iOS 18 Beta: Keep Your iPhone’s Notes App Organized With This Secret Trick [CNET]

Make jumbled and scattered notes a thing of the past.

Apple released the fifth public beta for iOS 18 on Aug. 20, more than two months after the company announced the update at its Worldwide Developers Conference. The beta update brings a handful of new features, like customizable home and lock screens, to the iPhones of developers and beta testers. It also makes your Notes app easier to organize with collapsible sections.

There are ways to keep Notes organized, like with tags, but those usually organize whole notes and not the content with the note. With collapsible sections, you can keep the content within individual notes organized and tidy so you can easily find what you’re looking for.

Read more: Everything You Need to Know About the iOS 18 Beta in One Place

Since iOS 18 is still in beta, I recommend downloading it on something other than your primary device. Because this isn’t the final version of iOS 18, the update might be buggy and battery life may be short. I downloaded it on my old iPhone XR to keep those troubles far away from my iPhone 14 Pro.

It’s also important to note that this isn’t the final version of iOS 18, so more features could land on your iPhone when iOS 18 is released. Apple said iOS 18 would be released to the public this fall, but there’s no definitive date yet.

If you’ve downloaded any of the iOS 18 betas, here’s how to create collapsible sections in Notes to keep the app organized.

How to create collapsible sections

1. Open Notes.
2. Tap the new note button — the square with a pen — in the bottom right corner of your screen.
3. Add a title to the note, like weeks of the month.
4. Tap the Aa in the toolbar across the top of your keyboard. You might have to tap the plus (+) sign over the top corner of your keyboard to open the toolbar.
5. Tap Heading or Subheading to name your sections, like the days of the week.
6. Fill out information under your headings and subheadings.
7. Tap the space just in front of your headings or subheadings, and a down arrow will appear to the left of them.
8. Tap that arrow and everything under the heading or subheading will collapse.

It’s important to note that headings won’t collapse into each other, same thing with subheadings and titles. But if you put a subheading under a heading, the subheading can collapse into the heading. And everything will collapse under a title if there’s more than one title in a note.

Now you can keep Notes organized and tidy. I’ve used the feature to keep track of my work week, as well as meetings, that way I can easily look back on what I was working on earlier in the week or remind myself what was discussed during a 1 p.m. meeting and not the meeting at 1:30 p.m.

Again, iOS 18 is still in beta, so these features could be buggy or not work properly. There will likely be more betas before the OS is released to the public, so there’s plenty of time for Apple to address any issues. As of now, though, there’s no word on when Apple will release iOS 18.

For more on iOS 18, here’s my hands-on experience with the iOS 18 public betas, what to know about RCS messaging and how to schedule a message to send later. You can also check out our iOS 18 cheat sheet.