The note list: pin, sort, select

Keep important notes on top, sort the list your way, and work on several notes at once.

The list shows each note as a card: its title, the first lines, the date and its tags. In a list that holds notes from several notebooks — all notes, a tag, a stack, a search — the card also shows the note's notebook in its own color and icon. A note's title is set in New York, Apple's serif, on its card and above the note. The cards stand on the list's own ground, a shade off the warm paper the note is written on. A card that is picked out has a blue border of its own.

Pin a note

A pinned note stays at the top of the list it is in, as a tile in its notebook's color.

Right-click the note and choose Pin.

Swipe the note and tap the orange pin button, or touch and hold it and choose Pin.

To unpin a note, right-click its tile — or touch and hold it on iPhone and iPad — and choose Unpin. Pinned notes also appear in the Pinned section on Home. To keep a note at hand everywhere rather than at the top of its notebook, add it to Shortcuts instead.

Sort the list

Use the ⇅ button above the list to choose how it is sorted: notes by Updated Date, Created Date, Title or Reminder Date, notebooks and tags by Name or Number of Notes — and in either Order, ascending or descending. Each kind of list remembers its own choice.

Choose the picture a card shows

When a note has several pictures, open the menu of the one you want on its card and choose Set as Note Preview.

A pinned note shows the picture you chose across its whole tile, with its notebook's color as a strip at the left edge. Pinned notes without a chosen picture keep their notebook's color.

Move through the list

Click in the list, then use ↑ and ↓ to go from note to note; the note beside the list follows. With no note open, ↓ takes the first card and ↑ the last. Clicking the sidebar gives the arrow keys to the sidebar, and while you type in a note they move the insertion point.

With a keyboard attached, tap a card, then use ↑ and ↓ to go from note to note; the note beside the list follows. While the insertion point is in the note or in a search field, the arrow keys stay there.

Select several notes

⌘-click cards to pick them out one at a time.
⇧-click a card to take every card between it and the last one you picked.
Press ⇧↓ to add the next card, and ⇧↑ to give it back. This counts from the card you last picked, or from the note you have open, and the open note doesn't change.
Press ↑ or ↓ on its own to put the selection down and go back to moving one note at a time.

Right-clicking a card doesn't add a second outline around it; a picked card's own border is the only mark.

With a keyboard attached, ⌘-click and ⇧-click cards, or use ⇧↓ and ⇧↑, as on a Mac. Without a keyboard, touch and hold a card and choose Select, then tap the other cards you want.

Touch and hold a card and choose Select, then tap the other cards you want.

A bar appears at the foot of the list. Use it to file the selected notes in a notebook, add a tag, pin them, merge them, export them, or move them to the Trash. Moving them to the Trash always asks first, whatever your setting for single notes says.

To stop selecting, press Escape or use the ✕ at the end of the bar.