In this article
A contact can carry a note. You write it on their profile, it sits with your account rather than on their side of anything, and they are never told it exists.
Which makes it the most useful small feature in the app for anybody who meets more people than they can keep straight — and the one that most deserves a moment's thought about what you write.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Attach a private note to a contact.
- check_circle Say exactly who can and cannot see it.
- check_circle Write the kind of note that is still useful in a year.
- check_circle Keep it out of territory it does not belong in.
It lives on their profile, on your side — nothing about it is sent anywhere near them.
notes The problem it actually solves
It is not filing, and it is not a system for managing relationships. It is the thirty seconds you lose when a name appears and you cannot place it — the third Anna, the person from the conference whose company you have forgotten, the handle that arrived through somebody else six months ago and has now written to you.
For that, a single line is enough and more than a line is usually worse. What you need is the fact that identifies them and nothing else: where they came from, what they do, which one they are. Written that way, a note keeps working years later, which is the only test that matters.
The temptation, once there is a box, is to keep a running record. That is a different activity with different consequences, and the app is not the place for it — partly because it has no structure for it, and mostly because of what accumulates when you write about people for long enough.
Can the other person see it?
No. They are not shown it, not told it exists, and nothing appears on their side when you write or change one. From their point of view nothing has happened at all, which is the entire premise — a note is a label you attach to your own view of them.
What should go in one?
The thing that will not be obvious from their name and picture in a year. How you met, which organisation, which of the several people with that name this is, what was agreed, what you owe them. One sentence, written for a stranger — because in eighteen months the stranger reading it is you.
What should not?
Anything you would be uncomfortable reading aloud to the person it is about. Notes are private, which is not the same as secret: anybody who gets into your account has them, a phone handed over unlocked has them, and a screen visible over your shoulder has them. A blunt judgement written in a box nobody sees is a blunt judgement stored under somebody's name.
Is this a substitute for a proper contact system?
No, and pushing it in that direction is how it stops being useful. There is no searching across notes worth relying on, no reminders and no structure, so a note that has become a history of a client relationship is both hard to use and stored in the wrong place. If you are running a business on this, the notes are the index — the record lives somewhere built for it.
What is the single best use?
Telling apart people you cannot otherwise tell apart. Two contacts with the same first name, a handle that gives nothing away, the person whose display name is a nickname you have never heard anybody say. That problem is solved completely by one word, and it is the one case where writing the note takes less time than the confusion it prevents.
Should I write a note on everybody?
No — the value is entirely in the ones that resolve a genuine doubt. Annotating every contact turns a small aid into an obligation to maintain, and the notes go stale invisibly: a line about somebody's current job outlives the job. Write them when you feel the confusion, not as a project, and delete them when they stop being true.
psychology_alt Writing about people
Every tool that lets people keep private descriptions of other people ends up with some notes in it that its owner would rather not explain. It happens gradually and for understandable reasons: a note about somebody being difficult on a particular day is accurate, and a year later it is simply a sentence describing that person, sitting under their photograph.
The workable discipline is not to write only pleasant things. It is to write facts rather than verdicts. "Asked for the report twice, deadline is the 14th" is useful, dated and survives being read; "unreliable" is a conclusion that stops you seeing anything else about them and would be indefensible if it were ever seen.
And a note is never quite as invisible as it feels. The reason to keep them courteous is not fear of exposure — it is that the way you write things down is eventually the way you think about the person.
settings Writing one
- Open the contact's profile The note sits with their details.
- Write one line, not a record Where they came from, what they do.
- Write it for yourself in a year Not for yourself today.
- Prefer facts to verdicts Dated and specific.
- Assume it could be read Private is not secret.
- Delete it once it is stale A wrong note is worse than none.
This page keeps one line under somebody's name. The curriculum step is where everything longer belongs: using your own chat as a notebook, tagging it so things come back, and what that store is and is not good for.
At a glance
- 1Contact notes
Attach a private note to a contact.
- 2Private, not secret
Anyone with your unlocked phone can read it.
- 3Write facts
Note how you met, not judgements.
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