Apple Notes is Now My Favorite Outliner

05 Oct, 2025

For years, my quest for the perfect outliner has led me through a variety of dedicated applications, from minimalist options like Bike to the comprehensive and complex Org Mode. I was in search of an ideal combination of simplicity, power, and a seamless user experience. To my surprise, the solution was not a new purchase but a pre-installed application I had overlooked: Apple Notes. With recent updates, it has transformed into a remarkably capable outliner that not only fulfills but often surpasses my needs, establishing itself as my new favorite for structuring thoughts and projects.

The Core of an Excellent Outliner

A great outliner must excel at a few fundamental tasks. It needs to offer a clear hierarchical structure, enable effortless manipulation of that structure, and maintain an unobtrusive presence. Apple Notes now masters these core requirements.

The fundamental outlining view is clean and intuitive. You can create hierarchies simply by using bulleted lists and adjusting indentation levels with the Tab key. For more structured documents, Notes supports various heading levels that can be collapsed and expanded. This folding capability is a significant advantage for managing lengthy texts, allowing you to conceal irrelevant sections and focus on a specific area without excessive scrolling. Combined with a robust full-text search that scans across all your notes, locating information is remarkably efficient.

The entire experience is fluid and virtually free of bugs. For a free, built-in application, this level of polish is exceptional and surpasses many paid alternatives.

How It Stacks Up Against the Competition

What truly convinced me to switch to Apple Notes is its performance compared to specialized software. I can confidently say that for my requirements, it is superior to dedicated outliners like Bike. While Bike is praised for its speed and focus on structured writing, Apple Notes delivers a more versatile and integrated experience across the entire Apple ecosystem at no extra cost.

Even when measured against a powerhouse like Org Mode, Apple Notes holds its ground. Org Mode is famous for its extensive flexibility and powerful features for task management and document creation within Emacs. However, it comes with a steep learning curve. For many common outlining tasks—such as drafting articles, planning projects, or organizing complex ideas—Apple Notes provides more than enough functionality without the associated complexity.

Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for Outlining

An efficient workflow hinges on the ability to use keyboard shortcuts, and Apple Notes offers a comprehensive set that makes outlining effortless.

Areas for Improvement

Despite my positive experience, Apple Notes is not without its flaws. There are a couple of key features that I find lacking.

First, there is no "focus mode." In other outliners, you can zoom in on a specific bullet point to view only that branch and its sub-items, hiding everything else. This is incredibly helpful for eliminating distractions and concentrating on one part of a large project.

Second, when working with very long and detailed texts, the inability to add comments or annotations to specific blocks of text is a notable omission. This feature would be invaluable for revisions and collaborative work.

Conclusion: A Superior Outliner for Most Users

Even with these missing features, Apple Notes has won me over. It achieves an outstanding balance of simplicity and power. Its features are robust, its performance is flawless, and its integration across all my devices is seamless. As a free application, it offers more than enough capability to replace specialized, paid outliners for a majority of users. I no longer feel the need to look for other outliners; Apple Notes is simply that effective.