The Best Note Taking Apps for Organizing Your Life
Note taking apps provide a centralized hub to capture, organize, and access all kinds of personal and professional information. The best apps empower users to collect text, files, images, audio, scanned documents, web clips and more in flexible systems tailored to their needs.
Mobile note taking ability frees you to capture anything at any moment. Robust desktop experiences enable rich formatting, tagging, sorting, and exporting. Cloud syncing gives you access across all devices. And collaboration features allow teamwork.
With so many capable note apps available now, choosing the right platform can be daunting. Considering core features, flexibility, intuitiveness, accessibility, security, and pricing will lead you to the perfect fit. Here are the top recommended note apps for organizing your life across personal and professional projects:
Evernote
Evernote is the long-standing leader in note taking software with powerful features and comprehensive platform support. Core strengths include:
Capture Anything
Using camera, voice, clipboard, documents, Evernote grabs notes, files, images, audio, scanned docs, web clips. Chrome extension enhances browser capturing.
Notebooks For Organizing
Flexible notebooks allow grouping notes, checklists, attachments logically by project, category, timeframe. Visualize progress.
Templates & Shortcuts
Format new notes faster by customizing and applying templates for recurring items like meeting notes, statuses, logs. Keyboard shortcuts speed workflows.
OCR & Searchability
Image text gets automatically converted by optical character recognition for full-content searchability. Find anything in your notes instantly.
Secure Cloud Sync
Notes stay encrypted and synced between desktop, mobile, web access. Permissions allow selective sharing of notebooks.
Plugins & API
Third-party plugins like Zapier integration andIFTTT automation increase functionality. API allows building custom integrations.
For comprehensive note capturing and organizing across devices, Evernote remains hard to beat. The free tier may suffice for personal use while business plans add features like offline access, larger uploads, faster search.
OneNote
Microsoft OneNote offers exceptional note taking capabilities tightly integrated with Windows, Office, Outlook, and Microsoft cloud services. Advantages include:
Multimedia Support
Type, draw, record audio, annotate screenshots, clip webpages, scan documents. Embed files. Mix media in flexible digital notebooks. Offline access enables capturing anywhere.
Collaborative Editing
Co-author notebooks in real-time across teams. Thread conversations under notes. @mention colleagues. Restore previous versions if needed.
Deep Search
Optical character recognition makes text in images searchable. Find words across notebooks instantly. Search by creation date, text tags, authors, locations, etc.
Customizable Organization
Create color-coded tabs, sections, and pages to categorize notes. Add tables and links. Insert recycled content. Sort any way you want.
Natural Pen Input
Handwrite or draw naturally with stylus and touch across Surface and other pen devices. Write anywhere on the page. Palm rejection avoids accidental ink marks. Voice dictation inputs speech.
Tight Office Integration
Copy OneNote content to Word, Excel, PowerPoint with a click. Embed spreadsheets or presentations. Record meetings directly to OneNote via Outlook calendar integration.
OneNote offers unmatched flexibility and seamless Microsoft environment support. It may work best for Windows-centric teams deeply ingrained in Office 365 workflows.
Notion
Notion takes a unique approach to notes via its customizable building blocks interface. Key features include:
Infinite Customization
Users build their own ultimate workspace on a flexible canvas combining customizable databases, wikis, documents, spreadsheets, kanban boards, calendars, and more. Link and nest everything. Filter views.
Block Building
Quickly build pages using text, headings, bulleted lists, quotes, toggles, embeds, code snippets, docs, media etc. Drag blocks, columns, and sections anywhere. Everything lives in flexible containers.
Fast Media Embeds
Easily embed tweets, figma prototypes, typeform surveys, Google docs, YouTube videos, PDFs, Google maps, etc directly inline. Keep relevant media together.
Relationships & Links
Relate pages via backlinks, tags, and other connections. Clickable [[wikilinks]] make navigating intuitive. Hovers preview.
Team Workspaces
Collaborate together in shared team workspaces. @mention colleagues in comments. Fine-grained permissions control access.
Notion offers nearly infinite flexibility to build a customized all-in-one workspace combining notes, tasks, wikis, databases, calendars, and documents tailored to any need. Some training required.
Bear
Bear provides a uniquely focused, beautiful note taking experience geared toward writing. Core differentiators:
Clean, Flexible Interface
Simple, uncluttered, text-based interface lets you focus on writing. Quickly take notes and link them intuitively. Customize fonts/themes.
Hashtags group notes across searchable categories. Double brackets [[link notes]] together. Clickable backlinks show connections. Hovers preview content.
Export Options
Share cleanly formatted notes, PDFs, HTML, DOCX, JPGs, Markdown files. Publish public notes to the web.
Writing Focused
No complex menus and configurations. Made specifically for crafting and organizing text-based notes, journals, prose.
Focus Mode
Immersive dark mode hides UI to put emphasis on your words without visual distractions while writing. Syncs between Mac, iOS, and iPadOS.
For those focused specifically on writing, Bear provides a simple but capable toolbox. However, Bear lacks capabilities like advanced media support, tables, collaboration, integrations offered in other tools.
Google Keep
Google Keep offers smooth integration into Google’s ecosystem with instant web and mobile access. Core features:
Web Clipper & Screen Capture
Easily clip content and annotate screenshots from the web. Chrome extension enables capturing anything. Access clips instantly across devices. Offline support allows constant availability.
Google Account Sync
Notes sync between mobile, tablet, and web. Changes reflect everywhere immediately when signed into Google account.
Media Embeds
Insert images via camera or gallery. Record voice memos and notes. Set reminders. Check tasks off lists. Everything stays together.
Sharing & Collaboration
Share notes or entire notebooks. Real-time collaboration allows teams to view, comment, edit notes together.
Simple Tagging
Add labels like #tags to notes. Click hashtags to quickly filter notes or view all notes for that category. Color code labels.
For those deeply invested in Google’s tools like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Chrome, Keep tightly integrates for seamless web and mobile note capture.
Simplenote
True to its name, Simplenote focuses solely on clean, speedy text-based note organization. Top features:
Lightning Fast Search
Instantly search across thousands of text notes for quick access instead of wasted browsing. Simplenote remembers locations.
Plain Text Focus
Forget complex formatting. Simplenote handles text, lists, and checklists. Markdown support optionally adds bold, headers, etc.
Version History
See all prior saved versions of a note. Restore from any point. Deleted notes recoverable for 60 days in trash.
Cross-Platform Availability
Apps for every platform – iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux, browser. API enables developers to build integrations. Notes sync everywhere.
Sharing & Multi-Editor
Collaborate on notes with others in real-time with live syncing across devices. Guests can edit without accounts.
When ultra-fast search and access of streamlined plain text notes are the priority, Simplenote excels. However, multimedia capabilities are limited.
Conclusion
The best note taking app for you depends on your specific needs and system environment. Evaluate your platform ecosystem, use cases, collaboration needs, mobility requirements, and preferred interfaces.
Evernote provides the deepest capabilities for capturing anything combined with powerful organization and context search. OneNote shines within the Microsoft ecosystem. Notion offers infinite customizability. Bear focuses on beautiful writing experience. Google Keep tightly integrates with Google tools. Simplenote provides streamlined speed and availability.
Try the most promising options to determine the best fit. Building effective note taking habits requires commitment to a single platform long enough to make it your own. With the right app implementing your note taking methodology, you gain an essential tool for organizing both work and personal life.