Apple Notes upgrade: Text highlighting and color features detailed explanation

While Apple Notes isn't as comprehensive as powerful word processors like Apple Pages, this simple text editor keeps adding utility new features, making it much more than a basic note-taking app. The latest updates finally bring text highlighting and font color change features, providing more options for highlighting important details.

This new feature is included in iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia 15, and is released on September 16. It should be noted that Notes' highlighting function does not currently support iCloud.com version applications. This means you can't view highlighted notes on iCloud.com (so don't panic if some notes don't appear in the web app).

Evolution of text color function in Apple Notes

Until the latest Notes update, you cannot highlight text or add text background colors in the Notes app, whether you are using iPhone, iPad, Mac or iCloud.com in your web browser.

In older software, it is easier to change the text color in Notes on your Mac only because Mac has a dedicated font color selector. On your iPhone or iPad, you can copy and paste colored text from other apps, but this rarely works. A better way is to create notes on your Mac and write text in different colors so you can copy and paste into other notes on your iPhone or iPad, and you can then overwrite the original text to preserve the color.

However, in older Notes versions, the hyperlinks remain yellow. A workaround allows you to change the colors of hyperlink text in older versions of macOS, but these colors are only visible in Mac apps and will not appear on other devices.

Latest improvements to text color and highlighting

While the old tricks still work, Apple Notes now offers an official tool on iOS and iPadOS 18 that not only adds highlighting to text, but also changes the color of highlighted text itself. Currently, it is impossible to change the font color without adding highlights, nor can it be added without changing the font color.

1. Highlight selected text on iPhone and iPad

First, select the text you want to highlight, and then click the Format (Aa) button in the toolbar. On the right, you will see a colorful dot. Click it to select a color and highlight the selected text. Currently there are only five colors to choose from:

• Purple
• Pink
• orange color
• Mint green
• blue

When highlighted, the font color will darken, while the text background will lighten, making both the text and the text background more prominent.

2. Highlight text when typing on iPhone and iPad

You can also add highlights to text as you type. To do this, move the cursor to the location you want to start and open the Format Tool. You can click on the pencil icon to select the currently selected color, or open the color selector to select a new color, which will automatically switch the pencil icon when no text is selected.

To stop highlighting text as you type, go back to the Format tool and close the pencil icon.

3. All content that can be highlighted in Notes

Text highlighting is suitable for math notes, quick notes and regular notes. You can highlight most text options in Notes using any five colors, including:

• Regular text
• Bold text
• Italic text
• Underline text
• Delete line
• Monowidth text
• Bullet List
• Dash list
• Number list
• Block reference
• Hyperlink
• title
• subtitle
• subtitle
• List
• Any combination of the above

When using dark mode, the text color stands out more than the background color, which can be difficult to see. Highlighting does not work for tables, and you cannot highlight any type of attachment or drawing.

4. Use the highlight tool on your Mac

On macOS 15, you can access the pencil icon and color selector from the Format (Aa) button in the toolbar, just like on iOS and iPadOS 18.

You can also go to "Format?Font?Highlight" in the menu bar to toggle the highlighted switch. When enabled, it highlights the text with the color you used last time.

You can also right-click or Control-click text to toggle the highlighted switch. Simply select Font?Highlight from the context menu. When enabled, it highlights the text with the color you used last time.

Of course, there are keyboard shortcuts: Shift-Command-E. Again, when enabled, it will highlight the text with the color you used last time.

However, you can only change the highlighted color through the color selector in the Format (Aa) button in the toolbar.

Cover photos and screenshots courtesy of Justin Meyers/Gadget Hacks

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