 Side notes is a great little app for the Mac, note-taking app that lives at the side of your desktop and for the main. And I'm gonna tell you all about it in this video. Hello, welcome to Take One Tech, my name's Alec. And today I'm gonna continue with the theme of choosing apps to review that are part of the set up bundle. And this is one of those ones where I don't actually use it for anywhere near its full capabilities. And it just has a specific niche use case for me. Scratches a little itch as it were. And that is one of the beauties of set up. And what is set up? Well, it is a bundle of over 200 apps that you can get access to for one monthly subscription of $9.99. And from once you download the set up app and put that on your Mac, you've basically then got a little mini app store where you can go and look at all of the different apps that there are available and simply download them from within set up. And then if you want to uninstall them, you can also do that from within there. So it's really great way of getting access to lots of great little utility apps. And the beauty of it is that if there are some apps where you maybe don't even need their full features or maybe you just need them occasionally where you perhaps wouldn't necessarily go and buy the app itself. But it does mean that you can just download them because you've got them as part of your subscription and use them as you wish. And that is the case with side notes because side notes, if I come back out of here for a moment is this little application that lives in the side of your desktop. In fact, let me just come over to this window. That might be a bit better. And here you can see if I just click on this little hotkey then out pops this thing where you can keep your notes. Now, I do not use this to keep notes in. I have my own copyright, Alec Johnson text system, text file system. So everything that I do is basically stored in text files and then I have different ways of accessing them. Actually, I use NVult, which is Brett Terpstra's application for basically managing text files and creating text files and things like that. So that is actually what I use for my main text file system. I also, for my task management, I use an application called OmniFocus, which is based on David Allen's Getting Things Done system of task management. I'll be doing videos about all of these in due course as well. So what exactly do I use this for? Because it does do text, it does do notes rather and it also does tasks. But like I say, I don't use it for that. But I will show you all of the features of it because it may be something that you would prefer to use. And I know people do. But what I use it for is basically a little holding bay to throw little snippets of text and things like that at where I need a little bit more organization than say, I'm naming a whole load of other different workflows in this video, so I don't want to overcomplicate it. But I also sometimes use Keyboard Maestro to collect little snippets and then manage my clipboards that way. But this is for basically if I'm working on something and I want to collect my thoughts and little snippets of text and things like that, visually, then this is a great way to do it. So with all of that out of the way, let me just show you it in action as it were and then you'll be able to have a better understanding of what it is. So as I've said, this little tray pops out from the side and I'm just setting it all up on my Mac mini at the moment, so it's completely empty and it starts with nothing. And then up here, we can click on this little plus icon and we can create a folder. So we can create folders of tasks. I'm just going to call this folder one for the moment, but we could have more than one folder, folder two. If I can type properly, there we go. So we can reorganize them and things like that. So now we've got a couple of little folders in this little tray that pops out and now I can go into one of those folders and then it comes up. So we can see the root folder that I am in up at the top. And now if I click the plus sign, it is going to create a new text. There are keyboard shortcuts for all of this, so I'll come onto those in a moment. But now basically we've got an area where we can add text or images. So this is a note and this is a task. Whoops, I really can't spell. This is a another task. So what you can do is you can just highlight some things here and if I go down to the little text box at the bottom, then I could change that to be a to-do item. And there you can see now we have got little check boxes. So if you were going through the day and you had a series of tasks that you wanted to do, it's a great way to just capture those. I could say I use OmniFocus, but I can see how somebody who doesn't use a full blown task manager, this would be a great way to just capture some little tasks and to-dos and things like that. I should also point out it will sync across devices using iCloud sync as well. So if you've got multiple Macs and things like that, it will copy across to those as well. You have got obviously all the standard text formatting like making things bold, italic headers and so on. Now the other thing that you can do is you can also create code blocks as well. So that's another way that I do use this is for little code snippets and things like that. I also use TextExpander for text snippets that I'm using all of the time, then that they would be just stored in TextExpander. But this is for sort of short term ad hoc little snippets of code or text that I'm gonna need. Then I would just drop those into here. The other thing is it is actually fully compatible or understands Markdown. So if you don't know what Markdown is, it's basically a system that allows you to add formatting to text just by typing characters. So for example, if I type the pound sign or the hash sign, whichever way you want to say it, that basically is now going to create a header. If I want to add quote text, then a little arrow will add quote text. And you can do italics, underlines, all these sorts of things, but just by simply adding the little characters before them. And so Markdown is used often in, well, like writing blogs and things like that. In fact, it was developed by John Gruber from daringfireball.net, famous Apple blogger, and he designed it to basically speed up his writing workflow because obviously you can see that without, you don't have to actually type out or fix any manually set any formatting. You can just do it all in the flow of your typing. So that is the point of Markdown. If you know Markdown, you'll know what it's for. And it's just to know that it is available in here. And if you don't know what Markdown is, then it may be something you want to look at. And I'll probably make a video about it at some point in the future as well. But for now, I'll move swiftly on. You can also do other things with notes. In fact, let's start another note, shall we? So now we've got another note. And so now you can just, you can see how these are basically separated. They just look like individual panels with these little notes. You can also, where you've got this little arrow at the bottom, so you can move it into another folder or you could actually share it or send it somewhere. So if I click on that little share tab, then this is the beauty of it. You can just copy the text. So if I've been building up a whole series of little text snippets and things like that, you may want to check out the video that I've just done on TextSniper as well, which was released yesterday. That is all about OCR and image capturing text from images. So this pairs quite nicely with that because you can use that to capture different parts of different text snippets, drop them into something like this. And then when you've got everything formulated in here, then you can just simply click the little share arrow and either copy the whole text or copy the note or just send it all to a different application. And you've got obviously all of the apples built in sharing functionality in this little share sheet thing here. There's also some settings. So you can basically change it from either standard markdown format, which is the default, or you can change it into plain text or code. And I should mention, by the way, when I said it can do code, basically that's just gonna use a monospace font and have a few other different formatting changes as well. But you can also color the notes as well. So if you want to change the colors of individual notes, you can do that. So as I say, it is just quite a nice little thing and it gets straight out of the way when you don't need it. So I'm not suggesting that you use this for your full blown notes management, although in theory you could. And you could also use it for your tasks as well. But it is just nice to have it there at the side. If I come into some of the preferences for it, if I go back up to my main folder. So there's a few different options that we've got with it, which are basically here. So we've got the general, the arrangement, either on the left side or the right side. Next is the show or hide bar. So there is actually, if I just come to another quick view, slightly more zoomed out, I'll just move that one out of the way. I don't know if you can see down here. In fact, you should be able to, there we go. There is a little sort of bar at the side. So you can change how the window actually opens. If I click on that bar, you can see it sort of folded away, but the bar is still there. That I'm only showing you the top quarter of my screen by the way. So this is actually positioned sort of halfway down the screen. So you can have it so that you actually move over and highlight the bar and click on the bar to activate it. The other option is that you can have it as a hot side as it were. That's supposed to be similar to a hot corner on the Mac, which is where you just move your mouse over to the side and it pops out. Or you can have it as a activated from the menu bar. So there is a menu bar item up there. So you can have it so that that is the way that it is activated. You can also, if you've got one of these two options selected, then you can also choose whether you want to even see it in the menu bar or not. Now I've turned off these because I don't like having the little bar there or the little hot side. And I obviously prefer to do things by keyboard shortcuts. And there are, there is a keyboard shortcut which happens to be command option shift, no, command option control, sorry, space. And that one you can just sort of basically toggle it in and out. So that is the way that I would do it. The next thing is you've got basically hide notes on click in empty space. So that is basically, if I'm in one of these folders, then you can have it so that it's, at the moment, nothing's happening if I'm clicking on the screen or clicking outside of the app. But you can just have it so that if you click in empty space between the notes, then it will disappear. Or if you click on the outside of the app like that, it will disappear. And you've also got hide when mouse is inactive. So if I put this one back on, then it should, once I come out again, it should just disappear for a few seconds. Well, it's not quite doing that, is it? It says open bar will disappear when the mouse is inactive for a few seconds, but it doesn't appear to be working. I'm wondering why that is, nevermind. I'll move swiftly on. I'll move swiftly on from that. It's obviously operator error. Usually these things are. So I just do it with the shortcuts anyway. And then launch on computer startup as well if you like. So I'm gonna toggle those off because I always just use keyboard shortcuts for everything anyway. So then the next one is creating notes. So the default format, as I mentioned, is either plain text code or markdown. So you can choose which one you want as the default. But obviously, like I showed you, you can change that as well. Current new, sorry, create new note. So the options are here, basically, either it's gonna put a new note above the previous one, below the previous one, or always come at the top or always come at the bottom. So that's what those are. It's just the position. So if I put always at the top, in fact, let me do something different. Always at the bottom. And you can see it's just put a new note at the bottom. If I put it always at the top, then the next note will come at the top. That is as simple as that. Default color is non, but you can just choose a specific color that you want it to have. The next thing is create notes for notes using global shortcut. So basically, if I go and type, want to type a new note, there is a shortcut which is command alt option N, or command, sorry, control alt command N. That is a new note. You see it's just popped a new note up there, but you can also ask it to say, if a no folder is open, so if I come back out of this folder and then press the same thing again, then it's just popped up a little notification here, asking me which folder I want to put the note in. So you can have it to ask automatically or just never ask. So that's up to us. And if I put never, then it will ask me to select the default folder basically that I want it to go into. So the next one is create new folders over selected folder. So this is the same thing as these ones up here basically. It's still saying whether the new folder is going to come either above the current folder below at the bottom or at the top as simple as that. Next on appearance is whether it's going to be light or dark and or whether it's going to be selected based on the system preferences. You've also got a different look and feel to the panel as well. Let me just come back to my slightly zoomed in scene. Maybe a bit easier for you to see. So you've got dark blue sort of graphite, the graphite gray or retro. So these are basically the styles you've got. There is also get more themes online. I've not actually tried that because I just stick with the standard ones, but you may want to add some more color or things like that. And then you've also got the difference between note colors and the background. And then also file links. So either full width or compact. So that is when you've actually got links to specific files in there, how they are going to appear. Next with the text, basic text formatting, things like that, the type of font. So this is where I've mentioned about the code. Then you have a different font for that specifically. So a fixed width font, Menlo. That's usually my default anyway to be honest. That's always quite a nice font. Change the font size, line height, things like that. Spell checking, either on or off. Remove indents, remove new lines and things like that when you're pasting text in. So depending on whether you want to have formatting included, so I actually take those off because I do tend to want to keep it if I've copied it that way. Next is shortcuts. So these are the shortcuts that I mentioned, command, control option, command space. It's a bit of a mouth for this. I always trip over with that. Or create new note is command, control, option, N. But you can also new note from Pasteboard. So you can actually create a new note from whatever you've got copied. The next is search. So you can just search your notes so they can have a shortcut for that to just search through the notes that you've got. Pin app window that's gonna pin this window to the side. And then also you've got a few other things for shortcuts for basically navigating the folders once you're in the app. And you can see that there's some other ones here that are not user-divinable, but it just tells you nonetheless how you can do things like creating a new folder, deleting notes and so on and so forth. Next is backups. So you can see that you can actually set it to automatic backups. And then you can see here when it's going to make them. And then where the backup location is. And then next is data. And you can do, as I mentioned earlier, iCloud synchronization to be able to sync between different iCloud devices. So that is basically side notes. And like I say, if you want to use it for managing, you can see here, you've got quite a lot of space all the way down the side of your monitor. You could have multiple different folders with all of your notes in, similar that you can do with Apple's own notes, but they just kept here conveniently on the side. And I know some people may cringe at the idea of this, but for me, I just use it for the occasional note snippets and things like that. And so for that, it is certainly worth the money when you effectively get it free if you've already got set up. And as I am a big proponent of a set up, then it's something that I've got there. And so this little niche use case for me certainly scratches a niche for me. And so that is why I'm using it. And that is why I'm recommending it to you. If there are any other set up apps that you use and find useful, then do let me know in the comments below. And also don't forget to like and subscribe as always. And if you've found this useful, then you may find some of these other apps that are available in set up useful as well. So until the next video, have a great day.