How to Email
Notes to Yourself
Capture ideas the moment they strike and send them to your inbox with one tap. Your email becomes your to-do list — the simplest way to manage notes without managing anything.
How do I email myself on an iPhone?
Create a message in Gmail or Apple Mail and put your own email address in the To field. For an occasional note, your existing email app is enough.
- Open Compose in Gmail. Check the sender if you use more than one account.
- Address the message to yourself. Add a recognizable subject such as “Memo” and write your note in the body.
- Send, then check the receiving account. Look in spam and filtered folders if it is missing from the inbox.
Apple Mail also lets you start a new message and address it to yourself. See the Google sending guide and Apple Mail guide for the controls.
For frequent short notes, Simple Memo lets you reuse a configured recipient. Verify that address and confirm your first delivery, then write and send without filling in the recipient each time.
Keep notes where you already check for messages
If you already check email regularly, keeping short notes there can help you revisit them. When you email notes to yourself, the inbox you already check every day becomes your task list. No folders to create, no tags to assign. Write it, send it, done.
Your inbox is the one place that demands attention. Unlike a note app buried three screens deep, emails create a natural sense of urgency. A memo sitting in your inbox is a memo that gets acted on — not one that gathers digital dust in a forgotten notebook.
Receive your first note from Simple Memo
- Install the app and verify your destination. Follow the destination setup prompts. If you choose email-code verification, enter the six-digit code from your inbox.
- Write a short note and tap Send. The free plan includes three sends a day. Use text you can easily recognize when checking delivery.
- Open the receiving inbox and check the body. A cleared editor does not establish delivery. The message comes from Simple Memo's sender, rather than being sent through your own email account.
To also save in Obsidian, grant access to your vault and choose the target note. Receiving an email does not itself append to your vault. Saving to email plus Obsidian is available within the free limit; saving only to Obsidian requires Premium.
3 Benefits of Emailing Notes to Yourself
Speed That Matters: 0.4s Launch, one-tap Send
Simple Memo opens directly to its editor. App launch, pressing Send and delivery to an inbox are different events:
Use Cases: When to Email Yourself a Note
Choose by your email workflow
This guide is written by Simple Memo's developer. Choose by the kind of message and how often you send it; we do not have a comparable delivery-time benchmark for these methods.
| Need | Gmail or Apple Mail | Simple Memo |
|---|---|---|
| Typical use | Occasional notes or messages to changing recipients | Repeated short notes to your configured destination |
| Initial setup | Sign in to your email account | Set and verify the receiving address |
| Sending | Compose, address, write and send | Write and send |
| Also save in Obsidian | Email alone does not append to a vault | Configure the integration and target on iPhone |
5 Reasons Email Beats Traditional Note Apps
Challenge the assumption that notes belong in a dedicated app. By leveraging email — infrastructure you already use every day — capturing, reviewing, and acting on notes becomes seamless.
How Email Memos Differ from Traditional Note Apps
Traditional note apps follow a three-step workflow: Capture, Organize, then Retrieve. Each step introduces friction. You launch a dedicated app to capture, spend time choosing folders or tags to organize, and must consciously remember to revisit your notes to retrieve them. Very few people sustain all three steps consistently.
The email memo approach reduces this to a single step: Capture, then Done. The organize step is eliminated, and retrieval is absorbed into a habit you already have — checking email. Because there is nothing to organize, the barrier to capturing a note drops to near zero, which means you record more ideas, more tasks, and more insights than you ever did with a traditional app.
You might feel uneasy about skipping the organize step. But consider: search engines inside Gmail and Outlook improve every year and can pinpoint any message among tens of thousands using just a keyword. Relying on powerful search is far more efficient than manually sorting notes into folders. The time you once spent organizing can be redirected to your actual work. By freeing yourself from organizational overhead, you focus on what note-taking is truly about — capturing ideas before they slip away and retrieving them when you need them.
Specifications
- Supported OS
- iOS 16.0+
- Launch Speed
- 0.4 seconds (UIKit, no Storyboard)
- Sending
- One tap after writing; arrival time depends on connectivity and the email service
- Offline
- Outbox architecture (AES-GCM encrypted, auto-resend)
- Email Support
- Gmail / Outlook / Yahoo Mail / iCloud Mail / Work email — any provider
- Free Plan
- 3 sends/day (free forever)
- Premium
- $2.99/month or $29.99/year (unlimited sends)
What if my note does not arrive?
- Pending recipient verification: finish destination setup and verification.
- Offline or unsent: reopen the app after reconnecting and check its Outbox.
- Missing from the inbox: check the recipient, spam and filtering rules. In Gmail, search for a phrase from the note or use
subject:Memo. - Obsidian-only mode: no email is sent. Check the configured note instead.
See the delivery-check FAQ and Gmail search guide. Check whether the original is still waiting before creating and sending repeated copies.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the benefits of emailing notes to yourself?
Your inbox becomes your to-do list. No need for a separate note app — notes land where you already look every day, so nothing slips through the cracks.
Does it work with any email provider?
Set and verify an address you can receive at, such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail or iCloud Mail. Work addresses may have rules that block external senders.
Can I send notes while offline?
Yes. The outbox architecture stores offline memos with AES-GCM encryption on your device and auto-sends them when connectivity returns. Reopen the app after reconnecting and check the Outbox and receiving inbox.
Are my notes stored on a server?
The local Outbox and history use AES-GCM encryption. Email content passes through our API and an external delivery provider, and the received message is stored by your email service. Local encryption does not mean end-to-end encryption of the email.
Can I customize the email subject line?
Yes. You can set a custom subject line and signature in the app settings. Use prefixes like "[Memo]" or "[TODO]" to enable automatic email filtering rules on your email client.
How is this different from emailing yourself via Gmail?
In Gmail, compose a message and address it to yourself; a recognizable subject helps you find it later. Simple Memo reuses a destination you set and verify once, so subsequent notes need only the body and a tap on Send. Check arrival in the receiving inbox.
How does Simple Memo compare to Slack self-DM?
Slack self-DMs stay inside Slack — they don't reach your email inbox. Simple Memo sends notes directly to your email, where they join your existing workflow alongside other messages, calendar invites, and action items.
Last reviewed September 9, 2026. Launch measurement conditions · Data handling
