Apple’s iOS 17 update includes several new features for the Notes and Reminders apps, making them more useful for those who prefer Apple’s default apps. There are no major changes, but the additions add to the usefulness of the app and are changes that some have been asking for for a while. This guide covers everything new in the Notes & Reminders apps.

Notes

Link notes

You can now link one note to another; this is useful for linking two related notes together for Wiki-style documents.

Embedded PDFs and scanned documents

Notes supports embedded PDFs; This means you can insert a PDF into Notes and then read, annotate, and collaborate on the PDFs. This feature also works for scanned documents and is available on both iPhone and iPad.

Updated formatting

The option to create block quotes has been added to Notes, and there’s also a new single style format to choose from.

Pages

A note from an ‌iPhone‌ or ‌iPad‌ can be opened in Pages, providing additional layout and formatting options.

Reminding

Product sorting

When you create a list with the new Product list type, you can enter multiple products and different products and automatically organize them by category. This organization makes it easier to find what you need when you go to the market.

Available Category Types: Grocery, Bread & Grain, Frozen, Snacks & Candy, Meat, Dairy, Eggs & Cheese, Baking, Bakery, Home, Personal Care & Health, and Wine, Beer & Spirits.

If ‌iPhone‌‌ doesn’t recognize where an item should be placed, it remains uncategorized. It’s a very reliable solution for grocery shopping because it recognizes certain brands and types of food, like “Sour Patch Kids.” You can also create your own categories in the product list.

Special sections

Sections or categories for a product list are enabled by default, but you can add sections to any reminder list created in “iOS 17”. In any list, click the three dots to go to the settings interface. From there, click New Section to add a section to the list. You will need to manually arrange the items in the list in each section, but this can be done with simple drag and drop gestures.

View columns

In the same settings interface, there is a new “View as Column” option that will display each section side by side. You can switch between column view and list view in the options menu

Interactive widgets

‌iOS 17‌ brings interactive widgets to the lock screen and home screen, and Reminders is one of the built-in apps that can make the most of this feature. Reminders in the Reminders widget can be marked directly on the “Home” screen or lock screen without opening the Reminders app

Early reminders

If you add a reminder with a specific date, you can select the early reminder to get an early alert. You can receive alerts 1 day ago, 2 days ago, 1 week ago, 2 weeks ago, 1 month ago, 3 months ago and 6 months ago, and set a special early reminder time.