I’ve tried a lot of notes apps. One of the main things missing from Apple Notes is a daily notes feature.

Sure Apple Journal exists, but it’s not the same, and yet another app to manage.

There was a time when I thought daily notes were silly. They did not fit my workflow.

Using Obsidian or Craft, or any other app with daily notes, opened my eyes to the benefit.

I’ve created a few shortcuts to help with this in Apple Notes, along with a process to manage them.

The first shortcut creates the daily note, tags it, puts it in the right folder, and adds a timestamp on top of the text that you input.

This way throughout the day you can add to it as things come up.

The downside is that it is limited to text input only. No links, images or other input methods. That is a bummer and I haven’t had the time to troubleshoot those other methods to get them working.

I’m sharing the full thing, so if you want to take a crack at it and comment below, have at it! I’m sure the community would appreciate it.

Here is what this does:

This way you have a running log of all of your entries throughout the day.

You can download it for yourself here or build it yourself based on the screenshot above.

I have one shortcut that I use for my morning journaling, also done inside the daily note.

This bit can be screwy at times, but this one is called “Create and Open Daily Note”

I use this exclusively on the iPad.

It does what it says, creates the daily note, with the timestamp, I add in my hand writing with the Apple Pencil and copy/paste that as text below.

Sometimes this can screw up the Create/Add to Daily Note shortcut, which will create a duplicate daily note, which is annoying. Again, haven’t hat the bandwidth to troubleshoot, the fun of sharing works in progress!

You can download this one here.

The final shortcut...opens the daily note.

I have the Create/Add and Open Daily Note tied to a shortcut selection menu on my iPhone’s action button.

This way if I just want to look at the daily note instead of add to it, I have easy access, instead of having to go into notes and hunt through whatever folder and note I was in out to the daily notes folder.

This one is available here.

These shortcuts by themselves are useful, but if I don’t have a way to process the information, I end up with a bunch of digital clutter.

This is why the notes live in their own Daily Note folder.

That folder gets pulled into my Weekly Review Smart Folder, so I have a chance to look back at my journals or actions or whatever I’ve saved throughout the week as I review what I did last week and look forward to what is upcoming this week.

I wrote all about my weekly review process here.

That Smart Folder looks like this:

Having a process to review was the key unlock for me.

Prior to that I almost never would have revisited a daily note. I’d write my thoughts and likely never see them again.

Now I will use it to jot down where I left off on a project, what I have upcoming tomorrow, or other key information that I’ll likely forget when I wake the next day.

That context keeps me on track and the goal in focus. Heck sometimes I even set my daily priorities when writing my morning journal pages.

Like a top 3 list of things I need to do today.

Sometimes I’ll even export these notes to markdown and plug them into Claude to make sure I didn’t miss any video ideas or action items I gave myself as a double check to my review.

That is a workflow for another time.

I went back and looked at every smartphone that I have ever used!

Turns out, I’ve had 18 over the last 16 years(yes, the early android years were wild).

I ranked all of them, looking back on the nostalgia, and what I remember about each one.

If you found this helpful, share it with a friend!

I’ll be back next week as always!