Apple Gave One of Its Most Popular iPhone Apps a Secret Feature You Probably Didn’t Know About

It’s a handy and simple feature that you’re probably not taking advantage of.

When Apple rolled out iOS 18 this past fall, it brought numerous new features to your current iPhone. (That’s right, we’re not talking about the Apple Intelligence features that are only supported on the latest iPhones.) And that’s especially true in regards to your iPhone’s Notes app.

For years, the Notes app has been one of the most popular and most basic apps on your iPhone. It gave you a blank canvas to jot down your thoughts, synced effortlessly across your other Apple devices, and even supported some advanced features, such as the ability to scan documents.

And while the Notes app is still straightforward to use, iOS 18 definitely took it up a gear. It added collapsible sections so that advanced note-takers could better organize notes with headings and subheadings. It also introduced highlighting text in five different colors.

And, perhaps most notably, Apple has upgraded the Notes app with a built-in audio recorder — just like Voice Memos — so you can record audio and transcribe it directly from the Notes app. Pretty incredibe.

But there are other little things that, for the average note-taker, might be even more useful and you’ll use more often.

A Notes app upgrade

With iOS 18, Apple significantly upgraded the default Calculator app on your iPhone, too. Specifically, it added a built-in converter tool, so you can more easily convert units like lengths, volumes, temperatures, as well as currencies. It also added Math Notes, a feature that gives you the ability to solve advanced math and scientific equations.

What you probably didn’t know is that Apple carried similar features over to the Notes app. So you can do simple conversions or math right from the Notes app. You just need to use the equals (=) sign.

That’s right, Apple upgraded the equals sign in the Notes app with immense power. Just type in a unit of measurement, hit the equals sign and the Notes app will automatically show you the converted metric. (If it’s not the correct metric you want, you can go into the Calculator app to fine-tune it.)

For example:

• When you type in “46 ounces” and hit the equals sign, the Notes app converts it to “1.304 kilograms.”

• When you type in “199 meters” and hit the equals sign, the Notes app converts it to “652 feet 10.646 inches.”

• When you type in “96 degrees” and hit the equals sign, the Notes app converts it to “35.556 Celsius.”

And you can do the same thing with currencies.

• When you type in “£287” or “287 Euros” and hit the equals sign, the Notes app converts it to “388.13 USD.”

It’s kind of incredible how much power the equals sign now has in the Notes app. So, next time you have a question about conversions, whether it be units of measurement, temperature or currencies, simple open the Notes app, type it in and hit the equals sign.

It takes a second.

Tucker Bowe has been on Gear Patrol’s editorial team since 2014. As a Tech Staff Writer, he tracks everything in the consumer tech space, from headphones to smartphones, wearables to home theater systems. If it lights up or makes noise, he probably covers it.