Category: Note to Self Mail

Introducing Note to Self Mail: The New Key to Productivity

According to the Harvard Business Review, your to-do list is too long. We’ve all experienced the feeling of being overwhelmed with what we need to accomplish. While this may initially seem as though it may help our productivity, too many things to do actually harms our productivity. It causes a never-ending cycle of not feeling accomplished, a lack of focus, and ultimately, procrastination. But, what can we do to avoid these issues? Enter Note to Self Mail.

Note to Self Mail makes it easy to keep your focus on a single task while reducing the time it takes to write out your notes. This improves your productivity both in the sense of keeping your focus on a single task and reducing time spent composing that note. So, let’s take a deeper dive into how Note to Self Mail can improve your productivity.

Compose Notes in Record Times

With the Note to Self Mail app, you can compose notes and send them to your email in just five seconds. Classic mail applications take roughly 25 seconds to compose a single note. This results in a time savings of about 80%.

On top of saving time composing your notes, Note to Self Mail also allows you to send that note to multiple addresses, record audio messages, and attach photos, sketches, or files to your note. These features help you compose comprehensive notes in record times. So with Note to Self Mail, you’re never left scouring for that one piece of information you forgot to include in your notes that you need to accomplish your task. It even archives your notes for easy access to past information you may need at a later date.

Connects with the Top Productivity Apps

Through connecting with the top productivity apps such as Wunderlist, Trello, Evernote, Asana, and OmniFocus, you can create notes and to-do lists in these apps directly through Note to Self Mail. So, instead of having scattered notes across multiple apps and your email, you can maintain one central location for all of your notes and to-do list needs. You can also use this connection to tie notes to different projects you incorporate into these productivity apps for even more efficiencies.

Aside from offering the fastest method for composing notes, Note to Self Mail helps you stay more organized in your favorite productivity apps. If you’re looking to step up your productivity, Note to Self Mail is here to help!

 

Note to Self Mail: edit notes from other apps using the new share extension

Note To Self Mail

The latest update of Note to Self Mail (1.14.0) adds a long requested share extension. This new extension helps you to edit contents from other apps before sending the note to your inbox. The extension is available on most of the share sheets, as it supports most of the share file types. If the extension is not available file type, please let me know.

The new share extension

iOS share dialog

The share extension has the same design as the main app, but with less complex input possibilities. It also uses the same settings as the main app: font size and the behavior of the sending button. For example, if you already use the “quick send” option of the main app, you will find the same behavior on the extension: a single tap sends your note to the first mail address. Long press the button to open the mail selector.

Main view of the new Share extension

Improved behavior of audio recordings

Beside the simple text input, Note to Self Mail already supported audio recording for simple audio notes. The behavior of this feature has been improved in the latest version. Before the update, you had to hold the record button as long as you wish to record. This is fine for small devices like the iPhone. But for iPads, this is a little bit exhausting. In addition to the know behavior, you can start and stop the recording with single taps now.

To avoid endless recordings or data loss after you started the record, some additional adjustments have been made to automatically stop the record. This will happen when:

  • you lock your screen
  • the app is going to the background state (e.g. by pressing the home button or when a phone call comes in)
  • after a maximum recording time of 15 minutes

As Note to Self Mail is an app for small and fast notes, those “features” for automatically stopping the record should not influence your daily work with the app.

Improved behavior of audio recordings

Hope this helps to make your notes faster and more structured 🙂

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Note to Self Mail - The fastest app to send your ideas into your inbox. | Product Hunt

 

Join Note to Self Mail beta testing

TestFlight

You are already using Note to Self Mail and want to test new features and check out the latest improvements? The TestFlight service of Apple provides an easy way to do so. You can join TestFlight by opening this link:

Invitation link to join the TestFlight of Note to Self Mail:
https://testflight.note2selfmail.app/

What is TestFlight?

TestFlight is a service by Apple that …

Help developers test beta versions of their apps and App Clips using the TestFlight app. Download TestFlight on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. […] To test beta versions of apps and App Clips using TestFlight, you’ll need to accept an email or public link invitation from the developer and have a device that you can use to test.

https://testflight.apple.com/

To learn more about TestFlight, how to get started an dhow to install and test beta apps, just open https://testflight.apple.com/.

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Note to Self Mail - The fastest app to send your ideas into your inbox. | Product Hunt

Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash

Note to Self Mail: create text templates for faster notes

Note To Self Mail

With the latest update 1.13.0 of Note to Self Mail, new text features have been introduced:

  • create static or dynamic text templates for faster input of contents
  • format the note text by using check lists or bullet lists

Use static or dynamic text templates

Text templates can be used for the input of repetitive contents. They can not only contain any static text, they can be extended with dynamic contents that are automatically replaced, when the template is inserted into the note. This includes: date, time, datetime or a unix timestamp. If you need additional contents, please let me know.

Text template selection

The first template uses Date as dynamic contents. Inserted into the note, it automatically adds the current date.

Text template with dynamic contents (date)

Text format: check and bullet lists

By default, a bullet list could already be used in previous versions of the app. Now, another toolbar action was added to insert also bullet lists. Both lists are made of pure text (without any html) to ensure a plain text note and therefore an easier parsing of the note in your inbox.

The app will handle the format of both of those lists automatically. Means, a new list item will automatically created with each new line.

Toolbar action for text format / check list in the note

Another helpful feature is the status change of check lists. Touching a checkbox will enable / disable the checkbox (see “Honey”).

Note text converted into a bullet list

Hope this helps to make your notes faster and more structured 🙂

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Note to Self Mail - The fastest app to send your ideas into your inbox. | Product Hunt

Note To Self: how to instantly create tasks in Trello

If you are using the mail import feature of Trello, you can speed up the notes with Note To Self Mail. The app creates notes in Trello in seconds.

Setup Note To Self Mail for Trello

1. Get your Trello email address

Get your Trello email address by open up one of your boards in Trello and go to “Email-to-board Settings” ind the settings section of the sidebar. Emails sent to this address will appear as a task in this board. The subject of the email will become the title and the body will become the description.

2. Add your Trello email address to Note To Self Mail

Add this email address to Note To Self Mail. You can also set the label to “Trello” or any other descriptive name.

Note To Self Mail > Settings > Add email …

3. Adjust the subject

Trello uses the subject as a main source of a new note. Set the subject to “Use first line of note”. This ensures, that the first line is used as subject and all the other text lines are moved to the description of the task.

Note To Self Mail > Settings > Add email … > Subject

Usage

There are some shortcuts or special chars that can be used in the subject of the mail. All available features are described in Trello’s documentation: Formatting Tips (opens in a new tab)”>Creating cards by email > Formatting Tips.

Now, you can send any note to Trello. With the following text …

… a new task will be created in Trello …

You might notice, that the task was placed in the correct list (as set in Trello) and was tagged with “home”. All the other contents of the input (line 2 up to the end) are moved to the task description. That’s it!

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Note To Self: how to quickly create tasks in OmniFocus

If you are using the email capture / mail drop feature of OmniFocus, you can speed up the notes with Note To Self Mail. The app creates notes in OmniFocus in seconds.

Setup Note To Self Mail for OmniFocus

1. Create your OmniFocus email address

If you’re already using the Omni Sync Server to sync OmniFocus, you can log in to the sync server web interface and create your first Mail Drop address. After logging in, just click the Create Address button to automatically generate the email address (a combination of your account name and a random string of characters, for example).

2. Add your OmniFocus email address to Note To Self Mail

Add this email address to Note To Self Mail. You can also set the label to “OmniFocus” or any other descriptive name.

Note To Self Mail > Settings > Add email …

3. Adjust the subject

OmniFocus uses the subject as a main source of a new note. Set the subject to “Use first line of note”. This ensures, that the first line is used as subject and all the other text lines are moved to the body.

Note To Self Mail > Settings > Add email … > Subject

Usage

In OmniFocus, the subject line of that message becomes the name of the new Inbox item. The body of the message becomes the Note, which can contain text, attachments (such as images and files), and simple HTML (more complex formatting is removed). All available features are described in OmniFocus documentation: Capture Methods > Email Capture (Mail Drop).

Now, you can send any note to OmniFocus. With the following text …

… a new task will be created in your Inbox.

You might notice, that the first line is used as title. All the other contents of the input (line 2 up to the end) are moved to the task description. That’s it!

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Note to Self Mail - The fastest app to send your ideas into your inbox. | Product Hunt

Note To Self: how to create tasks in Asana – the fast way

If you are using the mail import feature of Asana, you can speed up the notes with Note To Self Mail. The app creates notes in Asana in seconds.

Setup Note To Self Mail for Asana

You can create tasks and conversations from email addresses associated with Asana. Check which email address is associated by open up Asana and go to “My Profile Settings > Email Forwarding”.

1. Add the Asana email address to Note To Self Mail

Add the Asana email address x@mail.asana.com to Note To Self Mail. You can also set the label to “Asana” or any other descriptive name.

You can create conversations by using [team-name]@mail.asana.com. For example, marketing@mail.asana.com goes to the Marketing team, and customer-success@mail.asana.com goes to the Customer Success team.

Note To Self Mail > Settings > Add email …

2. Adjust the subject

Asana uses the subject as a main source of a new note. Set the subject to “Use first line of note”. This ensures, that the first line is used as subject and all the other text lines are moved to the description of the task.

Note To Self Mail > Settings > Add email … > Subject

3. Check your “from” email address

When using Gmail, your login id is used as sender address. If you use a custom SMTP server, you can specify the sender email in SMTP settings. In this case you have to make sure that this email is the same as the one used in Asana settings (see 1.).

Usage

Now, you can send any task to Asana. Tasks emailed will appear in your My Tasks list.

  • The subject line will be the task name
  • The body will be the task description
  • All email attachments will be attached to the task
  • You can cc teammates to add them as task collaborators

A detailed description of the possibilities are listed in Asana’s documentation: Emailing Tasks.

Now, you can send any note to Asana. With the following text …

… a new task will be created in Asana …

You might notice, that the task was placed in the correct project. The subject is set to the task title. All the other contents of the input (line 2 up to the end) are moved to the task description. That’s it!

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Note To Self: how to quickly create tasks in Wunderlist

If you are using the mail import feature of Wunderlist, you can speed up the tasks with Note To Self Mail. The app creates tasks in Wunderlist in seconds.

Note: as Wunderlist was acquired by Microsoft and is therefore not available after 6th of May 2020, feel free to check out an alternative task manager like Trello, Evernote, Omnifocus, Asana or any other.

Thank you 6 Wunderkinder for this great app!

Setup Note To Self Mail for Wunderlist

1. Add the Wunderlist email address to Note To Self Mail

Add the email address me@wunderlist.com to Note To Self Mail. You can also set the label to “Wunderlist” or any other descriptive name.

Note To Self Mail > Settings > Add email …

2. Adjust the subject

Wunderlist uses the subject as name of a new task. Set the subject to “Use first line of note”. This ensures, that the first line is used as name and all the other text lines are moved to the description of the task.

Note To Self Mail > Settings > Add email … > Subject

Usage

Now, you can send any task to Wunderlist. With the following text …

… a new task will be created in Wunderlist …

The task was placed in the inbox list and was tagged with “home”. All the other contents of the input (line 2 up to the end) are moved to the notes of the task. That’s it!

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Note to Self Mail - The fastest app to send your ideas into your inbox. | Product Hunt