Being an official offering from Apple, the Notes app has a robust integration on the company’s devices. While some of the Notes features, such as Smart Folders, Quick Notes, tags, and subfolders, are great, the app misses out on several basics and spoils my note-taking experience in no time.

Every year, when Apple announces new features for the default apps at WWDC, I give the Notes app a fair shot on my Mac and return to my true and tested OneNote setup within a week or two. Here are the top features Apple Notes needs to receive to break my shackles with OneNote.

6 Highlighter

Whether I’m jotting down ideas, checklists, or thoughts, I rely on OneNote’s highlighter tool to mark specific tasks and paragraphs. It even offers a couple of built-in tags like Remember for later (Yellow highlighter) and Definition (Green highlighter) that you can apply with keyboard shortcuts (cmd/ctrl + 4 and cmd/ctrl + 5, respectively).

It baffles me that Apple has yet to implement such a basic feature for a note-taking app. The Notes app does let you change the font color, but the option is buried in Format > Font > Show colors menu, and it’s not even available on iPhone and iPad. Apple needs to offer such features right into the top toolbar.

5 Different page colors and styles

Using the same page color and style for all notes can sometimes get boring. For better differentiation and to spice things up, I often change the OneNote page background color and style.

For example, I use Blue shade for my WordPress notes, Green for Figma notes, and Yellow for personal notes. I also insert rules and grid lines for some of the SEO notes. Apple Notes doesn’t support any function that tweaks the look of your page. Every note uses a bland white or dark theme. I hope Apple borrows some of these OneNote page customization options in future Notes updates.

4 Audio recording

Voice recording is an essential note-taking feature that Apple Notes lacks. OneNote has a robust audio recording tool that inserts date and time automatically and lets you add bookmarks to important phrases. You can rename the audio file, save it on your device, and play it with your preferred third-party app.

I frequently use OneNote’s audio recording feature during seminars and other occasions. It’s another feature that I miss whenever I’m taking Apple Notes for a spin.

3 Web extension

Due to research purposes, I frequently clip relevant articles from the web. OneNote’s web clipper lets me effortlessly save relevant content from any webpage to my Quick Notes section. The OneNote extension is available on Google Chrome, Firefox, and other popular browsers.

Apple Notes only has integration with Safari, where you can bookmark a post as a quick note. It doesn’t offer the option to clip a specific part of a webpage. You must take screenshots and insert them into Notes manually, which is definitely not intuitive compared to OneNote.

2 Math equations

The lack of support for math equations is another missing feature that affects my productivity while dealing with the Apple Notes app. I often keep track and calculate my EMIs, subscriptions, rent, and invoices in OneNote. Microsoft’s built-in math equation support is a time-saver as I don’t need to open a separate calculator app to perform basic addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (* or X), or division (/). I can simply type the formula, enter = at the end and hit the Return key to get the answer.

With Apple Notes, I must open the Calculator side-by-side to complete such basic tasks. Apple is rumored to add support for math equations in the upcoming iOS, iPadOS, and macOS updates. But I will believe it when I see it.

1 Templates

OneNote lets you set any page as a template in a given section. For example, if you often use a table and specific headings for your Chemistry notebook, create a hero page, and set it as the default template. You don’t need to enter the same information repeatedly.

OneNote also has excellent template support from third-party developers on the web. Notegram is one such source for finding handy OneNote templates like monthly calendar, weekly planner, day planner, to-do list, trip planner, journal entry, and more. You can simply connect your OneNote account and import your favorite templates with a single click.

Apple Notes only lets you duplicate notes. You can’t save any page as a template, and it doesn’t support any template gallery either. Drafting a new page with a repetitive formatting style in Apple Notes can get tedious at times.

I'm looking forward to WWDC 2024

When I’m away from my desktop PC, I rely on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook to get the job done. Thanks to some of its unique add-ons like Smart Folders and Quick Notes, I have long been trying to integrate Apple Notes into my workflow. However, the lack of the above-mentioned features has been a deal breaker, and I keep coming back to OneNote. If you are also a OneNote user, check out our top tips and tricks to get the best out of it.