Working Around a Missing Feature in Apple Notes

Annoyingly, you cannot make a Note in MacOS read-only (i.e. unalterable). So if you have a note containing important information which you frequently open in mobile, a stray hand movement might alter its content and you might not notice in time to perform an "undo", leaving you "screwed" as they say in the tech world.

The standard workaround (until Apple finally solves this) is clunky:

Create a new Notes folder

Share the Folder with yourself

Set permissions to View Only

Move the note into that folder

That's a lot of work. And I can't anticipate all the consequences, some of which will inevitably be painful in some unforseeable way.

I'm a fan of lazy, dumb, good-enough solutions one might miss while trying to find a non-existent perfect solution. So here's my move:

Control/Left-click the note in the sidebar of the Notes app.

Choose "Duplicate"

Rename the newly created note so it sorts, alphabeticallly, just beneath the original version, but append the name with "(xxxxBACKUP VERSIONxxxx)".

And never ever open that one.

Dumb. Inelegant. Lazy. Sloppy. Welcome to my world!