Twos

Things

Notes

iPhoneiPadAndroidWebMacWindowsLinuxWatchUpdated 2026-09-18

A note is a longer body attached to a thing, underneath its line.

Add notes to any thing in Twos | Twos App Watch on YouTube

Why you'd care

Sometimes a thing needs a paragraph, but promoting it to a whole list would be too much. A note keeps the line short and scannable while the detail sits underneath it.

The 60-second version

Press ⌘⌥N on a thing and write. The thing's own text stays as its title.

Step by step

Showing it

A note can appear two ways: as a small icon on the thing, or expanded inline underneath it. That is a global preference, set in Settings Lists & Things Show notes inline.

Icon mode keeps lists short. Inline mode is better when the notes are the point.

Formatting

Notes take the same formatting as thing text: bold, italic, underline, links, and the Plus formats. See bold, italic and underline.

Going further

Calendar events bring their description with them. A thing synced in from your calendar gets the event's description as its note, so the agenda the organizer wrote is sitting under the event rather than in another app. See Apple and Google Calendar.

Worth knowing about how that arrives:

  • The join boilerplate is stripped. Google Meet, Zoom, Teams and Webex all append a dial-in block to the description. That block is cut, so a bare meeting invite with nothing written in it gets no note at all rather than a note full of PINs.
  • The join link is not in the note. It is pulled out and attached to the thing as its link instead, which is why the note holds only what a person actually typed.
  • A very short description does not earn a note. If what is left after stripping is barely a sentence, it is skipped rather than putting a note icon on every meeting.
  • A very long one is stored as a partial copy and marked as such, so you know to open the event for the rest.
  • Edit it and it becomes yours. Once you change a synced note, later syncs leave it alone. If you have not touched it and the organizer rewrites the description, your note follows along.

Note or sublist? A note is prose about one thing. A sublist is a set of things that belong to it. If you are writing sentences, use a note. If you are writing a list, promote it. See sublists.

Notes are searchable. The body is indexed alongside the line, so a phrase buried in a note is findable. See search.

Settings that change this

Tips

  • Keep the thing's line as the summary. If the line only makes sense after reading the note, rewrite the line.
  • Meeting notes work well as a thing per topic with a note on each, rather than one enormous thing.
  • For a meeting that came from your calendar, write your own notes into the one already sitting under the event. Everything about that meeting then lives in one place.