This note-taking app works like iMessage and it might be genius

Note Yourself Promo
Note Yourself Promo (Image credit: Rihab Mehboob)

What you need to know

  • Note Yourself is an app that lets you send notes to yourself as messages.
  • WhatsApp and some other messaging apps let you send messages to yourself already.
  • Note Yourself is as simple as can be but might just work the way your brain does.

If you've ever tried to get into the habit of taking notes but have never managed to make it stick, Note Yourself might be the app for you. The reason for that is simple — it doesn't look or work like a note-taking app and instead appears to be a messaging app. It looks like one, functions like one, and essentially is one. Except your messages don't go anywhere and nobody can bug you, either.

Note Yourself is an odd one, but it might also be genius in the way it works. See, WhatsApp and some other messaging apps already have a way to send messages to yourself. That might seem pointless to some, but to others, it makes perfect sense. Need to remember to do something or pick something up? Put it into a one-way chat and you have a sort of timeline of events or, in this case, notes. Note Yourself works the same way but without all the messaging stuff thrown in.

The result is an interface that looks immediately familiar and you create "chats" that are actually different notes. You can create a chat for groceries or for homework or whatever, really. But the idea is always the same — notes get written as if they were a chat message and you hit the send button. Need a reminder? There's an option for that, too.

Notable features include:

  • Pin messages within notes, to make them stand out and appear like sent messages
  • Communication Notifications that appear chat-like, and can be scheduled
  • Store notes in separate chats
  • Share, pin, delete and lock chats by swiping left or right
  • Copy, share, edit and delete individual messages by swiping left or right
  • Search for a particular chat
  • Dark mode support
  • VoiceOver support
  • 3D Touch
  • Simple and beautiful user interface
  • Small haptics when interacting, improving the overall experience

If that sounds good you can take Note Yourself for a spin now. It's available for download from the App Store and costs $2.99. If you already send messages to yourself instead of notes, this might be the best iPhone app for you.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.