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Introduced in OS X version 10.8 (or as it’s more commonly called, “OS X Mountain Lion”), the Notes app was almost laughably bad. With one of the most ridiculous skeuomorphic user interfaces of all time, I hazard to guess no one used that app on a regular basis.

1. Notes in OS X El Capitan has a very straight-forward user interface. The 3-column UI design is found across a wide variety of apps on OS X, so it gives the app some intuitive properties that previous skeuomorphic designs lacked. Moving across the UI, I’ll explain the various sections and buttons.
2. The Share button in El Capitan includes Notes, so now you can send items to the Notes app. Probably the quickest way to get anything from your Mac onto your iPhone. You can now send things straight.

Feb 12, 2018  On an El Capitan machine without Pages v5, and even though it is listed in past 'Purchases' on the Mac App Store — because it is installed on another El Capitan machine with the same Apple ID — no download button is available to retrieve Pages v5.6.2 for El Capitan. No intrigue there.

Fast forward 4 years and 3 OS versions later, and the Notes app has become much more respectable. Today Notes can proudly face-off against strong third-party options like Microsoft OneNote or Evernote. Now, that isn’t to say that Notes does everything you could ever dream of in a notes app, but it does enough to be useful to a large majority of people out there.

If you’re curious to know if Notes in OS X El Capitan is the notes app you’ve always been looking for, let me walk you through some of its features.

Contents

• 3 Attachments and Notes

The Writing Environment

Notes in OS X El Capitan has a very straight-forward user interface. The 3-column UI design is found across a wide variety of apps on OS X, so it gives the app some intuitive properties that previous skeuomorphic designs lacked. Moving across the UI, I’ll explain the various sections and buttons:

1. Folder List — This view allows you to choose between your various folders. Selecting a folder changes what appears in the Note List. From the Folder List you can do a lot which we’ll cover in more detail in a moment.
2. Note List — This lists out whatever notes are within the selected folder.
3. Note View — This shows the currently selected note, and is the area where you can actually write.
4. Folder List Toggle — This button toggles the visibility of the Folder List if you’re interested in a more distraction-free writing environment.
5. Attachment View Toggle — This button toggles the Attachment View, which we’ll talk about more in a bit.
6. Delete Note — Sends the currently selected note into the trash.
7. New Note — Creates a new note within the currently selected folder.
8. Insert Checkbox — This is a new feature of Notes in OS X El Capitan, and it allows you to insert a checkbox. That checkbox can then be toggled back and forth as much as you’d like. It’s a faster and more useful way to create a quick to-do list on the fly.
9. Heading Selector — Another new feature of Notes, this lets you assign pre-designed headings to the content in your note. There’s just enough options here to be useful, but not so many that it gets confusing.
10. Insert Attachment — This button opens up a floating window which gives you access to images found in either the Photos app or the Photo Booth app.
11. Share Sheet — Found across both iOS and OS X these days, this share sheet behaves as expected, giving you a list of options where you can “share” your note.

Organizing Your Notes

The Folder List view actually allows for a lot of different things. You can create new folders, re-arrange the order in which they’re listed, or rename pre-existing ones. In fact, you can take things one step further, and drag folders inside other folders to create a nested structure.

This sort of customizable folder structure really elevates Notes and lets you reasonably store a whole lot more notes than you might otherwise.

Attachments and Notes

The Attachment View is another new feature that really increases the utility of Notes. You can attach a wide variety of different file types to your notes. The easiest way to do this is by dragging and dropping the files from a Finder window into the Note View.

From the Attachment View you can get a feel for all the different attachments you have across your library of notes.

I really think that the new Notes app released in OS X El Capitan is a significant improvement. It elevates what seemed at first to be a purposeless app designed to simulate parity with iOS into a full-featured digital notebook capable of meeting the note-taking needs of most people.

Obsessed with tech since the early arrival of A/UX on Apple, Sudz (SK) is responsible for the editorial direction of AppleToolBox. He is based out of Los Angeles, CA.

Sudz specializes in covering all things macOS, having reviewed dozens of OS X and macOS developments over the years.

In a former life, Sudz worked helping Fortune 100 companies with their technology and business transformation aspirations.

Arriving Fall 2015, Apple today announced OS X El Capitan, the next update to OS X that refines the Mac experience and improves system performance. Building on last year’s release of OS X Yosemite, El Capitan introduces enhancements to window management, built-in apps and Spotlight search, and makes everyday activities — from launching apps to accessing email — faster and more responsive. Metal, Apple’s breakthrough graphics technology, is integrated into El Capitan, delivering system-wide performance gains and enabling games and pro apps to tap into the full power of Mac graphics processors.

Refinements to the Mac Experience
OS X El Capitan refinements begin with the new system font, San Francisco, a modern and easy-to-read typeface that looks stunning on a Retina display. Mission Control, the quickest way to view all open windows, has a cleaner design so you can find the window you need even faster. When your desktop gets crowded, simply drag a window to the top of your screen to access the new Spaces Bar in Mission Control and create a new Space, OS X’s intuitive way to group applications. And, the new Split View feature automatically positions two app windows side-by-side in full screen so you can work with both apps without distraction.

Built-in apps are even more streamlined in El Capitan. Safari now features Pinned Sites to keep your favorite websites open and active in your tab bar and a new mute button to quickly silence browser audio from any tab. Mail introduces Smart Suggestions, which recognizes names or events in a Mail message and prompts you to add them to your contacts or calendar with a single click. You can also now swipe to delete messages, just like in iOS, and juggle multiple emails while Mail is in full screen. In Photos, you can add locations to a single image or an entire Moment, and sort albums by date or title. Additionally, you’ll be able to download third-party editing extensions from the Mac App Store and access them directly within the Photos app.

With the all-new Notes app in El Capitan you can drag and drop photos, PDFs, videos and other files into notes, and add content directly from other apps, such as Safari or Maps, using the Share menu. Easy-to-create checklists help you keep track of important to-do items, and the new Attachments Browser organizes your attachments in one simple view, making it easy to find what you’re looking for. With iCloud, your notes stay in sync across all your enabled devices.

Notes App Mac Email El Capitan Free

Spotlight gets even smarter in El Capitan, generating results for even more topics, including weather, stocks, sports, transit and web video. You can now resize the Spotlight window to display more results or move it anywhere on your desktop, and use natural language to find documents and files on your Mac based on when they were created or who you sent them to.

Improvements to System Performance
OS X El Capitan improves system performance across your Mac, making many of the things you do everyday faster and more responsive. Metal, Apple’s groundbreaking graphics technology, accelerates Core Animation and Core Graphics to boost system-level rendering by up to 50 percent, and efficiency by up to 40 percent, resulting in faster graphics performance for everyday apps. Metal also takes full advantage of your CPU and GPU, delivering up to 10 times faster draw call performance for a richer, more fluid experience in games and pro apps.

El Capitan also features enhanced international language support, including a new Chinese system font for both Traditional and Simplified, with 50,000 beautifully designed characters for crisp on-screen readability. Chinese keyboard input methods now offer regularly updated vocabulary lists and a smarter candidate window. El Capitan makes entering Japanese text faster by automatically transforming Hiragana into written Japanese and reducing the need to individually select and confirm word conversions. You can now also select the perfect font for your documents using four new Japanese typefaces.

Availability
The developer preview of OS X El Capitan is available to Mac Developer Program members starting today. Mac users can participate in the El Capitan Beta Program in July 2015 and download the final version for free from the Mac App Store this fall. Customers interested in signing up for the public beta can visit www.apple.com/osx/elcapitan-preview/ for more details. Features are subject to change. Some features may not be available in all regions or all languages.

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