User's guide
Notes
Any writing longer than a line can become a document, a page with a title that you can come back to, edit, and find again. Notes is the tab that holds all of them, and every long entry you titled in the Journal is already one.
Where they come fromTwo ways to start one, and they make the same thing
Write a longer entry in the Journal and give it a title, and it becomes a document with a card on your timeline at the moment you wrote it. Tap that card to open the whole thing.
Or start one directly. Notes has a plus, beside the heading on the web and at the foot of the screen on the phone, and it makes a document and opens it. The new document arrives unnamed with its title field waiting, so you name it on the document rather than before it exists.
Both routes make the same object. A document started from the Journal keeps its place in the day, and one started from the Notes tab is simply a page.
Finding oneThe list is the index, and the field searches it
Notes groups its rows by life area. Three words above the list — Areas, Type and Date — arrange the same documents three ways, and Areas opens first. Type sections the list by your own word for what a document is, and Date sections it by month, newest month first. A document you never filed under an area gathers under No area at the end of the Areas view, and one you never gave a type under No type at the end of Type. Every heading folds, and a folded heading stays folded until you open it again.
A row reads the life area it is filed under, your word for its type, its date, then its title and its description. Under Areas and Type a row drops whichever of those the heading above it has already said. Under Date a row keeps its own full date, since the heading names the month alone. Inside a section the newest date leads. A document with no date of its own takes the day of its last edit, and a new one starts stamped with today, so renaming a document does not move its row and neither does typing inside one.
The search field, rather than the top of the list, is the way back to the one you were writing in last week. The field searches as you type, and the grouping goes away while it has words in it: the list becomes one run of hits with a count above it. It matches the title, the description, the type and the life area, everything a row shows except its date, and it reads the text inside your documents as well, on the web and on the phone alike. A month later you remember a sentence you wrote far more often than the title you gave it.
If the server cannot search inside your documents right now, a line under the field says so, and the field keeps matching the rows.
The list exists so nothing gets lost. If you delete the journal entry that pointed at a document, the document is still here. Without this list you would have no way back to it.
Reading and editingThe same editor on the web and on your phone
Opening a document shows the whole thing, with its headings, lists and checkboxes as you wrote them, on the web and on the phone alike. On the web, Rename is one of the words along the top and tapping the title does the same thing. On the phone, Rename is under the ⋯ at the top.
Under the title is the life area the document belongs to, in that area’s colour, on the web and on the phone alike. Tap it and your areas come up, filtered as you type; pick one and the document is filed there. Picking No area at the bottom of the list takes it back off, and it stays off. With AI on, a document you have not filed yourself gets filed for you within a few minutes, on both, and your own pick always replaces that.
On the web, every document is fully editable, formatting included, and saves itself moments after you pause. If edits failed to save before you left the page, the document says so the next time you open it, so a lost save never looks stored.
The phone runs the same editor, so it writes the same things: headings, bulleted and numbered lists, checkboxes, quotes, code, links, tables, bold, italic, strikethrough, text colour and highlight. A bar above the keyboard holds them, and it shows what the line your cursor is on already is. Typing - starts a bullet and ## starts a heading, the same shortcuts the web takes.
Photographs go in too. On the web, drop one into the document or pick it from the editor's own menu. On the phone, the ▣ button on the bar adds one from your camera roll, and holding it opens the camera. A photo that did not upload says so on the bar rather than quietly doing nothing.
The phone saves itself on the same clock as the web, and says Unsaved, Saving or Saved next to the document while it does. There is nothing to press and nothing to lose by leaving.
History at the top of an open document reads back what it said before. On the phone it is under the ⋯. Every save is kept, and the panel gathers a long afternoon of them into one sitting rather than listing forty. Save version marks the text as it stands and lets you name it, opening one shows how the document read then, and restoring puts it back, keeping what the document says now as a version first.
Your Journal gets no entry about an editing session. The changes save into the document as you write, and the document itself is the record.
Putting one awayArchive keeps it, delete means gone
Archive takes a document out of the list without destroying the writing. On the web, right-click a row (press and hold on a touch screen) for Rename, Archive and Delete permanently. An open document reads Rename, History, Archive and Delete permanently along its top. On the phone, a press and hold on a row opens the same three, and the open document keeps them under the ⋯ at the top.
Archived documents stay reachable through the Archived link at the top of the list, where the same menu reads Restore and puts one back. Notes in the same place is the way back to the live list.
Delete permanently is the one action that asks first. The document and its text are gone for good. A journal entry that pointed at the deleted document keeps its writing and simply stops being a document.