When a good idea strikes, what is the best way to capture it? You can scramble for a piece of paper or hope you’ll remember it once you get home, but the best solution for keeping everything you need to remember at your fingertips is a note-taking app on your phone,tablet, or laptop. With the right app, you can write down ordictate notes across platforms, have them synced and ready to access anywhere, and have an easy way to find an important piece of information if you need to refer back to it later.
Microsoft OneNote
Google Keep
Goodnotes 6
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Note-taking apps can vary in quality, features, and price, but in our book, Microsoft OneNote is going to be the best for most people. It’s free, supports a variety of different inputs, is completely searchable, and should be familiar enough to use for anyone who already uses another Microsoft productivity app. But simple note-taking isn’t going to work for everyone, so if you’re specifically interested in having a great search experience, want something moreGoogle or Amazon-friendly, or simply want to focus ontaking notes with a stylus, we’ve got you covered in the list below.
Our favorite note-taking apps
Covers all the basics
Microsoft OneNote crams most of the text-formatting prowess of Microsoft Word into a note-taking app that’s equally capable of handling audio and handwritten text.
It never feels exciting to recommend a Microsoft app because of how well-known they are, butMicrosoft OneNotehas earned its place in the pantheon of simple, but powerful tools for collecting your thoughts. Its general interface and layout looks a lot like Microsoft Word, including the trademark “ribbon” of buttons for changing formatting and other settings.
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It can create notebooks with sections and individual note pages, with room for links and images like any other text editor. Where OneNote shines is handwritten input, with deep integration with Windows Ink if you’re writing on aSurface Proor other convertible laptop, and the option to convert handwritten notes into typed text.
You’ll get all the features you need with a free Microsoft account and the ability to access the app across Windows, Android, macOS, iOS, and iPadOS, but if you want more storage (a free account gets you 5GB) or access to AI-powered features that can help you solve math problems or summarize your notes, you’ll need to spring for a personal or business Microsoft 365 account. They start at $6.99 per month, but you’ll get access to the rest of Microsoft’s productivity suite too, so it’s more than worth it.
Notes, databases, wikis, and more
Notion is a solid note-taking tool, but with a little effort and a little extra money, it can transform into a database, wiki site, and even an AI companion for work.
you may useNotionas a simple note-taking and journaling tool and be more than happy, but the app is popular because of how flexible it is. Notion’s system of “block” components makes it comparatively simple to spin up a database, to-do list, task tracker, or wiki, and link between them without needing to know any kind of programming skills. Plus, you can share anything you create in Notion with other people for collaboration and, because Notion pages are hosted online, it’s very easy to convert them to a website.
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You get all of that for free, with unlimited pages and blocks, and the ability to bring in 10 collaborators. What makes Notion a fantastic premium note-taking tool is how it improves if you’re willing to pay. Fork over a monthly fee of $8 per month or more, and you can remove the cap on file uploads (free accounts can only host 5MB), bring on even more collaborators, get custom domains for each Notion page, and create private pages for specific team members.
Notion is also experimenting withAI featuresthat can generate text, automatically write meeting notes, create summaries, and answer questions about all the information stored in your Notion account for an additional monthly subscription.
Ridiculously easy to use
Google Keep is barebones, but hides a flexible text editor and reminder system that makes it a useful cross-platform note-taking app for anyone with a Google account.
Google Keepis stripped-down, but oh so reliable. You can access Google’s free, collaborative note-taking and reminders app from the web, Android, and iOS. It’s great for creating notes on the fly, writing out a shopping list, or setting down some to-dos and reminders for the day. Notes in Keep can be formatted and filled with links and images, but their real winning quality is how they interact with Google’s other services.
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You can convert Keep notes intoGoogle Docs, saving you time getting a draft ready to publish, and Keep is easily accessible from the sidebar inGmailor Google Calendar in case you need to jot down a note or reminder while reviewing your email or schedule. Google doesn’t charge money for Keep, but you do need to create a free Google account and notes stored in Keep count against your overall Google account storage, so you might want to upgrade at some point if you need more space.
The OG notes app
Evernote is one of the original note apps, and even though its price has changed, it still has some of the best search and document scanning features in the business.
Evernotewas one of the first note-taking apps on the scene, and while it can do a lot of what the other note-taking apps on the list can do in terms of interlinking notes, nesting notes inside other notes, and supporting multiple kinds of content in an individual note, it’s still best at what it’s been doing from the beginning. Evernote is a bit like a storage app and a note-taking tool in one.
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You can jot down some thoughts, scan and upload a receipt, and search through a PDF all in the same place. The app still offers great OCR (optical character recognition) search for finding things inside of images and PDFs, and Evernote shines in linking disparate types of information together.
In the years since Evernote’s launch and later sale to app developer Bending Spoons, it’s also become more of a general productivity tool, with a dashboard of useful widgets to keep you on top of reminders, your calendar, and past notes. The only problem is that the free version of Evernote is fairly limited, and to get the best features, like OCR search and the ability to markup PDFs, you have to pay at least $14.99 per month or $129.99 per year.
Secure and highly-expandable
Obsidian looks intimidating, but only because it’s a highly flexible note-taking, brainstorming, task tracking, and even publishing tool that stores information securely and locally.
Obsidianhas most of the features of an Evernote or Notion, but without the need for an internet connection, because it stores all of your notes and data locally, rather than in the cloud. That keeps notes stored on Obsidian more secure – your information is never on anyone else’s server – and easier to port to another app if you get tired of Obsidian’s interface. That security doesn’t come without a few drawbacks, though.
Obsidian can be as inscrutable to use as Notion, especially if you want to create a nesting doll of notes, charts, and lists. There’s even a way to illustrate that complexity with the app’s visual graph, which can illuminate how your notes are connected to each other with colored nodes. With hundreds of plugins and multiple ways to display information, there’s definitely a lot you can do with Obsidian, but you’ll likely have to watch several YouTube tutorials to do it.
You can use Obsidian for free for your personal note-taking, if you’re a nonprofit, or you’re a company of one, but for anyone else, Obsidian asks that you purchase a commercial license that costs $50 per year per user. On top of that, if you want to securely sync your notes between versions of the Obsidian app, you’ll have to pay $8 per month, and if you want to publish directly from the app to the web, you’ll need to pay an additional $8 per month (though you do get a custom domain and theme options).
Like an Apple app from another universe
Bear is an elegantly designed Mac, iPad, and iPhone app with a tagging system and Markdown support that makes creating and organizing notes easy.
Apple’s iPhones,iPads, and Macs all come with a built-in Notes app, but even though it’simproved drasticallyover the years, you may still do one better.Bearis the way to go. As a note-taking tool, Bear is simple. It lets you write and edit text in Markdown (a markup language that lets you format text as you type) and it lets you tag each note so that you can organize all the things you write down. But if you want, you can nest notes under other notes, link between notes, and include sketches using the Apple Pencil. You can also lock notes, and use the apps search to look through notes, images, and files you’ve uploaded for a specific piece of text.
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Bear gives you a lot of what Evernote does, but in an elegantly designed app that feels right at home on Apple’s devices, and at a much cheaper price. Bear can be used for free if you’re comfortable only being able to export .TXT, Markdown, and TextBundle files or for $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year if you want all the export options (including ePub), OCR search, iCloud syncing, and lots of theme options. $30 a year isn’t as good as free, but if you value design and a seamless experience, it’s hard to beat Bear.
The killer app for the Apple Pencil
Goodnotes 6 works across devices to collect handwriting and typed text in the same note, and particularly handy AI-powered search and spell check features on iOS and iPadOS devices.
Goodnotes 6is designed with handwriting in mind first-and-foremost and works seamlessly withApple Pencil. You can combine sketches and handwritten text seamlessly alongside typed text in the same note, edit and annotate PDFs, and move and resize images and text, but most of Goodnotes 6’s flagship features concern stylus input, specifically on the iPad. With AI, Goodnotes 6 can correct handwritten spelling mistakes, automatically solve math problems, and search through handwritten notes on the iPad. You can even record and sync audio to your notes live and listen back to them with a tap.
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While those flashy features are currently specific to the iPad, the bread-and-butter sketching and writing Goodnotes 6 is capable of working across Windows, Android, iPadOS, iOS, and macOS. Unfortunately, a free account only gets you three notebooks, so to really take advantage of what the app is capable of you’ll have to pay $9.99 per year, but if you feel like you thoughts flow easiest when you’re writing them down by hand, there really isn’t a better digital experience you can get than Goodnotes 6.
The bottom line: What is the best note-taking app?
If you’re in the market for a new note-taking app, the best option for most people is going to be Microsoft OneNote. You can use the app entirely for free if you’re just jotting down text, it plays nice with styluses and handwritten notes, and it works across all the major platforms. For a more premium option, paying for a Notion account gets you all sorts of niceties, like no cap on the size of files you can upload and a custom domain name on top of the app’s flexible system for organizing information. And if you privilege price and simplicity above all else, Google Keep works like a charm just about anywhere.
Microsoft OneNote crams most of the text-formatting prowess of Microsoft Word into a note-taking app that’s equally capable of handling audio and handwritten text.
How we picked the best note-taking apps
As writers covering consumer technology and entertainment on the daily, Pocket-lint has more than our fair share of experience collecting our thoughts and organizing information before we actually sit down and write an article. I primarily drew from that experience building this guide. I’ve tried dozens of note-taking tools throughout my career as a student and then a writer, and upended my digital life more than once by trying out a new system for storing information. This list reflects what I think matters in a good note-taking app.
Note-taking apps should be simple to use, especially if all you care about is creating visually pleasing text. They should ideally have a free option, so you can try them without committing, and be accessible on more than one device, so you can jot down a quick thought on the go. And lastly, they should offer a way to sort and search through the notes you create. Everything else is gravy, and luckily for readers of this guide, we found several note-taking apps with excellent extra features, like support for handwritten notes, linking between notes, tables, databases, AI, and more.
Is it worth paying for a note-taking app?
That’s going to depend on you, what kind of notes you take, and how many notes you think you’ll take, but in general I’d say yes. Think about it this way. We pay for other digital tools in our lives, whether they’re a photo editing app or an online storage service. Why shouldn’t you pay for a note-taking app that will likely improve over time?
The good news is, if all you plan on doing is typing notes, you can get pretty far with a free account from Microsoft OneNote, Notion, or Google Keep before you run into any kind of storage issue. It’s only when you start uploading files that storage gets eaten up more quickly, and even then, if you have aMicrosoft 365orGoogle Workspace accountthrough school or your employer, you might not have to worry about the issues anyway. Give a note-taking app a try and see if it’s worth paying for. You might be surprised at how you feel.
How important is OCR?
OCR or Optical Character Recognition is the technology that lets an app’s search engine recognize text in a file, image, or piece of handwriting and not just the note format of a given note-taking app. It’s a handy tool if you know you have to juggle lots of different PDFs in your day-to-day life, but not a necessity for most people. That being said, once you rely on it, you might find it pretty darn useful, especially for digging up a hard-to-find scanned receipt.
