Inklingfor Mac

Note templates on a Mac: build one once and reuse it

· 5 min read

Apple Notes has no template feature, but macOS has two that work well. Tick Stationery pad in a file’s Get Info window and Finder gives you a fresh copy every time you open it, or save a Pages document with File > Save as Template. For notes you want a hover away, Inkling has templates for a daily scratchpad, a meeting, a project and a journal, and lets you save any note as your own.

Whichever you use, the template is only as good as what you put in it, so start there.

Decide what goes in the template

A template earns its place when you write the same kind of note again and again and keep rebuilding the same skeleton by hand. The work is deciding what that skeleton is. A few rules that hold up:

  • Structure, not content. Headings, an empty checklist, the header row of a table. Anything you delete every time does not belong.
  • Prompts as headings. “Decisions” and “Next steps” beat a blank page, because each one asks a question you have to answer.
  • The date at the top. Most repeated notes are about a day or a meeting, and the date is often what you look for later.
  • Short enough to fill in. If you regularly leave half the sections empty, take them out.

A weekly review built on those rules fits on one screen:

Week of [date]

Finished

Slipped, and why

Next week
- [ ] [first priority]
- [ ] [second]
- [ ] [third]

One thing to stop doing

“Slipped, and why” is the section that earns the template. Finished work is easy to remember; the reasons things did not happen are what you forget, and they are what a month of old reviews can teach you.

Stationery pad: a template file Finder copies for you

Stationery pad is an old macOS feature that still works and is easy to miss. It marks a file as a template, so opening it gives you a copy and the original stays clean.

  1. Make the template in TextEdit, or any app that saves files, and save it somewhere permanent, such as a Templates folder in Documents.
  2. Select the file in Finder and choose File > Get Info, or press Command-I.
  3. In the General section, tick Stationery pad.
  4. Close the Get Info window.

Now when you open the file you get a copy to fill in rather than the template itself. Depending on the app, that is either an untitled document or a copy Finder makes beside the original and opens for you. Either way the template is untouched.

To change the template later, untick Stationery pad, edit the file, and tick it again. Dragging the Templates folder into the Favorites section of the Finder sidebar keeps every template one click away.

Pages templates, for notes that need a layout

If the note is closer to a document, with a set font, a heading block or a table that has to look right when printed, Pages has proper templates.

  1. Set up a Pages document the way every copy should start.
  2. Choose File > Save as Template.
  3. Add it to the template chooser and give it a name.

The next time you make a new document, it appears under My Templates in the template chooser.

The trade-off is weight. Pages is a word processor, and opening it for a five-line meeting note is more ceremony than the note deserves. It suits the reports and letters you send, less so the notes you jot.

A template note in Apple Notes

Notes cannot mark a note as a template, but a pinned note does the job if you are careful with it.

  1. Make a note with the skeleton and title it something like “Template: meeting”.
  2. Control-click it in the note list and choose Pin Note, so it stays at the top.
  3. To use it, open it, press Command-A and then Command-C to copy everything, make a new note with Command-N, and paste.

The risk is typing into the template by mistake. Make the copy first, before you write anything.

If you would rather skip the copying, the Shortcuts app can do it. A shortcut with a Text action holding the skeleton, followed by Notes’ Create Note action, makes a new note from the template each time it runs. Add the current date inside the text with a variable, and in the shortcut’s details you can give it a keyboard shortcut of its own. It takes some setting up, but after that a new meeting note is one key away.

Templates in the notch

Inkling puts templates inside the notes app itself, so there is no file to copy and no shortcut to build. Four come with it: a daily scratchpad, a meeting, a project and a journal. Any note can also be saved as your own template, so the skeleton you designed above only has to be made once.

A template can use everything a note can hold: headings, checkboxes, links, highlights, quotes, code and tables. That means a project template can carry a table with its column headers already in place, and a meeting template can end with the empty checklist for actions. When the meeting starts, hover over the notch or press Option-N, start from the template, and press Command-Return when you are done. The note tucks away and Ink, the pair of eyes in the notch, gives a nod.

If your templates already exist as Markdown files, Inkling imports Markdown, so a file can become a note and then your own template.

The limits: it runs on Macs only, on macOS 14 Sonoma or later, with no iPhone or iPad app. There is no sharing or collaboration, so it is not the place for templates a whole team fills in together. It costs $12 once, and you can try it free for 24 hours with no card.

Keep templates from going stale

A template that is never revised slowly turns into a form you fight with. A few habits keep it useful:

  • Review it after the first handful of uses. Delete the section you always leave empty. Add the one you keep typing by hand.
  • One template per job. A meeting template and a project template should differ. One template that tries to cover everything ends up covering nothing well.
  • Name it by what it is for. “Weekly one to one” is easier to pick than “Template 3”.
  • Keep the prompts short. A heading that needs a sentence to explain it is asking too much of a Tuesday morning.

Questions

Does Apple Notes have templates? No. The closest you can get is a pinned note you copy from, or a shortcut in the Shortcuts app that creates a new note from fixed text.

What is a stationery pad on a Mac? A setting in a file’s Get Info window in Finder. When it is ticked, opening the file gives you a copy, so the original works as a template.

Can I turn a note I have already written into a template? In Pages, choose File > Save as Template. For any file, tick Stationery pad in Get Info. In Inkling, save the note as your own template.