What Is The Best Note Taking App For Mac Rating: 4,8/5 5618 votes

As of Apple's launch of the iPad Air 3 and the iPad mini 5, all-new model iPad devices support Apple Pencil. That's the 9.7-inch iPad, iPad Air, iPad Pro, and iPad mini. Sims 1 complete collection cheats. Whether you need to take handwritten notes, annotate documents, record audio, create sports playbooks, and more, the App Store has a number of fantastic apps for note-taking. Here isç the cream of the crop based on our extensive testing.

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Starting out? Try The Notes app

The iPad's default Notes app is perfectly suited for use with Apple Pencil. It has text recognition search, inline scanning and annotation, and sketching or handwriting support. With Apple Pencil 2, you can assign the double-tap tool to either erase or the last tool used. It has more limited features than the best third-party notes app — you can't sync your notes anywhere but iCloud, and there's no easy way to link various notes together — but if you're just jotting down a quick note or sketching an idea, the Notes app is that perfect quick-hit app. Sort of like having a napkin with you at all times.

Note-taking apps are more useful than you might think. Taking notes with pen and paper works just fine for some, but if you have a smartphone or tablet, using an app designed for note-taking can truly change the way you get things done. Mar 25, 2019  Best Mac note taking app for a simple, visual approach to note taking. Zoho Notebook is perhaps best considered an alternative to Apple Notes owing to its ease of use and limited feature set, with the added benefit of working on non-Apple platforms. You can sync your notes for free by signing up for a Zoho account and logging in, with iOS. The iPad's built-in Apple Notes app has some new features, including, scanning, attachments, and photos. But if you're curious about what else is out there, here's a look at some of the best iPad note-taking apps of 2020. Some can even turn your handwritten notes, no matter how sloppy, into text that others can read.

Notability is the best for general note-taking

Notability is a fan favorite of many note-taking aficionados, including me. It has an excellent interface full of tools for handwriting, drawing, annotating PDFs, making shapes, highlighting, moving objects around, adding audio, integrating photos and web clips, and more. If you want your note-taking experience to feel more real, you can choose from a number of different paper styles, including grids, which is very useful for vector line drawing. You can share your notebooks to just about every major service and print them, along with importing notebooks from Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or a WebDAV service. Notability also offers iCloud sync support and a companion Mac app.

Because it's so feature-rich, it can seem a little intimidating to newcomers. Luckily, Notability has a really nice tutorial that guides you through its features when you first open it.

It also works flawlessly with the Apple Pencil — whether you're writing, sketching, or drawing shapes. It's an excellent, well-designed app if you want a little bit more power than what the default Notes app provides.

  1. Zoho Notebook - Best Note Taking App. Next in the list of the best note taking apps for students as well as professionals is the Zoho Notebook app, which is a free note taking application that you can easily find on the internet. This app provides its users with a wide range of features and is also available on a majority of platforms.
  2. The best apps for taking notes. Word had been grafted onto a note-taking app. That’ll be fine for some users, but I prefer the focus of a task-focused app.
  3. Aug 31, 2018  The best note-taking apps sync across iPhone, Mac, Windows, Android, and the web. They let you jot down quick notes, search, export, and sync everything you want to remember. The best app.
  4. The best apps for taking notes. Word had been grafted onto a note-taking app. That’ll be fine for some users, but I prefer the focus of a task-focused app.

GoodNotes is for the power-using note-taker. It is packed to the brim with a robust list of pro features. I'd never heard of the app until developer Chris Liscio pointed it out, and I'm so happy he did.

For starters, GoodNotes offers a truly massive selection of paper types for its digital notebooks, including lined, graph, design, and music notation; there are even advanced options that let you upload custom templates. Better still, most templates are available in specific paper sizes (if you're working for print). GoodNotes also offers a ton of different cover styles and choices, all of which can be written upon and further designed.

Like the other apps in this roundup, GoodNotes supports writing and drawing with the Apple Pencil — along with a number of third-party stylus options — using two different digital writing tools: a digital fountain or ball pen in a preset or custom color spectrum.

Best note taking app for mac and iphone

GoodNotes also has built-in handwriting search recognition and text conversion (done via MyScript's engine, which also powers MyScript Nebo).

Note: As friend-of-iMore Jason Snell has pointed out, apps like GoodNotes do this largely by guessing your words. You might get a hit for 'app' after writing the word, but searching for 'ape' might bring you to the same page.

If you're looking for a more extensive option than Notability, GoodNotes is a feature-rich app well worth the download.

For Office users, OneNote is great

Microsoft's note app is more of a note storing receptacle than a full-featured note-taking app. That being said, it's got plenty of useful features for iPad owners with an Office 365 subscription. Even if you don't you can import and edit documents for free. You just need a Microsoft or Skype account. With OneNote, you can share links to your notebooks to the public, email a PDF of your notebook to others, and annotate documents with your Apple Pencil. In a single note, you can sketch an idea, add photos and audio, type notes, create calendars, and more. It's similar to Evernote but is designed to work seamlessly with Office 365.

PDF Expert is the king of PDF annotation and markup

Though you can quickly highlight, edit, and markup PDFs on your iPad using the built-in Markup extension, if you regularly need to annotate PDF files, you should consider PDF Expert instead. It's got a list of comprehensive markup tools to make things easier for you. You can open up PDFs from iCloud or pretty much any other online service with the PDF Expert app, fill out forms, and sign documents; you can also work with items with a digital pen, shape tool, underline, strike-thru, or highlighter option, as well as create 'stamps' for often-used wording. All of these changes, after saved, are not only fully editable in PDF Expert, but in apps like Adobe Acrobat and Preview — so you can move from Mac to PC and back again with your iPad.

PDF Expert also lets you edit the structure of PDFs themselves: You can rearrange pages, delete sections, extract parts of the PDF, and even add new blank pages to your documents. Once you're finished with a PDF document, you can even zip it (or multiple documents) with PDF Expert's built-in compressor, and password-protect crucial documents.

Should you want to further tinker with your PDFs, Expert offers a Pro upgrade in-app that allows you to physically edit the text, images, and links inside a PDF, as well as redact information.

If you need handwriting recognition, get MyScript Nebo

Forget mere note-taking: If you want your scribbles converted to text, you're going to need an app that supports handwriting conversion. We've come a long way from the Newton and egg freckles, but the apps available for such things are still few and far between. Apps like Notes and GoodNotes scan your text for search purposes, but don't offer outright handwriting recognition. In contrast, there are apps like MyScript Nebo, which offers full handwriting-to-text conversion.

MyScript has been a big name in handwriting recognition for years (including a handwriting recognition keyboard), but the Nebo app is the company's first attempt at an app designed for Apple Pencil and iPad Pro, and it's excellent. It's simple enough to use and offers a silky-smooth digital pen tool in multiple colors. In addition, users can add photographic and video content, diagrams, and equations alongside handwriting or digital text.

Nebo's notebooks can be converted a paragraph at a time or as a full notebook; those conversions are entirely non-destructive, too, so you can preserve the handwriting if the type conversion isn't perfect. You can also export notebooks as text, HTML, PDF, or Word documents. Sync is available through MyScript's proprietary service, as well as iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox.

Here are some other great note-taking apps that don't necessarily fit this list, but are still worth mentioning in their own right.

  • Evernote, Free with in-app subscription: Like Microsoft's OneNote, Evernote is an incredible import repository for organizing a ton of data, notes, documents, and sketches. But to take full advantage of its sync capabilities, PDF annotation, and more, you need a monthly subscription. Evernote is great if you need all the features a subscription provides, but not quite worth jumping in for the free version.
  • LiquidText, Free with in-app purchases: LiquidText is a brilliant concept for organizing and annotating PDFs but it's a little too specialized to be considered equal to PDF Expert.
  • Noteshelf, $13.99: This app combines many great features from Notability and GoodNotes, including custom page templates and audio recordings, but the writing tool isn't quite as good.
  • Notes Plus, $9.99: Notes Plus is a strong entry in the handwriting recognition category with support for Apple Pencil — but it's a little clunkier in the looks department, with iffy palm rejection.
  • Whink, $4.99: Whink is a great entry-level handwriting app, and it's still quite nice, offering nice pen tools, audio and photo integration, and basic document annotation. But the stock Notes app is a better overall recommendation for most users.

Your favorites?

These note-taking apps are the perfect fit for iPad and Apple Pencil users. They're not the only ones in the App Store, though. Do you have a favorite you'd like to see on this list? Put them in the comments!

Updated April 2019: Updated for Apple Pencil 2 and support for iPad Air 3 and iPad mini 5.

Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.

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Taking notes on a Mac is as simple as opening Notes and starting to type. But the best way to take notes actually depends on your own personal habits and workflow.

Some people are better with sticky notes that stay on your screen all the time, or an app that syncs seamlessly with Evernote. If your notes tend to turn into blog posts, an app like MarsEdit can keep them organized until they’re ready to publish.

Setapp collection is packed with useful apps that might fit your unique way of note-taking better than a one-size-fits-all solution like Apple’s own Notes. With over 150 apps to choose from — and a free trial — you’re bound to find the best app for jotting down your thoughts. Here are our favorites.

Best note-taking apps for Mac

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Get the most out of your notes - with a huge set of top Mac apps in one pack!


Capture ideas with Unclutter

Unclutter is perfect for capturing the smallest germ of an idea, since it works as both a sticky notes app and a clipboard manager. Because it’s always open, you can write down an idea the second you have it. Unclutter’s notes are sticky because they never go away, and the interface is even better than default sticky notes on the desktop since Unclutter doesn’t clutter up the view when you’re working in other apps.

To access Unclutter, you can just mouse to the top of your screen and scroll down (or choose your own key command), and its three-pane layout appears, with sections labeled Clipboard, Files, and Notes.

In Clipboard, you’ll see a list of everything you’ve copied to your Mac’s clipboard, ready to re-copy and paste whenever and wherever you need. You can star favorite items to keep them accessible here forever.

Files is a handy place to drop files you need an easy access to, like things you’re working on right now.

Unclutter’s Notes pane is a text field where you can type out notes and also drag text and links into. You can keep one long-running note to yourself or create multiple notes and view them in a list — the Search field searches the full text of all of your notes, so you can always find what you’re looking for. All panes are easy to resize to give yourself more room.

Unclutter is easy to fit into your workflow since it’s always there, and the search field helps you find things later. Dropbox integration even syncs your Unclutter files and notes across multiple Macs. When you want to turn your thoughts into something more edited, you can choose another note-taking app from Setapp.

MarsEdit and Strike for blogging

MarsEdit makes it easy to create content, cleverly edit what you write, and integrate with WordPress as well as other blog publishing services right from the app. Besides giving you a place to write in Markdown or Rich and Plain text, MarsEdit lets you build and format robust blog posts, complete with links, images, and other media. You can add tags and schedule your posts to go live anytime.

MarsEdit even makes it easy to gather links and media to blog about. It has a Safari extension that lets you save URLs and start blogging instantly once you find something worth writing about.

If you’re looking for a writing tool that allows to collaborate on a doc, you should go with Strike. This effortless text editor lets up to 10 people to work on the same content in real time.

Improve your writing‎ with Ulysses

Ulysses is a writing app with outstanding organizational features, so you can move from notes to an outline to a full manuscript. In fact, Ulysses is a popular app for Mac users participating in NaNoWriMo, a month-long exercise that encourages people to write a novel. It has all kinds of features to get you to write more, from flexible themes to eliminate distractions, to writing goals that count words written.

You can use Ulysses to post to a WordPress blog, export Word documents, or even format an entire ebook. But at the most fundamental level, it’s a great note-taking app because you never have to save anything, and your writing can sync between multiple Macs and iOS devices via iCloud or Dropbox. Your notes can contain images, keywords, and PDFs. The search function is incredibly thorough; for example, you can find keywords in notes created before a certain date, in case you want to see how your thoughts about something have evolved over time.

Take study notes with Studies

While other note-taking apps are flexible enough to handle work and personal topics side-by-side, Studies is created especially for those in academic settings. It’s designed to take your notes and turn them into study notes, which are basically flashcards on steroids.

Instead of a traditional two-sided flashcard for memorizing terms, the study notes in Studies can have as many “sides” as you need. They can contain text, images, videos, even audio. This makes them flexible enough that you can create study notes for any subject, from accounting to zoology. You can share study notes with classmates or even download pre-written note sets from Quizlet.

Then, you can use Studies to quiz yourself. The app can set up a schedule for you, based on prepping for an exam or just learning the material as quickly as you can. It chooses notes to study every day, and the cards you got wrong will re-appear more frequently in future sessions, so you can get it right.

Setapp puts all best note-taking apps together

Note Taking Apps For Macbook

All these note-taking apps are available in Setapp, so you have access to them all for your ideal workflow. You could start an idea as a sticky note in Uncluttered, paste it into Alternote, where you flesh out the idea a little more. That syncs it to Evernote, which you can also connect to Blogo, and turn that note into a full-featured blog post for the world to read.

It’s all up to you, and Setapp lets you focus on the work, instead of finding the right apps, buying them, and then buying them again for updates. Just consider subscribing once and then all you have to do is write.

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