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Apple is bringing Fast Notes to the iPhone with iOS 16 — type of. Here is what you get, what you do not, and use all of it.
Launched in iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey, Fast Notes have been a transformative addition to Apple Notes. Immediately Apple Notes felt prefer it was a part of each app, each doc, and each web site you used since you might so very swiftly scribble down notes anyplace.
Over time it did change into clear that the characteristic works finest on the iPad. There along with your finger or the Apple Pencil, you would at all times swipe up from the underside proper of the display screen, write or learn a observe, then push it again out of the best way once more.
With the Mac, you clicked within the backside proper nook and all of it labored the identical method, simply someway not as constantly or conveniently as on the iPad.
But it surely was nonetheless higher than on the iPhone which formally didn’t help Fast Notes. There was a workaround to get among the options and in fact, iOS 16 has constructed on these workarounds relatively than actually including the complete Fast Observe expertise.
Contents
What you do not get with Fast Notes on iPhone
There are two points with the brand new iPhone implementation of Fast Notes. One is the way you begin a Fast Observe, and the opposite is what info is mechanically included in a single when you could have began it.
Each points are a ache, however the one that may cease you utilizing Fast Notes on iPhone considerations entering into a brand new or present observe. You need to neglect all of the swiping up and pushing away that is on the iPad model, as a result of there may be nothing like that on the iPhone.
As a substitute, you must use a extra clunky methodology. If you do, for those who open a Fast Observe when you’re on an internet site, the observe is meant to change into related to that website. Subsequent time you go to it, the Observe ought to unobtrusively pop as much as present you it is out there.
In iOS 16, that works with web sites, however not for any paperwork or apps because it does with macOS Monterey and iPadOS 15. After which no matter its present limitations, Fast Notes now presents two methods to start out a observe.
You are able to do it from Management Middle, or from inside any app.

begin a Fast Observe from Management Middle
Swipe all the way down to open Management Middle and search for a Notes icon. The icon exhibits an oblong with a squiggly line within the center.
Apple has modified what options mechanically go in Management Middle and it could accomplish that once more earlier than the general public launch. So the Notes icon might or will not be there, and if it is not, you must set it up.
- Go to Settings in your iPhone
- Faucet Management Middle
- Scroll all the way down to the listing headed Extra Controls
- Discover Fast Observe and faucet on the inexperienced plus icon
- Now within the high listing, Included Controls, drag the Notes icon up the listing
You should definitely select Fast Observe and never Notes. The latter is what was once Apple’s nearest equal to a Fast Observe, and all it does is act as a shortcut to opening the Notes app.
Additionally dragging an Included Management vertically up the listing rearranges the place it would go within the rows and columns of Management Middle. You’ll be able to’t drag it to the highest, Management Middle will at all times have Apple’s most important controls there, however usually the upper you go, the faster it’s to search out the management.
Observe, too, {that a} Fast Observe can pay attention to what you have been doing if you swiped down for Management Middle. If you happen to have been in Safari, as an example, then the clean Fast Observe will embrace an Add Hyperlink possibility on the high, adopted by the title of the present web site.
If you happen to select that, then the observe you save will embrace a hyperlink again to that website.
begin a Fast Observe from an app
- Discover the Share button in your app
- Faucet that, then scroll down beneath the icons to written listing of choices
- Select Add to Fast Observe
- Write any notes you want after which press Save
That is like making a Fast Observe from Management Middle, and mechanically urgent the Add Hyperlink button. Apple assumes you could have chosen to avoid wasting this website or this text, in order that goes straight into the observe.
As earlier than, you possibly can select to put in writing in something you want, or you possibly can simply reserve it. Whichever you do, if you come again to this explicit Fast Observe, you possibly can faucet to be taken to the web site it is linked to.
Discover that it normally is an internet site. For some cause, maybe as a result of builders have not completed implementing this characteristic, a doc you attempt to share to a Fast Observe might not at all times work.

Room for enchancment
It is a small factor, however with the ability to swiftly swipe up from the underside proper, create a observe, after which push it away once more, is actually good. And we won’t have it on the iPhone.
That is presumably as a result of the gesture for a swipe from the underside proper nook already does one thing on iPhones. It brings up the applying switcher.
But there’s extra to this swipe than the comfort of beginning a brand new observe. On the iPad, it is a very quick method to get to see the final observe you created.
Plus the iPad model — although not the Mac — enables you to rapidly swipe via totally different Fast Notes if the one you need does not pop up mechanically.
On the final betas earlier than the ultimate launch, YourNextApp did have one second when typing in OmniOutliner precipitated a small popup window to supply us a earlier Fast Observe to change to.
It seemed very very similar to how the iPad’s model of Fast Notes tries to give you an present observe for those who return to the app or web site you have been on if you created it.
Nevertheless, we have not been capable of reproduce the characteristic deliberately. And aside from this single incident, it has been that to learn a Fast Observe, you must open the Notes app.
So whereas having Fast Notes on the iPhone is a lot better than not, the characteristic is not as helpful on iOS as it’s on iPadOS.