How to add divider lines and section links in Notes on iOS 27 and macOS 27How to add divider lines and section links in Notes on iOS 27 and macOS 27

Apple's Notes app in iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 can insert a horizontal divider line and link to a heading inside a note, two small tools for organising long notes.

Neither needs anything switched on. iDownloadBlog published step-by-step instructions for the divider on 7 October, and MacRumors and 9to5Mac described both features when Apple released them. Here is how each works.

How do you add a divider line in Notes on iPhone or iPad?

• Open a note and tap where the line should go
• Tap the cursor to bring up the edit menu
• Tap the right arrow in that menu
• Choose Insert Divider Line

With a hardware keyboard attached to an iPhone or iPad, Command-L does the same, according to iDownloadBlog.

How do you add one on a Mac?

Click where the line should go, then press Command-L or choose Edit, then Insert Divider Line, from the menu bar. If the cursor is in the middle of a sentence, iDownloadBlog notes that the line splits it and moves the rest of the text below.

What a divider line cannot do

According to iDownloadBlog, the line cannot be recoloured, thickened or restyled. It is a thin dark rule, and it behaves like a character: Delete removes it and Command-Z undoes it. Drawings and attachments added below a divider stay below it. The Lines and Grids option in Notes is a different thing, a background pattern for the whole page. We could not confirm how a divider looks on a device still running iOS 26, so anyone sharing notes with older devices should check.

How do you link to a section of a note?

Select some text, open the edit menu and choose Add Link, then Link to Section, 9to5Mac explains. Notes lists every heading and subheading in the note; pick one and the text becomes a link that jumps there. MacRumors adds that a link can point to a section of a different note as well.

Our take

Each of these is minor, and together they move Notes in one clear direction: towards long, structured documents rather than quick jottings. Section links are a table of contents you build by hand. Dividers break a long note into parts that can be seen while scrolling. Add the Markdown copy and paste that also arrived in iOS 27, and Notes now covers much of what people used to install a separate writing app for.

The divider is also an example of Apple building a feature people were faking. iDownloadBlog's writer used to type a row of hyphens and copy it around, and plenty of others did the same. A real divider survives a change of font size and screen width, which a row of hyphens does not, and that is the whole improvement.

What we at APPDOOK would still like is a way to collapse a section under its heading, which would make the section links far more useful in a long note. For now, headings, dividers and links are the tools, and they are worth five minutes to learn.