Note-taking apps are as crucial as any other app on our phones. It’s challenging for people to put notes, thoughts, ideas, and even tasks inside their heads. That is why many people scribble things down to refer back to them later.
Nonetheless, the habit of bringing a notepad has become out-of-date and is becoming rare. An average person always has their phone with them, making notes through note-taking apps extremely hassle-free and easy.
What’s more, the major challenge for users is that numerous options make it difficult to find the best note apps for productivity.
What Are the Best Apps for Note Taking?
Notion
In case you didn’t know yet, Notion is a unique productivity app that offers everything you need to take important notes and finish tasks from your smartphone. And yes, you can also access the memos and notes you make with Notion from and on your devices. How cool is that?
The app calls itself an all-in-one place for your wikis, tasks, notes, and databases. Indeed, it can be utilized for all of that. The app also helps you make a custom structure for your notes and keep track of your projects.
The best part here is that the app offers different templates that can be utilized to arrange things such as annual goals, quick notes, movie lists, travel plans, meeting notes, personal journals, grocery lists, and many more.
With this app, you can easily copy notes and share them with other people so they can access them. Users who have access to your note can comment. You can also switch from a dark to a light theme to make it easier for your eyes.
Overall, Notion is one of those compelling note-taking apps for iPad, and you’ll hardly be able to discover all of its features.
Key Features
⦁ Very small size
⦁ Has both dark and light themes
⦁ Simple to use
⦁ Available to use Android, iOS, Mac, Windows and on Web
Obsidian
Obsidian is the best note-taking app for Android, focusing on making connections between your notes. Keep in mind that this works on Windows and Android.
This app addresses professionals or developers who wish to keep all their notes in one place and connect numerous files. If you need an app for taking notes on your random ideas or groceries, you won’t need an advanced application like Obsidian.
With this app, you simply do not take notes. You can even open plain text files, write custom code, do advanced interlinking between your notes, make knowledge bases, store data, use outgoing links or backlinks, and many more.
Key Features
⦁ Page previewer on hover
⦁ Works offline
⦁ Note encryption
⦁ Graph view
⦁ Multi-device sync
You can check out our full review of Notion HERE.
Evernote
Evernote is another one of the best apps for productivity built for creative individuals and entrepreneurs to jot down and arrange their thoughts. It’s simple to use and provides numerous time-saving features.
This app guarantees you will effectively capture your memories, projects, ideas, and workflows. The note-taking app enables you to personalize your notes based on your needs while giving you the flexibility to attach audio clips, images, videos, and documents to them.
Evernote helps arrange everything from personal routines to big projects through a single multi-purpose app. Cross-compatibility enables you to continue the notes or view them from your smartphone, tablet, or computer.
Also, the sync features make a real-time backup for your notes on the app’s cloud server. That guarantees you never lose your notes during a disaster.
Key Features
⦁ Effortlessly make to-do lists and notes
⦁ You can set a reminder
⦁ Useful in organizing your ideas
Microsoft One Note
OneNote is one of the best note-taking apps for Android. The software is minimalistic yet loaded with features that everybody needs to take and arrange notes. Did you know that One Note also supports converting handwriting to text, drawing, creating to-do lists, scanning notes, and many other things?
This app has an intuitive interface and is also synchronized with all platforms. Another perk of this app is that your notes will be accessible from any device, thanks to its cloud backup feature. How cool is that? That means you won’t have to think about losing your important notes if your phone gets lost.
Microsoft OneNote is also free and does not have any ads. That’s a great advantage that few note-taking apps for Android provide. If you like to take long notes (such as handwritten notes), this best note-taking app for Android and iOS provides endless paper.
With this app, you can also export your notes as PDT or plain text at any time. Those are some cool features you can enjoy when using this note-taking app.
Key Features
⦁ Advanced collaboration features
⦁ It does not contain adds
⦁ Endless paper for note-taking
⦁ Intuitive UI design
Notability
Notability is a mobile-based note-taking app providing excellent functionality in a compact package. You can easily collaborate with other team members and handle projects using PDF annotation tools and sketching.
The app lets you discover your creativity and provides enough customization options, such as adding images, web pages, GIFs, and more to your notes.
You can also color or edit your notes and arrange them to meet your preferences. Also, you can share memories, ideas, or notes using a third-party app such as AirDrop, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
Notability offers you the feature to make custom content, receive verbal or written comments from colleagues, and utilize audio in your notes by tapping on the file. You can also arrange your notes through customizable features and secure them using a hardware-based authentication such as Touch ID or Face ID.
Key Features
⦁ Link audio recordings
⦁ Combine everything literally
⦁ Make it a blank canvas
⦁ Annotate with an Apple pencil
GoodNotes
GoodNotes is one of those powerful apps for productivity for notetakers everywhere. The app has everything you need to mark PDFs, write music, and take notes.
One of the major differentiators between GoodNotes and other apps for note-taking is its abundance of organizational tools. By default, it enables you to make notebooks and store everything within them.
That’s a crucial difference from a tool such as Apple Notes or Notability, where the software limits your capability to organize. But GoodNotes does not stop there.
The app also provides onboard handwriting recognition, a powerful search function, and many more. You can utilize those features to mark up and annotate imported documents. Also, the app syncs with third-party storage and iCloud, so you can always keep your notes with you.
Key Features
⦁ Search your handwriting
⦁ Annotate your PPTs and PDFs
⦁ Organize your notes
⦁ Personalize your notebooks
⦁ Access your notes on Mac devices
GoogleKeep
GoogleKeep is another one of the best apps for note-taking. As a Google app, you can expect no less. It has been around since 2013 and is lightweight, making it simple to use on any smartphone.
This note-taking app allows you to jot down ideas effortlessly, save articles to read later, make your to-do lists, and keep track of it later. It also uses a card format to present notes reminiscent of sticky notes.
It’s also made simpler because the app can be used offline, so you don’t need to think about the internet. On top of that, you can make notes in any format (voice notes or images) that you can record, and the app will automatically transcribe them for you.
Key Features
⦁ Offline access
⦁ It can be connected with other Google apps
⦁ Simple to use
Final Thoughts
Finding the best note-taking apps for iPad and Android can be challenging because of the many options available. However, the apps in this post will increase your productivity as they all provide cool features and are simple to use.
