TopXNotes is a native Mac note-taking app that landed alongside Evernote on Lifehack's list of best note-taking software. The application supports rich-text notes and password protection. The Best Note-Taking Apps of 2018. Zoho Notebook is a free Mac app that makes note-taking simple, but to be really useful. The Best Travel Apps of 2018. Apple's Notes app is a great starting point for handwriting on the iPad Pro.The default drawing tool is a pen, and you get a horizontal sheet of paper to draw on. One nice touch is the.
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- Best Note App For Mac
Man, it’s a great time to be a note-taker.
For a couple of decades—first as a student, then as a professional journalist—I filled notebook after notebook with notes, covering classes, press conferences, interviews, and more. When I was done, I’d have to find someplace to store them until (most likely) I’d throw them out. The notes I did keep? Useless. My on-the-fly handwriting is a horrible thing.
The result: A lot of personal and professional history gone to waste.
The process got better when laptop adoption became widespread and I could start typing my notes in real time as a speech or lecture was being delivered. It improved yet again when Google Docs came along, and storage ceased to be a worry.
Mobile devices, though, transformed everything. The productivity charts in the app stores are awash in great note-taking apps, ranging from the complicated—Evernote would let you describe every part of your life with enough detail to satisfy three of the five senses—to the useful-but-relatively-one-dimensional (think of the naive Notes app on iOS). For the first time in decades, I don’t have to carry pen and paper everywhere I go. All I need is my smartphone, and I’m ready to go to class, conduct an interview, or cover a fire as a breaking news story.
So which app is the best?
To determine that, TechHive picked a number of note-taking apps, popular either with the public—as determined by the iOS and Android app store charts—or which have received sterling notices in the tech press. And to test them, I used each in my everyday life—for reporting and writing news stories, as well as everyday tasks like making grocery lists, or to store away a great thought or quote.
I had three criteria for judging these note-taking apps: They had to be versatile. They had to help me get organized, easily and intuitively. And they had to be accessible—a note that will live on my iPhone and my iPhone only is not a note that’s ultimately useful to me: I might take the notes on a mobile device, but I might write a paper or a story on a laptop or desktop— so I want quick, easy access to the notes in both locations.
Oh, and while I used Apple gear in the testing of these apps, I didn’t want to preclude the idea that someday soon I might switch to a Nexus tablet instead: The apps had to be available on both major mobile platforms, to give users maximum flexibility.
The winner: Evernote
Um, surprise?
There’s a reason Evernote (free; iOS and Android) is generally thought of as a best-in-class note-taker: It’s the best in class, and it easily surpassed my desires in each of the three criteria I was judging by:
- Versatility: I took my iPad to a morning breaking-news conference and fired up the app. I typed in notes during the question-and-answer portion of the presser, used the app to take pictures of charts displayed during the event, and after it was over used the microphone to record a quick on-the-spot interview with one of the participants. Shifting between functions was seamless: I just clicked the “Add Attachment” button in the upper right-hand corner, chose which medium to operate in, and moved on from there. Easy as pie.
- Great organization: This didn’t matter so much at the press conference, but Evernote is easily—and endlessly—organizable. You can create notebooks to cover broad topics, and then create individual notes in each. Plus, you can tag the notes, to further refine your searches and your overall ability to find your information later.
- Accessibility: When the press conference was over, I put my iPad away, rushed back to the office, fired up my computer, and immediately opened Evernote on the Web: Everything was right there—and would’ve been if I’d tried accessing it on Android or a Windows computer, too. (I could also have downloaded Evernote for Mac, but I hadn’t done that. In any case, I’d rather shift back and forth between browser tabs than shift between apps; your own mileage may vary.) The story was finished within about 30 minutes. That’s efficiency, folks.
If there’s a drawback, it’s that the free account limits you to 60 MB of uploads per month: Power users beware. But upgrading to a premium account—and up to 1 GB of data uploads per month—costs just $45 a year.
The runner-up: Simplenote
No, this app isn’t nearly as versatile as Evernote. Simplenote(free; iOS and Android)—as the name implies—is simple. You write stuff down, and that’s it.
Then again, the vast majority of the note taking I do is just writing stuff down. And one person’s versatility can be another person’s clutter can be another person’s app overstuffed with features.
When it comes down to it, Simplenote isn’t that stripped down—and it’s certainly an improvement in several ways over the native iOS Notes app: For one thing, cut-and-paste quotes are stripped of coding, so everything you paste and type has the same, simple text-style font and format. And you can tag each note as much as you want, making organization a snap.
What’s more, Simplenote is easily accessible: It’s available as a Web app, and as a download for iOS, Mac, Android, and Kindle devices. But don’t be fooled by this name: In this case simplicity is a virtue, in the cause of simply getting stuff done.
Best for Microsoft users: Microsoft OneNote
While I found Evernote and Simplenote to be the best overall note-taking apps, others stood out for specific features, which you might want to consider depending on your needs.
Microsoft OneNote (free; iOS and Android) is a lot like Evernote—and yet not quite enough like Evernote.
Like Evernote, it’s versatile: It’s easy to add pictures, tables, and hyperlinks to your notes. Like Evernote, you can organize your notes into broad notebooks and narrower note entries. And like Evernote, it’s accessible via a broad array of devices, including for Mac and iOS. So that’s good!
Unlike Evernote, it lacks an audio recording capability, and thus there’s no opportunity to review a lecture or interview to make sure you wrote down everything correctly. Also unlike Evernote, accessing notes on other devices is not a seamless transition. OneNote.com (the app’s Web version) offered me ads for related Microsoft products, but it never showed a way to get past the ads and simply make notes when using Safari. (It performed better in Firefox.)
The app does offer lots of formatting options, but that almost seems like a distraction: It’s as if Microsoft 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.
So why use it? The prime audience will, of course, be current Microsoft customers, especially users of its OneDrive cloud-based system for creating documents and presentations. If you’re not already a Microsoft fan, this app won’t be quite as alluring.
Best stylus companion: Penultimate
This is a specialty note-taker worth mentioning, because some people just like the feel of a stylus in their hand when taking notes. Penultimate (free; iPad) rewards them with a responsive user interface that allows for both taking notes and sketching. And it’s part of the Evernote ecosystem, making it easy to access your hand-written notes and drawings on other devices aside from your iPad.
Others of note
This is a good time to mention that there aren’t really any bad note-taking apps out there. It’s just that some aren’t superlative as others. The following apps all have their strengths, save one: All of them are built primarily for iOS. If you’re an Android user, you might want to turn to well-regarded offerings like Papryus (free), Note Everything (free), or Google Keep (free).
Notability ($3) remains among my favorite note-takers: It’s like a mix of Evernote and Penultimate, letting users create notes using a range of techniques—handwriting, typing, taking pictures, capturing audio, and more. Its best feature? If you’ve recorded a lecture and taken notes simultaneously, Notability syncs the two—just tap a word in the middle of your notes, and the app will find that same spot in the audio, helping you rediscover and remember the context of your half-formed thought.
App developer Ginger Labs recently launched a companion app for the Mac ($10; OS X 10.9 or later), where you can sync your notes via iCloud across devices. If you're not a Mac user, you can still access your notes on a computer, but only by syncing your account with Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, or webDAV. Students may find its audio sync feature especially helpful for taking notes during long lectures.
Super Note (free) shares a lot of Notability’s features, but with a simpler and perhaps more intuitive user interface: It only incorporates typed notes, pictures, and recordings. It may also go a little further in helping you get organized, with color-coded arrows to guide the way. You’ve got one option for syncing to your desktop computer: Dropbox.
NoteMaster ($4) has separate apps for the iPhone and iPad. They both feature plenty of formatting options, easy organizing rules, and the ability to insert photos. You can sync the notes using Google Docs or Dropbox. (However, if you’re thinking about using the Google Docs app to take notes on a mobile device: Don’t. Get this app, and you’ll have a more pleasant visual experience, at the very least.)
Vesper ($3) isn’t really a classroom app: It’s an iPhone-only offering (though that may change soon) that’s built more for an individual’s on-the-fly thinking. Got an idea for that song you’re writing? Jot it down quickly. Want to make a poem about that pretty flower? Take a picture and jot down your thoughts. The app has limited syncing options—basically, unless you send the notes in an SMS message or an email, will only be able to access it from… your other iPhones also equipped with the Vesper app. But stay tuned: This app may have a different story to tell next semester.
There is no shortage of good note-taking apps out there, and your criteria may differ from mine. Though Evernote will likely be the best choice for most users, you should feel free to try several of these options—most of them have free versions—and see what works for you.
Editor's note: This article was updated on 09/03/2014 at 4:45 PM PST to highlight Notability's new app for the Mac and to correct a typo.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
Notes apps are prevalent in the iOS App Store, and the millions who use them seem to want different things from each app. Unlike mail apps where your goal is to read, sort, and delete mail, or weather apps for checking the daily forecast, finding the right notes app presents a bigger challenge in determining which is the best.
Some users want a minimalistic approach to notes, while others are looking for a notes app that is feature-rich with different tools and customizations.
Bear, from Shiny Frog, accomplishes both by designing a user experience that balances the needs of each user, which is just one of the reasons why we think it is the best note-taking app on iOS.
Criteria
No matter how simple or robust you want your notes app to be, we looked for a specific set of qualities when testing each candidate:
- Features – Ideally, our favorite note-taking apps are able to sync reliably with cloud services, handle copy conflicts, have easy importing/exporting, hold a large number of notes without showing slowdowns, and offer sharing options to other apps. Additionally, search is a huge factor; we’d like our app to be able to find a note quickly no matter how many we have.
- Design – Great UI and UX design is paramount when using a notes app. The reading and writing environment needs to be simple yet functional, and navigation around the app should feel natural.
- Ease of use – If we have to look up how to figure out an app, then it’s not going to make the cut. A great notes app will be intuitive enough to create, find, and organize our notes on first launch.
- Price – Like other apps we review at The Sweet Setup, we are happy to pay for a great tool — though, having a price tag on an app doesn’t always reflect its quality. As long as we think the price is fair, we are more than happy to download and support iOS developers.
The Best Notes app: Bear
The first thing that will strike you is Bear’s exquisite aesthetic. Its UI has a level of polish that feels even nicer than some first-party apps on your iOS device.
Before reading the three introductory notes written by the developers, Bear’s design should feel familiar to anyone who has used a notes app before.
The app launches you into your list of notes. If you swipe to the right of your notes, the side bar will slide in from the left exposing settings, tags, and trash. If you tap into a note in your list, the editor will slide in from the right.
By default, Bear includes three helpful notes that explain how the app works and guides you through the features.
Bear is free to download, and the majority of its features come included. Bear Pro, which costs $1.49 per month (with a one-week free trial) or $14.99 per year (with a one-month free trial), includes three valuable features: cross-device sync (Bear is also available for free on macOS), app themes, and advanced file export. Bear Pro will also be required to use Bear on the web when the new browser-supported feature debuts sometime this year. This business model seems to be working well for Bear’s developers, and the app has quickly implemented many new features since its original release.
Wait. There’s a Bonus….
Custom Productivity Templates
We have a set of custom productivity templates that work well with the iPad app, GoodNotes. And if you want to try them out, we’ve put together a free guide that can help you.
We’ll show you…
- How to create and save custom page templates in GoodNotes.
- How to use those page templates to transform GoodNotes into your own productivity notebook (or any other type of notebook replacement).
Plus, we also have included a couple of our custom productivity templates for you to get started with. These templates are right out of our popular productivity course.
The custom templates and the guide are available for FREE to our email subscriber community. And you can get it right now. By joining the Sweet Setup community you’ll also get access to our other guides, early previews to big new reviews and workflow articles we are working on, weekly roundups of our best content, and more.
Notes List
Your notes list displays the title, two lines of text, and multiple image thumbnails per note. The last time a note has been modified or created is displayed to the left of each note.
In Bear’s settings, you have a few options as to how you can sort your notes list. You can have it sort by modification date, creation date, or by title. Modification date and creation date can be further sorted by either oldest to newest or newest to oldest, and title sorting can be further sorted by A to Z or Z to A.
Bear’s left sidebar includes a few extra ways to sort and find your notes.
- Any note you’ve left untagged (more on that down below) is left in an “Untagged” filter. This is perfect for staying on top of any organizational workflows you may have.
- Any notes you’ve touched today, be it an edited or new note, will appear in the “Today” filter — great for staying on top of your most recently used notes.
- Any notes with a to-do item that hasn’t been checked off will appear in the “Todo” filter. This function is great for ensuring you follow up on a task inside a note before either sending the note into a different part of Bear or into the archive.
- Any notes you’ve archived out of your broader notes list will be kept in the “Archive.”
Archiving notes in Bear works great, except for one little hiccup: Any notes you archive will be hidden from any global search function. So, if you archive a note and want to search for it later, Bear will only show search results for unarchived notes. This diminishes the value of the note archive, in our opinion, and we hope to see a more globalized search function in the future.
There are times when you want a note to be easily accessible every time you launch the app. Bear gives this to you in the form of pinning. By swiping left on a note in your list, you can choose to pin that note to the top of your list so that it’s easy to access no matter how your notes are sorted.
Swiping left on a note also gives you a quick way to trash a note and a More button that exposes a menu that allows you to share the note, export the note, get a link to the note, duplicate the note, or copy the note identifier to use in apps like Shortcuts.
With 3D Touch on iPhone, a note in your list will show a larger preview of the note, and if you swipe up from there you get the same options as swiping right on a note. 3D Touch is also available on the home screen, which exposes quick actions for a new note, new to-do, new photo, and search.
For notes that contain a checklist of items, Bear uses the dividing line below the note in your list to show you your progress in checking off each item.
Search
You can tap the search button located in the upper right corner of your notes list, or you can swipe down anywhere in your notes list to bring in the search bar. Searching in Bear is incredibly fast. As you type in the search bar, the app is instantaneously surfacing each relevant note and highlighting the term in the note preview. As mentioned above though, any notes in your archive won’t appear during these searches.
The app indexes almost instantly and search works great even if you don’t have internet connectivity.
Bear offers many advanced search options for those who want to search for specific phrases, notes excluding certain words, or even notes that have certain elements within them like to-dos. You can find the full list of advanced search options on their FAQ.
Editor
To compose a new note, tap the circular button floating in the bottom right corner of your notes list.
In a new note, the editor has three buttons along the top: a back button, share button, and an information button. As you’d expect, the back button brings you back to your notes list, and the share button brings up an iOS share sheet.
Best Note Taking App For Macbook Pro
The information button serves a few purposes. When you tap the button (represented by a circle and lower case “i” in the center) a new section slides in over the editor from the right. Starting from the top, you see the following information and options:
- Last modification date and time
- Word count
- Character count
- Read time
- Paragraph count
- The device you last edited on
- Creation date and time
- File export
While each Bear note is stored in plain text, the information section offers you seven ways to export your note.
- Plain Text
- Markdown
- HTML
- Rich Text Format
- DOCX
- JPG
Exporting a note in one of these formats is quick with a simple tap and becomes a valuable part of the app if you are sharing notes with multiple people using different platforms.
If you just want to export a selection of text, Bear has a Copy As button on the iOS text selection menu that you can use to export to Markdown, HTML, Plain Text, and text without tags.
Writing
When writing in Bear, your notes are displayed in a rich preview with support for inline images. It’s really valuable while writing as it minimizes distractions. Bear also can detect elements like an address, for example, and will format it to be clickable in Maps.
If you are a Markdown user, you can toggle on Bear’s Markdown compatibility mode which will automatically format your Markdown as a rich preview while you are writing. Another natively supported markup language is Polar Bear. Polar Bear is Bear’s spin on CommonMark. Keep in mind, while Bear may be displaying your notes in a pretty way, it isn’t altering your markup as it’s storing all notes as plain text.
The keyboard shortcut bar is where you access all the tools necessary to help you write; from to-do lists and sketches to outlines and long-form pieces. Listing from left to right, here is what’s available in the shortcut bar:
- Take photo/choose from camera roll
- Sketching
- Tags
- In-app links to other notes
- Headers
- Horizontal rule
- Bold, italics, underline, and strikethrough
- Link
- Bulleted and numbered lists
- Quote
- Checkbox
- Code snippet, code block, and highlights
- Attachments
- Calendar dates
- Indent and outdent
- Shift up and shift down
- Undo and redo
- Directional cursor selection
Swiping through and tapping on the different options helps make writing in Bear both convenient and fast.
Organization
While search is fast and near-instant, when you start accumulating a lot of notes or are working on a project with notes associated with each other, organization becomes important. Bear offers two nice features, tags and note links, to help you get to the note you want faster.
Tags
The tags feature is really simple to learn, but is also very powerful. To add a tag, use the number sign to hashtag a word. No matter where you place this hashtag in your note, the tag will now show up in the sidebar of Bear for quick access to that note or multiple notes. While typing out a tag, a picker menu pops up and changes as you type, making it easy to select a tag that already exists.
To take your note organization further, you can have nested sub tags that allow you to break out tags under a parent tag. As an example, here’s how you would organize writing this review in Bear.
#TheSweetSetup
#TheSweetSetup/research
#TheSweetSetup/outline
#TheSweetSetup/review
Bear also supports tag names with spaces. Just add a hash to the end of a tag.
#The Sweet Setup#
Each tag you create will show up in that left sidebar for quick viewing, and you can also customize how these tags look in the sidebar. Simply tap and hold on any tag and change the tag’s “TagCon” to any of the included tag icons available. TagCons are very popular and a great way for visual people to scan their notes list in short order.
Note links
Complimentary to tags, note links allow you to link to another note. You can do this in two ways.
The first way is by typing the title of the note that you want to link to in between two brackets, like so:
[[Title Goes Here]]
. Bear doesn’t look for upper or lower casing when entering the title.The second way is to navigate to the notes list, swipe left on a note, tap More, and tap Copy link. When you paste the link in a note, Bear automatically recognizes that it’s a note link and formats it appropriately using the title of the note.
Sketching
Within a note, you can launch a sketch by using the keyboard shortcut represented by a squiggly line. This will bring you to a blank canvas with a pencil, marker, and eraser tool. Each drawing tool has three widths and eleven colors to choose from. After you start a sketch, undo and redo buttons are also available.
The Sketching functionality has room for improvement as it currently doesn’t allow you to edit sketches after being added to your note, and while an Apple Pencil can be used as a stylus, Bear isn’t leveraging the sensor technology that is available to developers to detect pressure and other sensitivity.
Typography and Themes
By default, Bear uses Avenir Next. In the editor menu of Bear’s settings, you can choose from seven different fonts and adjust the font size, line height, line width, and paragraph spacing.
While Bear’s default theme is very pretty to work out of, there are 14 more themes in Bear’s settings and each one is stunning in its own way. The High Contrast and Panic Mode themes are among some of our favorites to use. If you’re using the iPhone X, the Dieci theme makes best use the iPhone’s true black display.
Based on the theme you have chosen, Bear gives you the option to match its home screen icon to that theme.
We used Bear to write this review and it was a pleasure to work in the different visual environments.
Sync
Bear uses Apple’s CloudKit to sync your notes across your iOS and macOS devices. What’s nice is that once Bear Pro is purchased, sync just works out of the box because you are already signed into iCloud on your devices.
For this review, we used Bear on an iPhone, iPad, and Mac to test out the syncing capabilities. We were happy to find no issues while using Bear in normal use and were impressed by how fast sync works. Even when intentionally trying to edit a note on two devices at the same time, Bear handled potential conflicts really well by preserving edits on both devices and adding conflicted copies to the notes list.
Bear syncs your notes every chance it gets. If you want to make sure a sync is happening, there is a sync status section in the settings area that shows when the last sync occurred.
Import/Export
In Bear’s preferences there is an Import & Export section. From here, you can import notes from other apps and services on your device like Dropbox and Google Drive, and you can customize how Bear handles titles for imported notes. If you are migrating away from another notes app, Bear has posted migration tips on their FAQ for Apple Notes, DayOne, Evernote, SimpleNote, Ulysses, and Vesper.
The export section exports your entire notes library 1 with customization for including tags and attachments and an option to merge all notes into one file. In addition to the seven file types offered when exporting a single note, bulk export options include Task Paper, Bear Note, and Text Bundle formats.
At the bottom of the Import & Export section, you can back up or restore all of your notes using Bear’s .bearbk file extension.
Extension and iMessage App
Bear’s iOS app extension is impressive. You can activate it inside any app supporting the iOS share sheet, and it can start a new note, append a note, or prepend a note based on what you have selected. Notes created or appended via the extension can include text you’ve selected, a link to a podcast in Overcast, or even just a web page in Safari. Bear can add the raw link or title the link when adding it to your note.
Taking the extension further, Bear can download the content of a web page to a note. Think of it like Instapaper for Bear. This works very well for written content.
As a fun bonus, if you are a sticker user in iMessage, Bear includes over ten stickers of a bear doing different things like laughing, drinking coffee, and sleeping.
Two Fun Ways to Use Bear
We’ve published two somewhat unique workflows outlining different ways to use Bear on iOS. Our editor-in-chief, Josh Ginter, uses Bear in multiple ways, including:
The first workflow uses iOS URL functionality to overcome one of the biggest limitations in Things 3: note attachments. Say you have a PDF or a photo you need to attach to a task. Using Things 3 alone, you won’t be able to put the attachment directly into the task’s note. Using Bear, you can create and paste a link into your task’s note in Things 3 which links to a note with all your attachments in Bear. This way you can add text, PDFs, URLs, photos, screenshots, and written annotations to your tasks and reference them quickly and easily.
The second workflow uses Bear as a catch-all repository for all sorts of media on iOS. Say you read an interesting quote in a book. You can snap a screenshot, highlight the parts of the text you want to remember and make any other annotations, save the annotated screenshot in Bear, and let the idea stew for awhile. If you want to save that note permanently in your personal journal, you can send it to Day One. If you want to turn the idea into a task, you can create a new task in Things 3 and use the note as an attachment repository (as mentioned above). Or, if you just want to let the idea rest in Bear for future reference, you can do that too.
In a way, Bear can become your own personal pinboard, scrapbook, and binder full of neat memories, research, quotes, URLs, photos, and more.
A New Kind of Notes App: Agenda
Agenda debuted a new take on how a notes app should work back in the late 2017. Agenda first debuted on the Mac and combines your notes list with your calendar, allowing you to organize your notes by applying them to a specific event or to a specific timeframe of the day. For many users, this paradigm is picture perfect: think taking meeting minutes, preparing for a pitch, or preparing notes for a board meeting.
Agenda’s iOS app took a few months of development before it debuted on the iOS App Store, but every unique feature found in the Mac app can be found in the iOS apps as well.
Agenda allows for multiple methods of organizing your notes, but the major form of organization is handled through projects. Each project is part of a category. Notes are created by tapping the + button and can be assigned to any date in the past, present, or future. If you have a meeting next week, you can assign your note to that date and time slot. Agenda’s premium features even allow you to create an event inside Agenda. The major advantage to assigning dates or events to a note is how it allows you to search for your notes based on date. You can jump through your calendar to look at the notes you took at that respective time. Again, for many users, this paradigm is likely to be powerful.
Agenda’s design is nothing to scoff at, either. The app has a simple, elegant design that fits within the latest iOS aesthetics. Like Bear, Agenda relies on heavy use of Avenir Next. Unlike Bear, however, Agenda has limited customization options to make the app’s design your own.
Best Mac Note Taking App
Agenda’s developers have also implemented a unique pricing method that deserves some attention. Agenda for iOS is free to download and you can unlock its premium features with an in-app purchase. That in-app purchase unlocks all current features across all your devices (you can purchase either the iOS-only option or the cross-platform option) and unlocks all features released in the following 12 months after your purchase. After that 12-month timeframe has lapsed, you can renew your in-app purchase to continue using all the latest features from Agenda’s developers. This is a unique pricing method and we’re curious to see how it plays out in the long run.
We think Bear is the best pick for note-taking on iPhone and iPad, but it’s very clear that Agenda will tick the right boxes for certain types of users. In much the same way physical agendas in the past provided areas for you to take and keep notes for a specific date or event, Agenda for iOS brings that old fashioned power to your iPhone or iPad.
Runners-up
With such an abundance of notes apps to test, the following runners-up deserve honorable mentions.
- 1Writer – 1Writer is a simple yet flexible app for notes and long-form writing. Primarily Markdown focused, 1Writer syncs with iCloud and Dropbox and boasts an impressive amount of customization.
- Apple Notes – Apple Notes is the fantastic default notes app for iOS. We think it will exceed the needs of a lot of iOS users and impress the more seasoned users with its capabilities. It’s deeply integrated around the entire OS, including Siri, but leaves some features to be desired, like Markdown support, code block support, font-choices, and theme choices. (That textured background is still hanging on.)
- Drafts – Drafts is a Markdown-equipped app that can sync with different services and is jam-packed with every option one could imagine. It makes for a great power-user notes app, but it may feel overwhelming for some.
- Simplenote – A veteran notes app for iOS, Simplenote lives up to its name. It delivers a straight-forward, easy way to take down and organize notes with its own unique sync service and tagging system. Its design is — well — simple.
- Evernote — Evernote is a giant in the notes space. It can do more feature-wise than most of its competitors, but we think it falls short in other ways. Its interface is clunky and crowded, over time you are nudged to try new features via pop-ups, and even when paying for premium, its search could use improvement.
- OneNote — OneNote’s user experience paradigm is less than ideal. The hierarchy of notebooks, tabs, and notes within tabs makes it overwhelming once you are over a handful of notes. That being said, it’s feature-rich and has many things in common with Evernote. If you are coming from the desktop app, this may feel like home for you, but a new iOS notes user could find OneNote overwhelming.
Mac Note Taking Software
Wait. There’s a Bonus….
Custom Productivity Templates
We have a set of custom productivity templates that work well with the iPad app, GoodNotes. And if you want to try them out, we’ve put together a free guide that can help you.
We’ll show you…
Best Note App For Mac And Android
- How to create and save custom page templates in GoodNotes.
- How to use those page templates to transform GoodNotes into your own productivity notebook (or any other type of notebook replacement).
Plus, we also have included a couple of our custom productivity templates for you to get started with. These templates are right out of our popular productivity course.
The custom templates and the guide are available for FREE to our email subscriber community. And you can get it right now. By joining the Sweet Setup community you’ll also get access to our other guides, early previews to big new reviews and workflow articles we are working on, weekly roundups of our best content, and more.
Conclusion
There is a level of personal preference when it comes to picking your notes app on iOS. The market of apps seems to grow each day, and finding the right balance of features, design, ease of use, and price is a monumental task. We think Bear exceeds those requirements and hope this helps you find the tool that works best for you.
Best Note App For Mac
- For single note export, use the information panel within the note. ↩