For years the Apple Notes app paste-flopped URLs into long, ugly strings and gave you no way to attach a link to nicely-worded text. Plain "click here" wasn't possible. That's no longer true — Notes now supports turning any selected text into a link, on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Here's how to use it on each platform, plus a couple of related tricks.

On iPhone or iPad

1. Select the text you want to turn into a link.
2. Tap the arrow button (>) in the selection toolbar to expand it if needed.
3. Tap Add Link.
4. Paste or type the URL.
5. Tap Done.

The text stays exactly as you wrote it; the link travels with it.

On Mac

1. Select the text.
2. Press ⌘K — or go to Edit → Add Link in the menu bar.
3. Paste the URL into the field that pops up.
4. Hit Return.

⌘K is the same shortcut Pages, Mail, and most Apple apps use, so the muscle memory carries over.

Linking to other notes

The same Add Link sheet does double duty for note-to-note links — handy if you're using Notes as a small wiki:

• Instead of typing a URL, start typing the title of another note in the link field
• Pick it from the suggestion list
• Tap that link later and Notes jumps straight to the linked note

This works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and the link survives if you rename the target note.

Editing or removing a link

• Mac: right-click the linked text → Edit Link or Remove Link
• iPhone/iPad: tap and hold the link, then choose Edit Link or Remove Link from the popover

Good to know

• Pasting a URL into selected text automatically wraps it as a link in iOS 17 and later — no need to open the Add Link sheet manually if you've already copied the URL
• Notes still auto-detects raw URLs, phone numbers, addresses, and dates and underlines them, even without explicit linking
• Links sync across all your devices via iCloud so you can author on Mac and tap on iPhone

For the official references, see Add links in Notes on iPhone and Add links in Notes on Mac.

Caveats — note-to-note linking can be hit-or-miss

Linking by note title relies on Notes' search index, which has been quietly unreliable for years. Threads on the Apple Support forums show people reporting the same thing across multiple iOS versions: notes that clearly exist don't show up in the link picker (or in the main search bar), and which notes go missing varies between iPhone, iPad, and Mac on the same iCloud account.

If a note you know exists won't show up in the link suggestions:

• Try typing a few different snippets of the title — the index sometimes only finds partial matches
• Toggle Settings → Siri & Search → Notes off, wait a few seconds, and turn it back on — this nudges Spotlight to rebuild the index
• On iCloud-synced devices, leaving the device plugged in on Wi-Fi for a while can let indexing catch up
• As a fallback, open the target note, copy its sharing URL (long-press the note → Copy Link), and paste that into the Add Link field — it bypasses the title search entirely

This isn't a hypothetical edge case — see, e.g., this long-running Apple Discussions thread on Notes search. Worth knowing before you rely on note-to-note linking for anything important.