With so many apps to consider, we had some pretty strict criteria for what made a great notes app.įirst, the apps had to do what they set out to do, and do it well. See our favorite ways to use automation to improve how you put your notes to work, track action items from meetings, and put an end to regular copy-paste actions.
Microsoft OneNote for a free note-taking app The best note-taking appsĮvernote for the ultimate digital notebook Even with these criteria in place, we still looked at close to 40 different apps. Great note-taking apps should be suitable for lots of different purposes and people, not just a small subset of a small subset. We also excluded super-niche notes apps, like those designed for fiction writers or developers. This might have excluded the app you personally use, but without this requirement in place, we'd have to consider whether Excel or Google Sheets was more efficient for taking notes. For this list, we weren't interested in apps that could be used as notes apps-we only wanted apps that were explicitly designed to be used as notes apps. It's the same with apps: you can write notes in a writing app like Ulysses or throw them in a Google Doc or Gmail draft you can use empty text files or even a sticky notes app. You can write notes on anything: the back of a napkin, an envelope, a ticket stub, and, yes, a notebook.
