How-to guide · Communication Capture a thought in your notes app

Actionadd_note
Audience Cognitive
Time Under 10 seconds
Permissions None — Aside opens a draft note in whichever notes app you have
What this is: A spoken or typed request that opens your notes app to a new draft with the text already typed in. Useful for the moment when you’re mid-stride and you’ve just remembered three things you need to do later — you say them, they land in your notes, you keep going.
Try it now

Open Aside on your phone, then say or type:

“Add a note — buy milk and call the dentist.”

Aside confirms in the chat history and your notes app opens with that text already in a fresh note. Save it or edit it from there.

Step by step

  1. Open Aside

    Tap the Aside icon, or trigger your assist gesture if you’ve set Aside as your default assistant. Aside opens to the orb in its idle state with the prompt “Tell me everything,” beneath it.

    The Aside main screen at idle on a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Across the top: the word ‘Aside’ with a red dot, a small mono status pill reading ‘● IDLE’, the cost counter ‘$1.937 today’, and a ‘NEW’ link top-right. Centered in the screen is a large warm-paper-colored orb with a soft brown core, slowly breathing. Below the orb, in large bold type: ‘Tell me everything,’ and below that ‘Tap the orb or type below.’ Near the bottom is a clay-colored ‘Make Aside my assistant’ pill button and a row of four mono pills: ‘history’, ‘type’, ‘muted’, ‘memory · 3’.
    Aside open at idle. The orb breathes; nothing else is happening.

  2. Say (or type) the note

    Hold the orb to talk and say “Add a note — buy milk and call the dentist,” or tap the type pill at the bottom and type the same phrase, then send. The dash (or the word “saying,” or just a comma) tells Aside where the note text starts. Phrasings that all work: “note: …”, “jot down …”, “take a note that …”, “add to my notes …”.

    Add a note — buy milk and call the dentist.
    The Aside main screen with the chat history bottom sheet covering the lower half of the screen. The status pill at the top reads ‘● READY’ and the cost counter has ticked up to ‘$1.975 today’. Behind a slight scrim the orb is dimmed; the words ‘Tell me everything,’ and ‘Tap the orb or type below.’ are still partially visible. Inside the bottom sheet: a small mono label ‘YOU’ above ‘Add a note - buy milk and call the dentist.’; and a label ‘ASIDE’ above ‘I’ve already added that to your notes.’.
    Aside confirms it has handed the note off to the system notes app — the bottom-sheet history captures exactly what gets pre-filled.

  3. Your notes app opens with the text already in place

    A moment later your notes app opens to a fresh new note with “Buy milk and call the dentist” already in the body. Whichever notes app you have set as default takes the hand-off — Samsung Notes, Google Keep, Obsidian, anything that registers for the system “send text” intent.

    Samsung Notes full-screen on the Galaxy S23 Ultra in dark mode. Top header: a left-pointing back arrow, an empty placeholder title reading ‘Title’ in greyed-out type, and on the right an open-book reader-mode icon, a ‘+’ insert button, and a three-dot overflow menu. Below the header, the editor toolbar runs across the screen with a keyboard icon (selected, in a circular highlight), a pen, a yellow marker, an eraser, a dashed-circle lasso, a sparkle (AI) icon, an undo arrow, a question-mark help icon (highlighted), and a faint redo arrow on the right. The body area shows the line ‘Buy milk and call the dentist.’ with a thin orange text-cursor at the end. The rest of the page is empty. The note has not been saved.
    Samsung Notes opens to a draft with your text already typed in. Tap the back arrow to save and exit, or keep editing.

  4. Save it, edit it, or discard it

    Tap the save icon to keep the note. Tap into the body to add or rewrite anything before you save. Tap back to walk away — most notes apps autosave drafts, so the note will likely be there if you change your mind, but check your notes app’s behavior if you’re relying on it.

If a different notes app opens than you expected: Aside hands off to whichever app on your phone is set up to receive shared text. If you have multiple notes apps installed and want to switch, change your default in Settings → Apps → Default apps on your phone, or pick a different one from the share sheet next time. For one-off destinations, see the share-to-any-app guide.
Note: For things you want Aside itself to remember (your address, a person’s number, a preference), use “remember …” instead — that goes into Aside’s memory, not your notes app. See Teach Aside something to remember.