How to Use Apple Notes for Secret Chats With Others
The Apple Notes app might not be the first option that comes to mind when you want to hide a conversation from others. But by using its collaboration features to invite others into a “conversation” and then deleting messages when you’re done, you can erase all evidence of your chat. Sure, it’s nowhere near as secure as using an encrypted messaging app with disappearing messages (and it’s pretty easy to take screenshots of your shared notes or copy your chats to another app), but the Notes app is a quick and easy option for secret messaging. as a last resort.
How to use Notes as a secret messaging app
First, open Notes and create a new note. Type something into the note, then tap the three-dot icon at the top right of the page and tap Share Note . Now you can click “Sharing Options ” and disable ” Anyone can add people “. In the Permission section, make sure you select ” You can make changes “.
Go back one page and choose how you want to share the note with someone else. As long as they have an Apple ID, they will be able to access your note. We went with iMessage to share a note. Once the other person joins, you can start typing a message and they can see it almost in real time.
To make it easier to distinguish between your messages and those of your contact, tap the three-dot icon in the top right corner and choose Manage Shared Note . Select “Select All Changes” and return to your note. When they reply to your message, Notes will highlight it in a different color.
When you’re done talking, delete whatever you typed first. Then tap on the three dots icon in the top right corner, go to Sharing Options and change the Document Resolution to View Only .
Return to the previous page, swipe left on the contact name and select Delete . This will prevent further access to the note. Now you can delete the note from Apple Notes and all traces of your conversation will disappear with it.
More private ways to communicate
While Apple Notes (or, for that matter, Google Docs) lets you have collaborative chats, those aren’t exactly the apps you want to turn to for true privacy. Ideally, encrypted messaging apps like Signal should be used for these conversations.
In Signal, every chat is encrypted by default and the app doesn’t save unnecessary information. Once you’ve started a chat in Signal, tap the contact’s name at the top of the page and select Disappearing Messages . You can set your own time for these messages, and after that, each message in the conversation will automatically disappear.
You don’t need to manually remove anything or use an unencrypted secret messaging platform. When you upload images to Signal, it has a handy option to automatically blur all faces . Features like this make it much more suitable for personal conversations. And if you don’t want to use Signal, we have a list of alternatives for you .