How to Use Apple Notes Like Notion With the Forever✱notes Framework
Free, functional, and practical
If you use Apple Notes for its simplicity and quickness, but want more of that Notion swag, here’s a great system.
It’s a clean, simple, and completely free method designed specifically for Apple Notes users. Developed by Matthias Hilse, this system offers a real solution to the chaos.
It’s structured, flexible, and unlike most productivity hacks, doesn’t ask you to adopt an entirely new app or ecosystem. It works with what you already have.
Let’s break it down.
What Is the Forever✱notes Framework?
Forever✱ Notes is a method for organizing Apple Notes into a long-term, scalable system.
It’s not a productivity cult with a monthly fee or a one-size-fits-all formula. It’s a way to make your notes actually useful again.
At its core, the framework is built around a few key ideas:
One central Home Note that serves as your main dashboard
A clear tagging system that makes finding things fast and effortless
Topic-based hubs and collections to keep related content together
A structure for daily, monthly, and yearly reflection
Lightweight design — easy to start, easy to expand
The goal? A notes app that you can actually rely on. And while it was made with Apple Notes in mind, you could apply most of the ideas behind it to many other “simple” note-taking apps for all major platforms.
The Problem It Solves
Before using any kind of system, most people’s Apple Notes look like a digital junk drawer. Including mine.
I was constantly digging, guessing search terms, or scrolling endlessly through generic notes.
Here’s what Forever✱notes fixes:
You stop wasting time looking for things
You capture ideas in the right place from the start
You can zoom out and actually see the structure of your ideas and projects
You’re not starting from scratch every time you want to do something useful with your notes
It’s not revolutionary — it’s just thoughtful.
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The ✱ Home Note
The foundation of this system is the Home Note.
This is the one note you actually pin and visit daily. It contains links to everything important: ongoing projects, personal trackers, key references, and topic hubs.
The idea is simple — don’t dig through folders. Just open one note that branches out to everything else.
This is where you set up your own navigation system.
You can include:
Links to current projects
Sections for writing, work, personal, admin — whatever fits your life
Quick links to your most-used templates or recurring notes
A structure you’ll stick with because it actually works
This centralizes your entire system. It’s what you’d call a dashboard in other apps.
The Tagging System
Forever✱ Notes suggests using four types of tags to bring order to your chaos. And tags are the real key here. Folders are cool, but tags are folders on steroids.
Tag types:
Note Type Tags — e.g., #task, #idea, #reference
Life Area Tags — e.g., #work, #health, #writing
Detail Tags — e.g., #2025, #urgent, #inspiration
System Tags — e.g., #done, #inprogress
It’s not about tagging everything. It’s about tagging intentionally.
Tags let you bypass folders entirely (if you want). Need to find all work-related notes from this year? Filter by #work and #2025. Done. No digging through subfolders. No guesswork. Just search and go.
Smart Folders and Collections
Apple Notes supports smart folders, which automatically pull in notes based on specific tags.
This turns tagging into a powerful sorting tool.
For example, you could create:
A smart folder for all notes tagged #bookideas
A folder for everything tagged #task and #urgent
A folder that shows all #writing notes from the past 30 days
No manual organization required. Collections let you group notes naturally — by tag, by topic, or by timeframe — without you doing the heavy lifting.
The only downside here is that locked notes cannot/will not appear in tag-related smart folders.
✱Hubs
Instead of trying to manage individual notes scattered everywhere, Forever✱ Notes encourages building topic-specific hubs.
Think of a Hub as a central page for one topic. The home page is essentially one of those hubs, the most important one. But you can create more.
Say you’re working on a writing project — your Writing Hub could include:
A list of all your ideas
Drafts in progress
Research notes
Style guidelines
Links to published work
You don’t need to cram everything into one massive note. Just build a hub that links to relevant pieces and updates over time. It’s fast, it’s clear, and it scales.
Interlinking notes is very practical!
Journaling and Reflection
For those of you who want to journal, Forever✱notes has a specific system.
The framework includes:
Daily Notes — quick thoughts, to-do lists, ideas
Monthly Reviews — what worked, what didn’t, what needs to change
Quarterly Planning — set goals, course-correct
Yearly Summary — track progress, plan ahead
This helps you keep track of personal growth and makes sure your system isn’t just a static archive — it evolves with you.
If you’ve ever wished you could look back and actually see what changed in your thinking or what goals got lost in the shuffle, this gives you a way to track that.
Visual Markers and Hyperlinks
For quick scanning, you can use visual markers (inspired by bullet journaling):
• for tasks
○ for events
– for general notes
✱ for important content
It’s a simple trick to improve readability, especially when you’re skimming longer notes. You can also use hyperlinks between notes to build a web of related information. This is especially helpful for connecting hubs, jumping between projects, or referencing templates.
How to Get Started
You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. In fact, you shouldn’t.
Start with these five steps:
Create a Home Note and pin it
Add a few important links to it
Pick three tags to start with — just the essentials
Build one topic hub
Create a smart folder or two
You’re not trying to build the perfect system overnight. You’re building something useful that you can maintain.
Over time, you’ll naturally expand — adding tags, linking more notes, creating hubs as needed. The system grows with you.
Bonus: Use It With PARA if You Want
Some users layer this on top of the PARA method (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives) by Tiago Forte. You can build your PARA structure inside Apple Notes and run it through your Home Note.
For example:
Projects: Create a folder or hub for each
Areas: Ongoing responsibilities with linked notes
Resources: Tagged or collected by topic
Archives: Just add #archive and forget about them until needed
Combining the two methods gives you structure (PARA) and speed (Forever✱).
The Bottom Line
Forever✱ Notes won’t magically make you productive. No system will. But it gives you a structure that respects your time, your attention span, and your existing tools. It’s not flashy. It’s not complicated. It’s just effective.
And that’s the point.
Since I started using this framework, I rely on Notion less and less. That’s a good thing for me. And it might be for you-
You don’t need another tool. You need your existing tools to work better. Forever✱notes does that for Apple Notes.
It’s a quiet, reliable system that gets out of your way — and finally turns your note-taking mess into something you can actually use.
If you’ve been overwhelmed by digital clutter or bouncing between productivity systems looking for “the one,” this might be it.
Not because it’s perfect.
But because it’s simple … and it actually sticks.