When you need to quickly take down a number or write yourself a reminder to pay the cable bill, typing out a quick note on your iPhone is an easy solution. But if you have to scan through an assortment of notes later to find a certain phrase or list, you could end up wasting a lot of time.
ScatterBrain is a streamlined note-taking app that makes it easy to visually zero in on the info you need, thanks to the ability to assign colors to individual notes and quickly sort them. Plus, the addition of a simple export feature means lists and memos can be emailed or sent via SMS to yourself or others — so that the information is always, and instantly, right where you need it to be.
Getting Acquainted
One thing a note-taking app absolutely must do well is make it convenient for users to speedily add new notes (or “thoughts,” as ScatterBrain calls them), otherwise it’s essentially useless. ScatterBrain, however, passes this test with the large “plus sign” button that appears immediately upon startup.
Just tap the plus sign to create a new note.
The first time you use ScatterBrain, the app runs a short slideshow just to give you the gist of the program. But don’t worry, you won’t have to scroll through those on subsequent uses.
Creating Thoughts
Thereafter, the first screen you see upon starting the app will be a listing of your saved notes with the number of total Thoughts shown at the top.
Thoughts can be assigned a color and sorted according to color, date or title.
Adding Thoughts is a snap. Selecting the plus sign at the bottom of the screen immediately calls up the keyboard (which can be used vertically or horizontally, of course), and you’re able to type whatever’s popped into your head. There’s also a title space where you can name the note. Thoughts could be phone numbers, grocery lists, Wednesday’s to-do’s, dinner party invitees, sights you want to see on your trip to NYC, or anything else.
As you create Thoughts in ScatterBrain, you’ll have the ability to color-code them (more on that in a minute), which provides visual cues when you’re viewing the list of all your saved notes. On this same screen, you can order your Thoughts according to color, modified date, created date, or title with successive taps of the Sort field in the top right corner. Or if it’s a keyword you’re looking for, a search field is present at top left as well.
Categorizing Thoughts
Odds are, there’s a method to your madness, and ScatterBrain allows you to put that system to work via colored tabs assigned to each of your Thoughts. For example, you could make all your to-do lists red, all your grocery lists green, and all the songs you want to remember to download from iTunes later blue.
Tapping the colored square cycles through your options, and the color can be changed at any time.
To assign a color to a Thought, you don’t even have to leave the note-writing screen; simply tap the colored square that appears within the same space until it cycles through to the one you want. You have six colors to choose from: green, blue, orange, pink, red and yellow. When you’re finished modifying the note, press Save and you’re good to go.
Of course, you don’t have to commit to a color permanently. Thoughts can be modified, and thankfully, so can their color assignments. Those who rely heavily on visual cues might even incorporate this into the way they organize their notes; red notes could indicate tasks or reminders yet to be fulfilled, while a change to yellow could be equal to crossing something off your to-do list.
Handy Features
ScatterBrain offers a few additional features for added convenience. One is the ability to make bulleted lists. When you’re typing notes, you’ll notice two buttons just above and to the left of the keyboard.
The keyboard can be minimized, and other options can be called up to allow for copying and pasting or sharing the Thought.
The far left button minimizes and expands the keyboard as needed, while the inside left button (it looks like a plus sign, a period and an underscore, but is meant to symbolize the addition of a list item) creates a bullet point.
When reopening a saved Thought, you’ll also notice a Show Options button in the bottom left of your screen. This brings up a panel showing you the date and time the Thought was created, the date and time of the last modification, and options for sharing or deleting the Thought. Additionally, the copy and paste buttons (just above and to the right of the delete button) are useful features for combining similar Thoughts into single entries. Just open the Thought you want to copy, hit Copy, then open the Thought you want to add it to, and hit Paste. Voila, now everything’s in one place.
Sharing, ScatterSync and More
If you can stand to get a little more complicated with your note-taking and task organization, you’ll want to take advantage of ScatterBrain’s Share button — which gives you the option to send out Thoughts via SMS or e-mail (for the latter you can even customize your signature) — as well as the app’s ScatterSync functionality.
You can create a ScatterSync account, which backs up all your Thoughts if your iPhone ever crashes.
The ScatterSync service (registration and usage are free) allows you to back up and restore all your ScatterBrain thoughts online. Although not required in order to use the iPhone app, this convenient service gives you a simple way to keep your Thoughts synced across multiple iOS devices, and the developer says DropBox integration is in the works. Think of ScatterSync as a safeguard against losing your “mind” in an iPhone crash.
Conclusion
ScatterBrain is a program designed to do only a few things, and it does them well without making the process too complicated. Plus, the sleek interface for an app dedicated to taking and listing notes is not a must to get the job done, but it sure makes the experience more pleasant. I’m more inclined to regularly use an app that’s easy on the eyes.
One final note regarding the number of Thoughts you store in the app: The more notes ScatterBrain holds for you, the less effective, obviously, the sort features will become because you’ll have to scroll or search through a long list of Thoughts to find the one you want. But then again, if you’re constantly adding Thoughts to ScatterBrain without periodically completing those tasks and deleting the notes, then you’re not really using ScatterBrain the way it was intended anyway.
In summary, I’d say this is a great no-fuss app to keep track of tasks, store Thoughts, and take down other bits of information, and it will help you to be as organized as you’re willing to be.