Apple's Notes app needs to solve its access and functional problems. It won't take a magic spell to do so, as plenty of apps already fill that gap for free.
Apple WWDC This story is part of our complete Apple WWDC coverage Updated less than 22 minutes ago Apple ’s execution with note-taking on macOS leaves a lot of room for improvement. There are so many areas where it feels like an abandoned project, instead of the future-proof experience that native iOS apps often deliver. In fact, the disparity across its own platforms is troubling.
Why won’t Apple put a Quick Notes button in the control center, or implement it in the Menu Bar, is simply perplexing. The whole concept of burdening users with another app window, when there is a solution waiting to be activated, also puzzles me. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon BarNotes. It’s a neat app that essentially serves as a scratchpad and lives in the Menu Bar. It has been designed in the same aesthetic format as a native Apple app.
Tab Notes Lite is another free app that lives in the Menu Bar and offers a few extra goodies. It lets you click on the screen’s edge to take a note, pick up the local storage folder, and offers customizable shortcuts, as well. There are a whole bunch of paid apps, too, but I recommend sticking with the free options if they get the job done.
To use it, you must copy-paste the text passage in the Notes app and then repeat the process to perform an AI-driven task, such as proofreading, style conversion, and summarization. If there were a Menu Bar shortcut for Notes, users wouldn’t have to do a back-and-forth between two apps in order to get the best of Apple Intelligence.
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