The best note-taking apps. Chosen by the community.
31 note-taking apps, chosen by the community. Top of this view: Notes — #2 overall. The overall rank spans all apps and changes with every vote. How the ranking works →
A note-taking app is the program you open more often than any other — and so the choice you regret longest when it turns out wrong. Most people searching here already use one and are unhappy with something: the syncing, the subscription, the sense that their own writing is stuck in someone else's format.
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Three things are worth checking. First the format: are notes stored as text files, as Markdown, or in a closed database, and can you get all of it back out? Second the way in — how fast is a note captured, is there a widget, a keyboard shortcut, dictation? Third, whatever else the app has to do: handwriting with a stylus, PDF annotation, shared notebooks, encryption for individual entries. Someone writing long-form text needs something different from someone collecting shopping lists and meeting notes.
This list is compiled by hand. The order comes from community votes and shifts with every new one.
