the Mac

0:01
In this video, we’re going to look at how we can organize our notes by tags and the Notes app on the Mac. This was introduced with Mac OS, Monterey, let’s go to my Mac. So I’m in my notes app here. And if we look, you’re going to see I have a few different recipes here. What I would like to do is organize these. Now one way of doing that is by placing them into different folders, I’m going to go up to View here. And then we go over to show folders. When I show my folders, what I’m able to do is go and create a new folder, and I can drag any one of these recipes into the folders that I create. So what I be able to do is create a folder for what type of meal it is. Maybe it’s for breakfast, lunch, dinner and appetizer.

0:47
But let’s say you also wanted to organize them by cuisine. Is it American food is a Mexican food, is it Asian food. So then what do you do, you don’t want to place them into multiple folders, or you can’t place them into multiple folders unless you duplicate it? Well, you can easily overcome this by using tags. With tags, what we’re able to do is apply multiple tags to a single note. So what I’d be able to do is apply a tag to the South Asian, for what type of cuisine it is, as well as if it is an appetizer or a main meal. With our big chili rellenos, I could take it as Mexican, but then I’d also be able to take it as a main meal or an appetizer. And then what you’re able to do is search just by day, you can search for all of your main meals or all of your Mexican foods, you can even combine them.

1:44
So how do we take these different notes? Well, all we have to do is just going to add a tag to the body. So let’s go with our South Asian meal here. I’m going to go over to my note here. And now all I have to do is just place a tag here to place a tag, what we do is we use the pound sign, this tells the Notes app that it is going to be a tag. So I’m just going to go pound sign, and then I’m going to go Asian. And when I hit space, it has to be one word. So I’m going to go and hit space here, we can see now that it is a tag. This is why it is orange. Let’s go and put another tag in here. This is the beauty of tags. So this here is a main meal. So I just go pound. And now I go main meal has to be one word, we can see that it as one word when I hit return. We now have those two tags. Let’s go over to big chili Rolando is here. This is also a main meal, but it is Mexican. And I just go and type in a pound sign.

2:51
We can see we have my tags here main meal. And then I go pound sign Mexican. I hit the spacebar. And now we’ve applied those tags. Let’s go and do one more. We have coconut curry here. This is an appetizer. So I’m just going to type in pound appetizer. I type in a space. And this is also Asian. So now I select Asian here. And now we can see we have those two tags. So now I’ve just applied tags to all three of these notes. How do I use these tags? Where do I find these tags? Well, if we look below our folders here, you’re gonna see I have my tags. So now what I’m able to do is just click on these, and it’ll find all of the notes with those tags.

3:43
So let’s say I was in the mood for Mexican, I do love Mexican food, all I have to do is just click on Mexican. And there are my big chili rely on us. To deselect all of the tags or go back to all of your meals, all you have to do is just click on it again. And now we can see all of the recipes. Let’s say I wanted to cook a main meal, I’m not sure what kind of mood I’m in. So I go over to main meal here. And I can see the two meals here. I’m in the mood for Asians. So now I just click on Asian. And now I can see all of the main meals that are Asian, which is my South Asian style ground beef. To remove a tag we just go over to our note here and then we can just delete that text and it’ll remove it. If you want to add another tag you can just go in here and start typing another tag again. Start with a pound sign and it does have to be one word. Now in addition to having these tags here, we can also create folders for our tags.

4:49
So I’m going to create a folder called favorite meals. So now I just go down to New folder here and I select Smart Folder. My favorite meals are Mexican and I’m going to say that they are main meals. So now I just go favorite meals

5:11
I add the tags in here. So I’m going to go with Mexican. And let’s just go with main meal, I’m going to combine the two just for the fun of it. From here, I click on OK. And now I want to see my favorite meals. Basically, I just have to go up to favorite meals here and I can see my make chili rely on those. Anything that is tagged with Mexican and as a main meal will automatically show up in this favorite meals here. If I remove a tag, let’s say that I removed this from main meal, maybe this is an appetizer, I just go over here to main meal. And I’m going to delete this. And we’re going to make this an appetizer. And when I do that, what it’s going to do is it’s going to remove it from my favorite meals. Because this favorite meals here is only Mexican foods that are main meals. If you want to edit this, all you have to do is just Ctrl Click on it. And then from here, what you’re able to do is edit it, you can change what tags are shown. And then you can also rename it. So that’s how we use tags with notes in the Notes app on the Mac. Again, this was introduced with Mac OS, Monterey. Basically what we’re able to do with tags is apply multiple tags to a single note. So this way, what we’re able to do is have a note show up in multiple categories as an example. In my case here, what we’re able to do is tag it as what type of meal it is as well as the cuisine. And then I can combine those different tags and even create a smart search out on a smart folder out of it. To create a tag or add a tag, you just use the pound sign and then you type in your tag. It doesn’t have to be one word. So that’s how we can organize our notes with tags and the Notes app on the Mac.