Transforming Apple Notes

This is part three of a series on note-taking in 2025. The series list is available here.

Here we are: Apple Event Day.

I pay attention to Apple rumors; I always have, but now it is just a force a habit, not necessarily driven by the desire to know all possible technologies that the company might announce on a day like today. There is always a buzz though, a low hum of excitement that I can't ignore as a long time Apple fan and follower, as well as a technologist. That latter hat, I put on when I am trying to understand how changes in the industry (which is often driven by decisions Apple is making) will affect the areas and people I support.

My focus recently has been more on the software releases than the hardware announcements because regardless of personal or professional hardware purchases that are on the horizon, the people I support will all ask about the OS updates they will start to get nagged about installing. This year's updates are driven by major design language changes (read Liquid Glass) and I will need to be able to navigate that OS and its customizations to help assist people of all technological aptitudes to do the same. But one thing that won't change for me is how I use Apple's Notes app.

Regardless of the design of that app, I will continue to use it in the way I have been for almost a full year now: using the Forever ✱ Notes system. The system is described like this here by its creator, Matthias Hilse:

Forever ✱ Notes is a simple, lightweight digital note-taking and knowledge management method for Apple Notes. It’s robust, versatile, and scalable to grow with you. Best of all, Forever ✱ Notes is completely free and designed to last—well, forever.

It combines fast capturing of journal entries with fast access to connected knowledge. Its modular design allows you to build your own system as you go, managing journal entries and keeping track of anything you like, people, resources, trips, book reviews - all with an app you already have with you every day — Apple Notes.

It's main tenets are simplicity of setup and maintenance, ease of navigation, and customizability, but where it gets really powerful over time is the ability to look back, to review the past in a straightforward way.

I got in when it was starting to gain traction (my first journal entry was on October 7, 2024) and since then, the resources and documentation and the Shortcuts to streamline the initial setup have all gotten a lot of attention, making it all the more approachable for those just starting out. Now, they have a user forum for sharing use cases and ideas, a Youtube presence with clear and supportive presentations, an email newsletter, and user-submitted best practices that have built upon what the creator originally set up.¹ These are all things that they did not have when I started out and would have been helpful at the time.

Back to my use of this as a note-taking system in 2025 and how I have effectively replaced a bunch of other apps with it. In a word, Forever ✱ Notes is malleable; it is flexible enough that I can use it to take simple notes, build meeting agendas, create project plans, or just keep a daily journal. It is also not prescriptive; I can set it up however I like once I feel comfortable with the approach and have built a habit of maintaining it. And finally, it is scalable; the creator knew this would be harder for some than others, so he purposefully built the system to have levels of difficulty that were based on need. I was already handling my file structures for project management with the Building a Second Brain method of PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives), so taking my notes and transforming them using the same ideas was not a hurtle I had to jump, but others would.

In the end, however, the focus of this system for me has been on the journal use case. Each day, I open Notes and start building out the information I want to hold onto; it is a combination of personal and professional notes about the day ahead of me, takeaways from the day before, or thoughts that I want to highlight. I could use a system like Apple's Journal app for this, but that was iPhone-only and overkill for firing off a few notes each day; I could have used text documents for this, but the interconnections that Apple enabled in Notes allows for better knowledge management; I could have used paper and pencil but that isn't searchable.

Using the journaling function has enabled me to create themes, set goals, and collect highlights at a cadence that facilitates an intentionality in these activities that I had been sorely missing. Above, I said that the system allows you to review the past in a straightforward way; that is enabled by daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews, as you like. What happened this day last year? What were my goals around this time? Who was I interacting with and what was I concerned about? These are all questions more directly answerable with this system in place.

Leveraging Apple's system of Tags, Smart Folders, Pins, Linked Notes, as well as the deep OS integrations and cross-device sync and support, makes a framework like Forever ✱ Notes possible, but putting it all together into a package that is approachable by most people is next level. I have used Apple Notes for years, but until this system came into play, it was just another dumping ground for random text. Forever ✱ Notes has enabled a more sophisticated approach to the most basic of utility apps.

Back to the point about Apple Event Day, Apple Notes isn't getting much more than a visual refresh this year, but the (albeit limited) Markdown support will be welcome. Either way, I know I will use the app and have a clear, consistent scope and need in mind when I do.

1. All of this started making me think of this system as a modern analog to the creation of Markdown. John Gruber created Markdown and it has enabled countless things to be created on top of it based on people's needs, even to the point of forking the original and building based on new use cases and intents that were outside of Gruber's original scope. ↩