Notebooks Apple Watch App

When using Notebooks on an iPhone paired with an Apple Watch, certain features of Notebooks are accessible on the paired watch.

Depending on your Watch settings, your iPhone may install Notebooks’ companion app automatically, or you may need to install it manually from the Watch app on your iPhone.

Transferring Documents

Notebooks automatically transfers the content of these smart books to your Apple Watch when its counterpart is installed; no action is required.

Due Tasks: this section lists tasks which are due or will become due today. Tasks with a due date in the future do not appear here, and if you do not have any due tasks at all, this section is not visible.
Favorites: lists the documents that you have set as favorites. Favorite books currently do not appear here. If you have no favorites selected in Notebooks, this section does not appear.
Inbox: displays the contents of your default inbox if you have set one of your books as inbox. Here again, Notebooks shows documents only. – If your Inbox is a task list, Notebooks transfers open and started items, but skips done and canceled.
The inbox is also the default location for documents you create on your watch, so it displays these items, too. This is essential in situations when your watch has no connection to your iPhone.

If any of these books is empty or not set on your iPhone, it does not appear on the watch.

Applications are limited in the amount of data they can send to Apple Watch. So if you have too many documents in your lists, Notebooks may not be able to transfer all of them and automatically skips some.
Notebooks limits the size of each transferred document to a maximum of 50.000 characters. This allows you to transfer as many documents as possible, and besides that, the watch is probably not the perfect device for reading documents of more than 50 printed pages.

Viewing Documents on the Watch

Tap any of the smart books to view its list of documents.
In the case of Due Tasks, the documents appear as tasks with tappable icons. Tap the icon to change the task’s state as you do in Notebooks on your iPhone.
Tap the title of a document to open it and view its content. Notebooks display the plain text of documents only (even for formatted documents), but it aligns lists and applies Markdown syntax highlighting if you have enabled these options in Notebooks.
Due to the limitations of the Apple Watch, formatted documents, PDFs and images are not displayed here.

Appending Text to Documents

For editable documents (plain text and Markdown), force touch the text and choose Append from the context menu, then dictate, type or scribble the text you want to append to the document. Appending text even works for documents which may have been truncated during transmission to the watch.
When Notebooks automatically extracts context tags from appended text if you have enabled that setting.

Deleting Documents

To delete the document which you are currently viewing, force touch the text and choose Delete from the context menu.

Creating Tasks or Documents

To create a new document, tap the Add Task or Add Note button. The button’s label reflects whether your default inbox is a tasklist or a regular book.
Dictate, type or scribble the text and tap Done when finished.
Notebooks adds this document to your Inbox on the watch, from where you can view and append the document even if it has not yet been synchronized with your iPhone. On your iPhone, the document will appear in your Inbox, too, but if you have not selected a default inbox, Notebooks adds the document to the top level of its hierarchy.
As with append, Notebooks automatically extracts context tags from documents you add on your watch.

Notebooks‘ companion app on the Apple Watch includes a range of complications that offer information, such as the number of pending tasks, and enable you to launch Notebooks with a simple tap. Additional complications will be introduced in future updates.