We’re likely witnessing many firsts. Apple has finally introduced AI to its devices and software, the Apple ID has been rebranded to Apple Account, and now the new Notes app on iOS 18 supports colors for typed text. There’s one thing common among all these developments: they are all happening for the first time.
During the WWDC keynote on Monday, Apple took wraps off the latest iOS 18. It packs several new changes, some of which are powered by Apple Intelligence. Among the many updates in the latest developer beta is the Notes app, which now offers over five colors to enhance your text, including purple, pink, orange, mint, and blue. However, you can’t create your colors using a color palette. If Apple is reading this, please consider adding this feature to the final version.
You can add these five colors to the text by tapping the Aa button and choosing one. Then, any text you select will change to that color, along with the background. If you are familiar with word processing or have used any note-taking app, you already know how efficient highlighting important words or phrases can be. While it may seem like a small update, coloring certain phrases or words — as I mentioned — helps improve readability as well. The only catch is that you can’t have colored text without a colored background, or black text with a colored background. Again, I hope the public version of iOS 18 fixes these issues.
Until now, you could use different colors when you wrote stuff in Notes on an iPad, but only for things you drew with your finger. As with the latest iOS 18 Notes app, you can do more like turn your talking into words, collapse sections to keep things tidy, and even get help with math problems you type or write on your iPad.
Read our complete Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024) coverage here.