
Prior to Mountain Lion, Mail on macOS supported a mailbox containing notes, which was synced with notes in the Notes application in iOS. Tapping the Pencil on the Lock screen will bring up a new note with drawing active the Pencil can also be used while in the Notes app to start an inline drawing.

The update to Notes released with iOS 11 adds tables, pinned notes, a document scanner, graph and lined paper, monospaced text support, handwriting search, and improved integration with Apple Pencil. In iOS 10, Notes now has a collaboration feature for many people to work on a note at the same time. The password syncs across compatible devices.

Īs of iOS 9.3, individual notes can be password-protected (with the ability to use Touch ID to unlock all notes on compatible devices), however only one password can be set for all notes locked henceforth. Starting with iOS 9, Notes received a significant functional overhaul iCloud sync (instead of IMAP in-line with the OS X 10.11 version), the ability to create sketches (and later, support for Apple Pencil), advanced text formatting options, several styles of lists, rich web and map link previews, support for more file type attachments, a corresponding dedicated attachment browser, and a system share extension point for saving web links, images, etc.
