Transcription
Don't use pen and paper, use Samsung Notes instead. Today, we look at every Samsung Notes feature and how to use them. Let's [Music] go.
I made this video last year, but it needs an update because Samsung Notes has added some extra features that are worth mentioning. So, instead of just adding the extra features, let's just do the whole lot again. Samsung Notes is all-encompassing as a note-taking service. I want to start today with looking at the user interface and then go all the way through to looking at how it's part of Samsung's broader ecosystem.
Let's start with the UI and how to navigate your way around. On first launch, it looks pretty similar to other Samsung apps. You have the hamburger menu on the top left, you've got the three-dot menu on the top right, and then you've got the content down the bottom, which is easy to access with Samsung's one-handed usability built into their apps.
Starting with the three-dot menu, there are three selections in here that you can make. Once you've selected it with the edit function, you can select some notes, and then you get some extra options down the bottom. You can move them, you can lock them, you can share the note, and then there's another three-dot menu that brings up even extra options as well, but we'll go through some of those a little bit later on.
You've got the view option. This will just change how the notes are viewed and displayed on your screen. There are a couple of different options there. There's grid options with different sizes, and there's also list options as well. Your preference is the one that you would choose, of course.
Then there's pin, which means if you have favorites, you can pin them to the top. If you don't want to, you can unpin them from the top. You can also organize the viewing of the notes that you've got in the date modified thing. You can go date modified, date created, or by name. Up to you. And you've also got the little down and up arrow for ascending or descending order.
Next to the three-dot menu, you have the search functionality. The search function will basically bring up the option to search any note that's on your phone within the Notes app. You've got different tags if you've used tags. We'll get into that a little bit later. You've got titles that maybe you've searched for before, and then you've also can search by cover. What I really like is the keyword search because if there's a word that's in any note that you've got, it will find it. You just have to type it in. That extends out also to handwritten notes. It will find the writing in that as well. Pretty clever.
You have the plus PDF icon, which does as advertised, basically. How this will work is when you tap on this, it'll bring up your files, and you can add a PDF straight into your Samsung Notes file.
Right down the bottom right corner of the UI, you have the new note function. Whilst we're here and inside the new note, let's go through the UI and all the functions.
Once you're inside creating a note, the interface is pretty comprehensive. There's lots of icons and toolbars and another three-dot menu that you can interact with. So, let's go through and break down what it is you can do.
Once you're in here, you can title your note straight away. So, you tap on title and you can enter the title of the note, but also you can favorite it if you like, add it directly to a folder. So, if you wanted to put it straight into a folder, you can do that from here.
On the far right, there's a little cover icon. So, Samsung this year has introduced the ability to make covers for your Samsung Notes files. You can select the style, you can select some little emojis to kind of differentiate it, and then basically any sort of style that you pick, once you go back into the main list of notes, it will display the note with this cover. It's very clever, and I love that Samsung has done this. It makes the notes bounce a little more instead of just looking like the first page that you have made.
Down the bottom of the note, you have the toolbar. Now, right on the far left of the toolbar, you have the little squiggly line. This will activate the pen functions for the S Pen. So, you don't probably need to worry about this if you don't have a phone that has an S Pen, but if you do, then obviously this is where you can interact and interchange between the two toolbars. For the purposes of this video, we're only going to focus on the typing toolbar. For the S Pen one, go check out my S Pen video. Won't regret it. It's every S Pen feature, including the S Pen toolbar.
In the typing toolbar, the main one that you sort of want to look out for is you have the little tick box that you can input and make lists. And what's really neat is you can then press on the tick box, and it'll cross out what you've wrote. I like that one.
If you tick on the formatting text icon, you can then have bullet points, number lists, you can center align it, right align it, left align it, whatever. I know there's some fancy term for them, don't ask me what it is. You also have the option to bold, italic, underline. That's all in there. And the rest of the toolbar is basically just what you might find in a Microsoft Word document where you can change the text size, you can change the font color, you can change the background of the font. That's sort of what that toolbar does and where it is. There's also Galaxy AI in this toolbar, but more on that a little bit later.
We have another three-dot menu in the top right corner. It's pretty extensive, the stuff that you can do in here. So, let's go through the capabilities of what you can find in here.
You can search through the note itself. So, if you wanted to find a word within the note, it can do that, and then it'll highlight it for you. You can edit the cover of the note. So, if you didn't like what you'd made, go back and edit it. You can do that through there.
You can sort the pages. So, if you have something out of order, if you go here, you can add extra pages in, you can make one page the dominant page, and you can also organize it and delete all that sort of stuff from the page sort of option.
Then you've got page template. With page template, what you can do is you can set the template or the format of the page in the notes itself. So, there's some stock standard ones. There's two tabs down the bottom. You have image and PDF. The image one will basically just put like an image background as the template. You can choose to apply to all pages, but most of the time this will just apply to one page. You can import your own as well.
In the PDF tab, you can have some extra ones that you can download, and these are multiple-page templates, calendars, diaries, that sort of stuff. And you can again download and even might be able to create your own and import them as a template. When you add it in, it basically takes over the entire note, and you can see the different pages that it adds to.
Underneath those settings, you have quite a comprehensive list of other things you can do. You can make the note go full screen, which will eliminate the top notification bar and basically just take over the entire display. This can be good if you're using S Pen and you don't want any distractions. Do it this way.
You can add the note that you're working on to your home screen, or what I find quite beneficial is the reminder app. A lot of people might write reminders in their Notes app, but you can then merge that into the Reminder app itself, or if it's something you're working on like a document, you can do that as well. And then adding it to home will basically just like add a widget to your home screen.
Samsung pretty recently introduced a feature to invite collaborators. So, you can live sort of collaborate on a document together, and you can also add this to like a shared notebook where you can both work on things at separate times. That's also from this menu. You can do that too.
You can add tags, which is great for search purposes, but also ties into the tags menu, which we'll explore a little bit later. But this is where you can add tags in.
What I really like is Samsung giving you the ability to save it as a different file format. So, you can obviously save it as a Samsung Notes file, but it will auto do that anyway. You can also save it as a PDF file. So, most people when you share stuff will save things as PDF, especially if it's like a contract or a document. PDF is a really popular format to use, so it's great that that's in there. But you also have the other quite universally used formats in PowerPoint and Microsoft Word, and it does a pretty good job of bringing over the format you had into Microsoft Word. So, definitely great to have these options there.
Down the bottom of this three-dot menu, you have some extra sort of icons, I guess you could say. You've got the favorites icon again, the star. You have the ability to lock that specific note, which I've used plenty of times. Sometimes I work on confidential stuff, and having a note that's locked behind my fingerprint and a password gives me a good peace of mind that if my phone were to go missing, someone were to access my notes, that stuff is safe. I'll show you where to turn that on a little bit later.
Then there's the option to share, which allows you again to share it in those file formats I showed you before, and then of course, delete it.
Next to the three-dot menu is the plus icon. This gives you the ability to add attachments to your notes file. You have image, which is self-explanatory, but you can access your gallery and attach an image into the notes file. You've got camera, self-explanatory again, it just opens up the camera and you take a photo in real time and attach it into the notes file. You've got scan, which again, self-explanatory, but it opens up the camera and will allow you to scan a document. So, it will size the document on the screen, hit save, attaches it in. Nice little picture my son drew for my wife and I. And then PDF, again, self-explanatory, can insert a PDF from your files.
Underneath that, though, is where the fun and productivity within Samsung Notes begins. There's two options there: voice recording and audio file. You might think they're the same thing, but they're not. Voice recording, I demonstrated this last week in my productivity video. Allows you to record as you're taking notes down. So, it'll activate the microphone, and whilst you're writing, it'll associate the words that are being spoken with the writing that you were doing. So, when you're playing it back later, you have the option of seeing what you wrote down when that particular stuff was being said. It's great if you want to add more context, or if you don't want to be too heavy with writing down, you can get the context later on because you've married things up together, or it's married it up for you. Have a listen to how it works.
"So today, I want to talk about what's going to happen next week because next week's really important to our business. So next week, we have sales, uh, not just money, but percent because next week, because next week's really important to our business."
You have audio file. Audio file is good because, well, you can add in a pre-recorded recording. Say, recording a little bit more, I guess it's if you've recorded a meeting before, you can attach it in to the notes file.
You have drawing, which takes you to a separate screen. Now, you can draw in Samsung Notes with the S Pen, but if you want more options, it will export you out into basically what looks like the Penup UI, where you can make your drawing, send it back into Samsung Notes, and it attaches it in. And then, of course, every good notes or document app needs a text box option, and that's here.
Next to that plus icon, you have the book icon. The book icon basically just makes it a reading view. So, you can't interact and add anything else in. Removes all the distractions like the toolbar, and it's just the content that you've created for you to be able to interact with.
Jumping back down into the toolbar, there's Galaxy AI. Now, I've done extensive coverage of Galaxy AI. I've got a whole video on what it can do, but inside Samsung Notes, you will find some of the best Galaxy AI features on the phone. I'm going to quickly cover it here, and if you want to watch my full Galaxy AI video, I'll leave the tag up here, but I might also link it in the description. Hopefully, I remember when I upload.
There are four things you can do. If you've got a notes file open and you press the Galaxy AI button, you'll see auto format, you'll see summarize, you'll see translate, and you will see spelling and grammar. I think spelling and grammar might be in a different order. I digress.
Auto format allows you to select it, and basically, it will format the note into something a little bit more pretty and digestible, and there's different options that you sort of swipe through.
Summarize does as advertised. It will summarize your text into a few different key points, and of course, you can replace it or copy it to another note, which I really like that option.
You also have the option to, yeah, like I said, spelling and grammar, which will basically clean up any grammar or spelling issues and allow you to replace it again. And then there is translate. Which if you are trying to send this somewhere else, you can translate it into that language, copy it, and away it goes.
Now that we know everything inside a note and the basic UI, let's jump into the hamburger menu. If you're wondering what the hamburger menu is, it's the three lines that look like a hamburger. So, clicking on that, before we go into any of the text items that are there, let's go to the settings. Because this is where you can set up a lot of what you can do with the stuff that you see here.
First one is Samsung Cloud. 100% get a Samsung account. It's so important and crucial to the whole Samsung ecosystem. If you haven't got one already, please sign up for one, especially if you're part of the Galaxy hardware. With Samsung Cloud and Samsung Notes, this basically allows you to live sync your notes across all of your Samsung devices, and it's very fast. I'll talk ecosystem a bit later, but the whole thing syncs very, very quickly. And Samsung Notes with Samsung Cloud, you need to have that sync turned on for that to work.
But it's not just the Samsung ecosystem that you can integrate and sync this with. It's also into OneNote. So, Microsoft's ecosystem and Samsung's ecosystem kind of marry up really nicely together, and you can live sync your notes into OneNote so you can see them on your desktop, on your non-Samsung device, on another platform.
Shared notes. So, if you've got a note that you're sharing with someone else, this is basically just do you want it to sync using Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi and data? Pretty simple.
Underneath that is screen-off memo. This is just the settings for how you want screen-off memo to save and appear in Samsung Notes once it automatically saves. Again, full S Pen video cover screen-off memo extensively in that one.
Underneath the general tab, you'll see the style of new notes. Now, this is what you want the note to launch at every single time you create a new note. What template, what color, what how, what size, what scroll direction. This is the place to do it. You've got just that. You've got the three tabs across the top: the template, the color, and the main one that you see when you first launch it. Absolutely hate the long 2x1. No, just give me the normal one any day of the week.
Then there's unlock methods. As I mentioned before, this is where when you lock a note, this is how you unlock it. So, you can either use it just a password, which is the default, and then you can add in fingerprints, which will just use the fingerprints that you've already set up on your phone. I recommend using the fingerprint setting just because it's way more secure than just a password, and it's way quicker and more convenient as well for you as the user.
Then there's import notes. Now, if you're a longtime Samsung user like myself, you might have S Note files stored somewhere in your Samsung account. This is where you can import them back into your phone, and then it'll convert them into the new format of Samsung Notes. I had more than I thought, so I imported just one just to bring it back into speed, but there's a lot there.
There's autosave notes. That goes without saying, just you want to save things.
In advanced, you have the Galaxy AI stuff, which is notes assist. That'll just give you a rundown of the language packs and stuff that you need for that to be sort of working as best it can.
You then got show links in notes and web previews. So, when you copy like a link or a website in there, it'll kind of preview that website and allow you to access the link from it as well. But the one that I really like here is the clipping options. Whereas if you're in Samsung Internet and you select a bunch of text, long behold, there's another three-dot menu, and when you click on that three-dot menu, you can see add to note. When you add it to note, there's two things you can do. You can just add the link with the text that you've created, or you can put in the entire page. Don't know why you'd want the entire page unless you're someone who is maybe like wanting to give feedback on what the website looks like. That might be the thing. But the link one will put the text that you've created, the text that you copied, rather, and then also the link to that website in there. I like that Samsung has built that energy between the two, between Internet and Notes, and they sort of can coexist like that together. It's really cool.
Then there's action icons. But for the life of me, I have not been able to get this to work in the new One UI 6.1 version of Samsung Notes, purely because normally when you back out of a note, it sort of saves it but leaves it there, and then all that sort of stuff like action icons can work. But now it just takes you back to the screen before, which I found really frustrating because normally you just hover your pen over the phone number or the email or the website, and it comes up with a little icon to take you into that. But I think Samsung has got a bug here because I don't think they realize this isn't working, and that's probably because it's been around so long, people forget it exists, but it's there. Just wish it worked.
You've got personal preference settings like turn off the navigation bar, turn off the scroll navigation, turn off the back gesture while editing. That's all stuff that you'll have to figure out how you want it, but it's pretty self-explanatory.
The one underneath there is toolbar add-ons. Now, this is again what I was highlighting before with the S Pen toolbar. These are things that you can add to it if they're not turned on by default. Again, go watch the S Pen video. It covers all of that in extensive detail because that is definitely more an S Pen thing than it is specific to Samsung Notes. Well, I mean, it is specific to Samsung Notes, but you it's only on S Pen devices that this becomes more relevant.
Now, let's jump back into the hamburger menu because this is, I guess, where you can do some other things, but not necessarily things you might use all the time. The first is old format files. So, if you have any on your phone that are old format S Note files, they will appear in this list. I don't have any because it seems to auto-convert if I've imported one.
But then the three-dot menu, another one, will show you converted files. So, anything that was S Note files that's already been converted, and there was a lot. Again, I was a massive S Note user. I was kind of upset when they brought Samsung Notes out, but I think now Samsung Notes has eclipsed what S Note could do. Let me know in the comments if you were an S Note user from years gone by. That thing was a beast of a note-taking app.
You've got locked notes. Pretty self-explanatory. All the notes that you have locked will appear in this list here.
Shared notes. It says it's still in beta, but I found it works pretty good for the one time I've used it. Basically, if you've invited someone to collaborate on that note, this will appear in that list, and then they will have it in their shared notes list, and you can then add up more people if you want to as well.
Tags. This is another way of organizing. Not the best way because folders are the best way, and I'll get to that in a moment. But there's actually two ways that you can tag a note. The first is the way I showed you before. The second is actually inside a note where you can actually put the hashtag, write the word, and then once you've clicked sort of out of it, a little tag icon appears, and it'll then add it to the tags list. And then once you're in that tags menu, you can select the tags you want to display, and it'll show them.
Then there's the recycle bin. I don't know why it's called the recycle bin. It might be called trash in other regions, but recycle bin, you're not recycling anything. It's not paper, it's nothing, it's just like zeros and ones inside the phone. So, anyway, this is where all your trashed deleted files are, and then you can see how long they have left before it automatically will delete itself.
Underneath that and underneath the dotted line is truly the hero of Samsung Notes: folders. I highlighted them last week in my productivity video because it's just such a great way of organizing, and it's kind of familiar. It's a file structure, basically, and your notes can be organized in that way. My favorite thing that I use is the subfolders because you can have a folder, and then inside that folder, have other folders. So, it's not just all about the one folder, you can organize within that folder as well.
There's a few ways to create a folder. In the hamburger menu, underneath the folders icon, you have manage folders. You can create a folder directly from there. You can also long-press on the folders word inside that menu and hit create subfolder, which I thought was kind of neat. But the quicker way and better way to create a folder is just inside the folders menu itself. You have the three-dot menu, hit create folder, and it's done because you can create this inside the subfolders as well.
Organizing notes into folders is really easy too. The easiest way is just dragging and dropping. If you have a note that you've created and is not in a folder, simply highlight it, pick it up with your finger, and then drag it and drop it into the folder you like. The other way, which eliminates that first way I showed you, is you can organize it directly into the folder you want as you're creating the note, in the way I showed you earlier. Of course, if you are creating the note from the folder you want it to be saved in, it will automatically just save into that folder. Simple.
The last part of Samsung Notes is the ecosystem. As I mentioned earlier, there's the Samsung Cloud syncing, and this is rapid fast. It's 12 seconds. So, you could start your note on your phone, and then, as you can see in this demonstration, pretty much as soon as you save that note, the timer will start. I don't think I even put a timer on there. If I did, give me a like. And then the note will appear on your other device, your other Samsung device with Samsung Notes within that 12 seconds. It's great because then you can immediately start working on it on that other device. I write all of my video ideas inside Samsung Notes, so I maybe start them on my phone, and then I'll pick up my Tab S9 Ultra or on my Book for Ultra, and I'll continue to work on them. And as you can see, it's a really quick process to go between the three. They really interoperate quite nicely, and there's a lot of parity, especially with the tab and the phone, in terms of feature set between Samsung Notes.
Another part of the ecosystem is how you can auto-open Samsung Notes from the recent menu. So, for example, you could be working on a note on your tablet, and you want to bring it into your phone. Well, whilst it's open on the tablet and you're in the recents menu on your phone, you can hit "Open from Daniel's Tab S9 Ultra." It's a little notification at the top, you tap on it, and it pulls it into your S24 Ultra, if that's what you're using.
What I really like too is if it recognizes that there's one or more of the same versions, it'll ask you what you want to do. Do you want to keep this version? Do you want to make a copy so you keep both? Or keep the most current one, which does tell you also. And that works back the other way. So, if you want to work on your tablet from your phone, you can again pull it from your phone onto your tablet in that same manner. It's fast, and it's clever, and it connects that ecosystem together.
So, that is Samsung Notes. With as comprehensive as Samsung Notes is, you honestly will not need another note-taking app, nor will you need that pen and paper that I threw somewhere before. It's part of the Samsung ecosystem, and it doesn't require any fancy subscriptions to utilize. Subscribe if you like this sort of stuff. Come follow me on all my socials. I've got Twitter/X and also Instagram, and I'll see you in the next one.