Q. What is a good app for taking notes on an iPhone?
A. Every Mac, iPad, and iPhone has an app called Notes. This app is one of Apple’s most powerful apps, and it has a wealth of features that are not immediately obvious.
The easiest way to use the app is launch it and create a new note. Add a title and start typing. The message can be as long as you want. There is a formatting bar for making text bold or underlined, and for selecting a typeface and font size.
Notes also understands hashtags. Anything following a # symbol will become a tag. All the tags are clickable on the Folders screen.
The circle with three dots at the top of each note is a menu with still more features, including the ability to scan documents into a PDF, file the note in a folder, and pin a note to the top of the screen.
These features are just a start. To learn more, search the web for videos on how to make effective use of the Apple Notes app.
If you have an iCloud account, the Notes app will keep all the notes backed up in the cloud and synched with all your other Apple devices.
Q. A friend sends me text messages that always arrive as email messages. The email message has a strange return address and often I cannot tell who sent it. We both use iPhones. Is there a way to fix this?
A. Yes. This is not a common problem, but it does happen. Let’s start with some background.
The Messages app on iPhone supports a number of different services, including the original cell text protocol (SMS), multi-media messages (MMS), Apple’s secure message protocol, and the newer RCS protocol.
By design, Messages chooses the delivery service based on your phone’s settings and the recipient’s address. It is also designed to do everything possible to deliver a message, falling back on a different protocol if the first choice fails.
The good news is that this arrangement works nearly all the time, but as you have discovered, there are exceptions.
When things work correctly, messages sent from iPhones should appear in blue message bubbles, which means that the message was sent via Apple’s secure protocol. Green bubbles use the other protocols, which are not secure.
Text messages show up as email addresses because of a fallback service. To make sure that all the messages sent to you from your friend appear as blue bubbles, the sender needs to make sure that both your cell number and AppleID are present in their address book.
To do this, open the Contacts app on the sender’s phone, find your address card, and edit it so that your cell number is labeled correctly as one of your telephone numbers, and make sure one of the email addresses matches your AppleID.
If you do not know your AppleID, open the Settings app and tap on your name. On the screen that appears, the AppleID should appear below your name. It is usually an email address.
Once these entries are in place, send a message to your friend, and have them reply. If you still need help, check out this link: Troubleshooting Messages, support.apple.com/en-us/118433.
Q. I use an iPhone at home and an Android phone for my work. Is there some way I can access things like Apple Notes on my Android device?
A. Yes, and this works with all newer devices. You may never have visited iCloud on the web, but almost everything you sync via iCloud on Apple devices is visible to you on any device via the Web.
To do this, open a browser on the non-Apple device and visit iCloud.com. Log in with your AppleID and password. That opens the portal to everything Apple.
Depending on your iCloud configuration, there are more than a dozen services. In general, you can see your contacts, calendars, notes, Apple email, iCloud Drive, and photos. If you use Pages, Numbers, or Keynote, full versions of those apps are also available inside the browser.
In short, using your AppleID and password on iCloud.com will give you access to a large array of capabilities on non-Apple devices.
Bob has been writing about technology for over three decades. He can be contacted at techtalk@bobdel.com.
Wander the Web
Here are my picks for worthwhile browsing this month:
A brief history of peanut butter
Everything you need to know about this kitchen staple. Also check out the food-related articles that appear at the bottom of this article
smithsonianmag.com/innovation/
brief-history-peanut-butter-180976525/
Visual vocabulary
Eyecandy is a platform to exchange ideas and find inspiration from films. Entries are cataloged by various filmmaking techniques.
Global reset button
Embrace the thought that things might improve thanks to this cute single-page website.
