Search your notes on Mac

You can search for specific text or even images in your notes, limit your search to a specific account or search in a single note. Your search finds matching content in:

• The body of each note

• The filenames of attachments in your notes

• PDF files that you’ve attached to your notes

• Drawings you created on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch and attached to your notes

• Handwritten text in any notes

• What’s inside the image you’re looking for (for example, “bike”)

• Text in a scanned document inside one of your notes

If you enter an image name or what’s contained in an image (such as “car” or “cat”), your search finds matching attachments with that image.

1. In the Notes app on your Mac, do one of the following:

   • Search in a specific account: Click a folder in the account you want to search, click the magnifying glass to show the search field, click the arrow (next to the magnifying glass), then choose Current Account.

   • Search in all accounts: Click the magnifying glass to show the search field, click the arrow (next to the magnifying glass), then choose All Accounts.

   Note: This step is only necessary if you have multiple accounts (such as iCloud and On My Mac accounts).

2. To limit your search to only some of your notes, click the magnifying glass to show the search field, then choose one of the suggested searches (such as Shared Notes or Notes with Attachments).

3. Enter what you’re looking for in the search field, then press Return.

   Type what you’re looking for in the same way you’d say it (this is called natural language search).

   Here are some examples of natural language search phrases:

   • “notes created last week”

   • “modified today”

   • “June from last year”

   • “with documents about remodel”

   Notes that match your search are listed, along with the folder where each note is located. Top Hits is listed first in the results and reflects notes with the best match (perhaps in the title), ones you’ve recently updated and other factors.

   If you’ve locked a note, only the title is searched, even if your locked notes are unlocked. Notes in the Recently Deleted folder are included in search results.

1. In the Notes app on your Mac, click a note in the notes list or double-click a note in gallery view.

2. Click the body of the note to add an insertion point, then choose Edit > Find > Find (or press Command-F).

3. Enter text in the search field that appears.