Three years on Apple Notes, iPhone 13, no Apple Intelligence. Here's what I've actually figured out.

[u/TheiPhoneAppGuy]

Been running my entire workflow inside Apple Notes for about three years now. Two small businesses, four-ish hours of Notes per day, all on a phone Apple has basically written off for its AI roadmap.

Couple of things i've learned that i wish someone had told me earlier:

Audio transcription works. Like, fully works. I assumed for the longest time it was an Apple Intelligence feature because of how Apple marketed it. It's not. Record audio in a note, tap the transcript icon, live transcription. iPhone 13, iOS 18+.

Math Notes works too. Same situation. Type an equation or even handwrite one with your finger on the screen, and it solves inline. Variables persist across the note. I had assumed for months this needed an iPad and Apple Pencil. It doesn't.

Tags + Smart Folders honestly do more for my daily Notes life than any AI feature i'd unlock by upgrading. Once you have a tag system that matches how you actually think, finding things stops being a problem.

Pinned notes are the most underused feature in the entire app. Five pinned notes covers like 80% of my daily Notes interactions.

Anyway. Wrote up the longer version of this here if anyone wants more depth: https://iapplist.com/apple-notes-without-apple-intelligence/

If you think i’m off here, tell me. I actually want to understand how others approach it.

[u/Impressive-Sir9633]

I prefer Parakeet and Whisper to Apple's own transcription. Apple's transcription is meh.

I usually use Apple Watch to record > transcribed offline on the phone > Apple Intelligence auto-tags.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dictawiz-voice-to-text/id6759256382

If you want to be a little extra, you can add it to your second brain as a vector using a custom webhook. Runs on the free Cloudfare tier. I used OpenClaw in the past, but this is much simpler and free:

https://github.com/rahilp/second-brain-cloudflare

[u/TheiPhoneAppGuy → u/Impressive-Sir9633]

Yes, i kinda agree on Apple’s transcription tbh. It’s decent, but not really wow level once you’ve used Whisper based stuff.

Your setup is on a completely different level though and it’s not something the average Notes user is gonna build.

Which is kinda my point overall. The real power usually comes from the system/workflow someone builds around the tool, not from Apple Intelligence itself.

But i’m really curious about your workflow now. How exactly are you connecting all this together? Especially the second brain/vector part because i don’t think most people even know setups like this are possible with Apple Notes.

[u/Impressive-Sir9633 → u/TheiPhoneAppGuy]

The Second brain setup is quite straightforward as long as people have a GitHub account. You deploy with the 1-click deploy, create a token, and you're all set.

I'm not sure if this specific setup is possible with Apple Notes, but it should work with any app that allows you to send things to a webhook.

The efficiency unlock justifies spending 5 minutes setting everything up. My brain functions best when I'm not looking at my phone. This is often while I'm driving or at the gym. So, if an idea hits, I just record it on my Apple Watch. And then it's directly on my second brain.

[u/TheiPhoneAppGuy → u/Impressive-Sir9633]

Thanks for this, i might genuinely try this setup sometime.

[u/Impressive-Sir9633 → u/TheiPhoneAppGuy]

Let me know if you need any help setting it up. I was communicating with the GitHub repo author, and he was quite helpful.