Tips for Using Drafts: The One Notes App to Rule Them All 

I just want to say thank you! I just recently started using my iPad as my daily driver / workbench and you are my number one resource to find out a fantastic workflow with the iPad. Many greetings from Germany!

A+ for clarity, pacing, and explanations. I absorbed the whole thing the first time through. Bravo!

Wow, what a great video. It has really helped me to begin to understand Drafts. What a powerful app! Hope you do more Drafts videos.

Another awesome video Chris! This one has so many great pieces to it that I will be watching it a few times to be able to absorb everything. I’ve already pulled some great things out of here and have immediately implemented them into my Drafts workflow.

Many, many thanks for this! Need to watch several times :-D

Superb video. Thanks!! I have been looking for something like this that describes the more advanced stuff.

Great video, you taught me several tips. Drafts has become one of my most used apps and yet there are so many functions I haven't touched. It took a while for it to grow on me, but now that it has it's essential.

I love the video. I am addicted in task management and using those apps are really great to organize ideas! Also, you are making believe that it’s possible to work and live using only the iPad Pro! Nice work!

Hi Christopher, Great job! I admire your work and am greatful for your extremely interesting and helpful contributions. I still struggle to find a perfect workflow for myself. There are more than enough programs and tools out there, but the challenge is to find the right ones, tailored to my own needs, to combine them correctly and to adapt them to my own workflow. Since the learning curve is often very high and therefore very time consuming and the development of the various applications is progressing rapidly, your contributions help me a lot in my efforts to keep the workflow perfect and to keep me updated. Keep your grate work up! Best regards Holger

Love your videos, only RU-vidd who posts exactly what I want to see

Excellent video Chris can’t wait for the Drafts action follow up :) - given me inspiration and ideas - was intrigued by your comment about creating a daily schedule when you talked about the links to bear so would like to know more? 🤔

I absolutely love your vids, can’t thank you enough.

As always, such a great video Chris!!! I did use Drafts a lot as a note taker app. Note to myself, I need to learn about Markdown....

Great video! Very insightful and beautifully presented.. thanks for sharing 👍🏻

you, sir, are a mesiah! I've been dreaming of such features in Evernote for way too long & all these next gen iPadOS apps are blowing my mind! 🤯

Been using Drafts since 2012 - and I learned a lot of great tips here! 😎👍

Thanks for your presentation style. One of my students wants to use this app, so this helps me get up to speed!

Fabulous overview of Drafts. Thanks!

This was so helpful. I wanted to use Drafts, but I wasn't sure how best to make it work for me and get some real benefit.

You deserve more attention. Great video!

This was great! I’m wondering if you can do an episode on shortcuts for draft?

I love your content, and I have greatly benefitted from your expertise on productivity and the iPad workdspace. I've been looking for nice writing experience to work on manuscripts, sermons, journaling, blogging, etc. I've dabbled with Ulysses, iA Writer, Word, etc. and I'm still trying to find something that can be somewhat of a one-stop-shop for all my writing efforts. It would be great if the writing app provides a "presenter mode" or a mode to see the "final formatted" version of the document and not just the mark-down version. Does Drafts provide a different viewing option other than the mark-down text? Meaning, can I write in mark-down mode, and then view the final document differently for the purpose of peaching, speeches, presentations, etc...? Thanks for your help.

Great video as always. I have a simple task that I want to do in Drafts, but for some reason I can't figure out how to do it. I want to be able to designate tasks in a draft that I will send to my inbox in Things 3. I don't want to send the entire draft to things, just specific things I designate. For example, I want to take a bunch of notes in a draft, extract out certain lines to create a task in Things 3. I've found the Things 3 parser, but it seems to take all or nothing. Any recommendations?

Another great vid! When I try to create links to other pages with the [[]], drafts does not suggest any pages to link to...or does it? I may be missing something. Thanks again!

I downloaded Drafts based on seeing the title of this video in my Notifications. 😂 Now that I’ve watched the video, it’s clear that you love this app and that there are MANY options and ways to use it! So many, that I‘m a little intimidated now. I guess I just have to start using it for a week and then maybe I’ll be able to re-watch this video and it won’t seem as intimidating. While I appreciate you not taking up a huge amount of my time talking about an app I haven’t even tried yet, it did seem like a lot of information going by very fast. As a new user of the app, I would have loved to have seen an “Introduction to Drafts: The One Notes App to Rule Them All” video with just the features that you feel set Drafts apart from the many other note-taking and writing apps out there. Then maybe a longer video, or series of videos with tips for different things. I’m not sure if you even addressed it, but I’m curious about the “Drafts Quick Capture” option that has been added to my list of Actions. I first noticed it while reading an article in News that (I have no idea why, I’m not a big fan of the News app and prefer to read articles in a publication’s app or just in Safari or Firefox) opened in an in-app browser which meant that when I hit the Share button to click “Save”, “Save” wasn’t there. I added it to Gladys, but noticed the new Drafts action, so I clicked that to see what would happen. I then opened Drafts and could make no sense out of what it had put there (it wasn’t a url!). I had also managed to skip over the introductory windows that appear when you first install Drafts. Argh! I deleted all of that, uninstalled, and reinstalled (hopefully the intro windows will return!) and I’m going to start out just writing something (now that I think of it, I should have written this in Drafts and then pasted it into RU-vid, a habit I’ve been trying to develop for all text windows for a few decades and still only remember to do half the time). I will give Drafts a concerted chance based on your enthusiasm alone! Thank you!

Great vid. Many thanks.

Thanks very much for this

I needed to see this . . . Thanks Chris. I needed this video to show me what I can do with Drafts. I want to use this as a capture for items to go into Roam or Obsidian (I have not decided yet which to use). I like the Apple Watch app that lets me dictate into Drafts. All the best!

Drafts + Shortcuts 💪🏼

How do you get the font to be like that all the time? I could only get it when I use the JavaScript markdown doc type.

At this point I'm waiting for the Notion API to open up and at that point I think Drafts>Notion will be my standard workflow. Drafts is the best way to start writing text digitally without friction, but Notion adds in so much with relational databases, photos, embedded media, and even being a good place to make a quick temporary website.

Can you make video Drafts vs Notion

What Font are you using in Drafts? Thanks

This is very cool! Although for my tastes, using an iPad for this type of work is stressful. Still very handy!

sorry i have a question when you click on preview you have the share button to share it, but when i click on the preview button i don’t have the share icon. What should i have to do ?

Which one is better between Draft and Bear ? And why ? 🙏

How did you sf mono on your iPad?

Thanks for the videos. I teach professional learning and knowledge systems and I share your videos.

Thanks so much Christopher. I love these totally in-depth and informative videos. Very helpful!

Can you use the Apple Pencil to take hand written notes or should I just carry on using Microsoft One Note.

Is there any way to create actions for other apps on your phone that you use. There’s barely any scripts or actions for saving in your own personal cloud that’s private and not Dropbox or google or I cloud and I have paid version. Same with sending a note to a note app that isnt Evernote Apple notes or BEAR. I used to use these but stopped when they make it too difficult to back up and for you to get your notes. How can I use other actions for other apps? Where can I get the proper script of JavaScript to make my own actions to my own apps of choice? BTW your worries on slabcast link doesnt work

How do you use drafts vs craft? Aren’t both used to take notes and documents? I wondering why you need both?

Does anyone know how if there is an action in drafts so when I export it to Apple notes it converts into formatted text? I'd love to use Drafts, but if I am unable to convert it into Apple Notes in a formatted way it might not be possible for my workstream. Would love any help.

What font are you using in your draft?

Bro, you use only drafts or what’s other for task? And writing ?

Loving the app so far. Not sure I’d pay £30 for the year though. Haven’t quite figured out how i want to use it yet, especially as I’m using Notion a lot. I’m thinking about journaling in it. If I can do that then I could get rid of my Journey subscription.

What font is he using here I srsly can’t find it anywhere and there’s nothing built into the iPads fonts or the drafts app that’s similar to this font pls can some1 tell me what this font is :)

"Drafts is like Notion"? Because they are both apps?

When I select send for my vmail, it goes into drafts and I can't get it back.

Really interesting review. I currently started with Bear app and as I saw in the video, that you use it too, I´d like to ask - how they compare to each other? I see there many similarities, but I assume, Drafts is better? Thanks. Sadly both are only IOS and MacOs, as I use also a Windows machine. At least some light web version would be nice.

Great video. But I do not really understand what is all fuss about the Drafts. Have it installed and do not experience it as a productive booster by any means possible.

Hi Christopher! I want to become professional filmmaker, but I love iPadOS so much, I love this iPad Pro. Is it possible to create professional videos on iPad Pro? I hope that Final Cut Pro X is coming to iPadOS, I don't want to buy MacBook because of FCPX.

Is there a simple text editor similar to Microsoft Notepad in iPad, where you could easily access an earlier text/doc file in order to edit and update it? And, where to save the file for later access? For example, I have got text and doc files on my PC, where I have saved passwords, ID codes, links, hints for pc tuning, repair etc. etc., but I hate using cloud services, because they are cumbersome and often cause you more problems than help. I am using GoodReader, when I want to secure the file, but somehow I have not been happy with iPad in comparison to using the MS NotePad and Word. Maybe I have missed something like organizing the folders correctly, because it is quite often very cumbersome to transfer the files between different apps. I don't understand, why you can't simply make dedicated folders in iPad and then access the files directly there no matter of the app you are using. Or, can you do it somehow? At least I don't feel the app centric access of iPad is a good idea at all in comparison to the folder centric access on the PC, because the first will scatter your files here and there inside the apps. I enjoy watching your videos, thanks a lot!

What is your phone wallpaper?

TEAM NOTION!!!!!

Great video! Wondering what the font is in the video.

Hey Chris. What font do you use in draft?

Still using in 2023? Pro or free version? Great overview thanks

❤️

Your videos are great but please timestamp! It’s good for OUR productivity 😉

that’s a dumbass question but how do we make every paragraph’s first line to start a little more towards the centre? if that makes sense ps. i love your vids

Welp, I made the mistake of downloading Drafts and now my ADHD brain wants to do nothing besides figure out all the cool stuff Drafts can do. Looks like I’m getting nothing done this weekend. Thanks. Thanks a lot. :)

Shortcuts don’t work, says unavailable

How is this remotely like Notion? Haha. Notion does far more than Drafts. I consider them two very different kinds of programs.

I would seriously consider using Drafts, as my GTD app, if it was available on Android as well. Linking with [[ makes it more like Roam or Obsidian... not Notion.

"What I want to see in iOS 14"

This app seems unnecessarily complicated. Seems Evernote does all this and with much less fuss.

Sounded interesting until I saw it was subscription based.