68+ Note-Taking Apps: Find Your Perfect Digital Brain!

In this video, I'll share the top apps that I recommend over55.0 for your consideration according to your note taking personality. Full disclosure, I'm not an expert on all of these apps. Most of this research was gathered from me by my team. For more details on any specific app that I mention, check out the YouTube channel called Keep Productive by my friend and app expert Francesco d'. Alessio. Let's start with the Librarian app. These are apps for people with a fundamentally practical relationship to information Studying, collecting, referencing, documenting three top recommendations for this category my first app recommendation is Evernote. Evernote's used by roughly 30% of note takers we've surveyed. As a potential second brain, Evernote excels especially at capturing. It's really great at taking literally any input notes, transcripts, videos, emails and just making it easy to grab, store and organize. Great searching functionality can store and search PDFs, character recognition to read and search the text within images. Plus its files are stored locally on the device for quick access, which means it can be used anywhere on your phone, your tablet, your computer. The next app for librarian style Note takers is OneNote. OneNote tends to be used by those in corporate setting or on Windows devices who want this integrated experience with Windows and Microsoft Office 365. It can store almost anything, has full fast search, character recognition and images. And of course it has quite advanced tablet features so you can draw and sketch with a stylus. And of course it Syncs with Microsoft's OneDrive which allows you to quickly search not just your notes but your entire file library. My third recommendation for our pragmatic action oriented note takers is Google Keep is similar to OneNote and Evernote, but of course it's built for the Google ecosystem so it integrates well with Google Docs, Google Calendar, and the rest of the Google suite. It feels a bit more like creating post it notes so it's got a sense of lightness and an emphasis on taking quick little snippets. Though you can of course always just jump over into Google Docs and link between those Google Docs and Notes in Google Keep there are three great choices. I personally use Evernote most of all my notes apps. However, if you're feeling a little ambitious, here are some more cutting edge or specialized librarian style apps. First is amplenote. Amplenote looks a lot like if Evernote was updated with some of the features from more modern networked notes applications. Features like bidirectional linking where two notes link back and forth to one another. It has what they Call Jots, which are daily journal style notes, and amplenote really prioritizes task management and calendar integration. Next is devonthink. It's like Evernote for power users, and it really excels at file sorting, organization and working with PDFs in particular. A lot of more scholarly or technical note takers use it as a file management app to accompany other more writing centric notes apps. Next is supernotes supernotes reminds me of a minimalist, lightweight, collaborative version of Evernote that's directed specifically at students who want to share compact, simple notes with one another. Inkdrop is like Evernote, but for software developers and engineering types. It's specifically designed for organizing a specific kind of notes, which are called markdown format, improving developer workflows, acting basically as a companion to anyone creating new software, whether solo or with a team. Next Nimbus Notes Nimbus seems very similar to Evernote, but it's built with more of a focus on teams and collaboration. It's got a slick user interface, easy to share your notes with others on a team or at your company, and can easily be shared even with external clients. Next Zotero. It's a way to capture references to external sources, format them particularly for academic work. It prioritizes getting your metadata right easy to reference or export into other written works. Some alternatives to Zotero that are similar include Mendeley, Endnote and Jabref. Let's jump into the Architect style. These are apps for people who approach everything about their note taking with a systems mindset of architecting their knowledge. First, we have Notion. Notion is used by roughly 20% of the thousands of notetakers we've surveyed. It excels visual presentation, sorting your notes. You can organize and reformat your notes into databases, galleries, tables, lists and even Kanban board views so you can reuse your notes and your data in ways that allow you to have this high level view of everything that you've captured. So you can think of it almost like a coding environment in the sense that you can build almost anything from it, and that's why it's so appealing to architect style notetakers. Second, we have the Craft app. It's quite similar to Notion, but built specifically with the Apple ecosystem and mobile and tablet in mind. It's aesthetically pleasing, well structured. Craft is a great option for architects who don't necessarily want to go into hardcore database mode all the time. Notion and Craft are my current top recommendations for architects, but if you're interested in diving into more options, here are a few rapid fire options Obsidian is an app primarily for the Gardener style note takers who are looking to explore their thoughts. But I mention it here because with the right plugins you can totally deck it out like an architect. We'll talk more about Obsidian later. Dendron is an Obsidian like app with a huge focus on developers. Think of it like a development environment for your knowledge. It should feel very at home for software developers and engineers who want a note taking companion. Wally is a visually oriented app that feels me like a stripped down version of Notion that's oriented toward organizing your information as a creative individual or as an agency, and in a way that's structured for clients and external collaborators. Microsoft Loop is Microsoft's version of an app like Notion that integrates into the Microsoft Suite. Hasn't been around too long at this point, but will be interesting to watch. Upnote is like a simplified version of Notion with clean, useful visuals and blocks, but with a user interface built around notebooks that will feel familiar for Evernote users. The Clover app is similar to Notion in terms of organizational frameworks, but it has, I would say, a greater level of flexibility and integration with visual freeform, almost canvas like elements, almost like a whiteboard with a stronger organizational bent. Bundled Notes is an interesting fun list maker and tagger that you can use to track simple or even more complex lists of almost anything. It has this unique bundling user interface that's quite different from most apps on this list. And finally, Rapid Fire. Here are a few Notes apps I think of as either mind mapping tools or knowledge palaces. We have Zedler, which prioritizes Zettelkasten style thinking, tiddlywiki for capturing your personal thoughts and sharing them on a mini website for your knowledge Marginote for a way of annotating and connecting your notes and documents together Tinderbox for developer types who want to create intricate code driven mind maps and the Brain app which combines mind mapping with wiki functionality. In summary, we like both Notion and Craft apps, but the Architect style Note takers out there. You have a lot of new and interesting options these days. Let's move on to type three apps for Gardeners. These are apps that approach everything about note taking with a nurturing kind of exploratory approach and making unexpected connections. First we have Roam Research. Roam is responsible for really kicking off the birth of what's sometimes called networked note taking. Roam introduced the key innovation for many Gardener style notetakers, backlinking, which are also known as bi directional links. What bidirectional links allow you to do is just mention a page or a topic in the midst of your writing and then it automatically links from there to all the different notes that mention that same topic. This allows you to start typing and anywhere in your notes app and quickly create a structure kind of out of thin air. Next, we have Obsidian. Obsidian has many of the benefits of Roam the ability to quickly create notes that link to one another to reference old thoughts quickly and honestly. A lot of what has made Roam appealing to many gardeners where Obsidian shines is security, speed and the ability to structure your thinking more cleanly into folder like hierarchies once your thoughts start coming together and emerging. Additionally, Obsidian's files are stored locally on the device and are in what's called markdown format, so it's really easy to secure your files and even if you need to export them to a different app. Roam and Obsidian are the apps I most recommend for gardeners, but if you still haven't been convinced, here are some other options for the aspirational thought explorers among us LogSec is a growing alternative to Roam. It's very clearly modeled off of Roam as a starting point, but they've focused more on offline availability, on local file storage, they've created a plugin ecosystem for easy customization. But from what we've seen, they haven't quite caught up to Roam yet in terms of its stability and performance. MEM is like a minimalist collaborative Roam with better built in desktop options for capturing a variety of documents, media and other items, and it also has some really cool ways to sort, tag and make sense of your data. It aspires to use artificial intelligence to intelligently and even automatically make connections between notes. Athens Research is another Roam alternative worth checking out. It looks a lot like LogSec with a bit more polish in the user interface, but we haven't heard as much from our students about it, so LogSec is likely more tested than Athens at this point. Reflect is a great Roam alternative that's very clean, easy to get started with, and more minimalist in its approach. It works offline and online and is a great alternative for Mac users who want a lower learning curve while maintaining a lot of the feature set of networked note taking. Saga is an app in beta that is simple teams focused with a more project manager orientation, but otherwise has many similar features to Roam style apps. Organizedly is also like Rome, but with integrated tasks and calendars. Tangent Notes is a fun, pretty simple note connector with the added cool feature of creating a visual log of the pages you did or didn't visit Every single time you use the app Weave, it is like an AI assisted notes app to connect your fleeting thoughts together, specifically on a mobile device. And hypernotes is like Roam or Obsidian, but with this kind of overlay to help organize your thoughts, almost like a writing app like Scrivener, into sub notebooks or mini books of knowledge. Finally, there are two subcategories. There are the Spaced Repetition and Serendipity apps. These apps are for gardeners who want their own thoughts to suddenly reappear without them having to look for them at all in a way that's either totally random or based on an intention to revisit certain top they've looked at previously. Drem Note this app is clearly inspired by Roam or Obsidian features, but really emphasizes spaced repetition. Spaced repetition makes it easy for students or really anyone who wants to really memorize or learn deeply or reinforce a lot of new information. Next is Readwise. This app is mostly just a great way to aggregate notes, highlights and articles from elsewhere. You can connect Readwise to your Notes app so it will send content from all these different sources into your Notes app. I use Readwise mostly to send my Kindle notes into my Notes app Evernote for example, but as a standalone app it does have a great feature where it will resurface highlights to you from ebooks or articles on a daily basis. You can even accumulate what are called streaks of multiple days of reviewing past highlights. This is a really just fun, frictionless way to maximize the serendipity of your notes. And third, we have Napkin. This app is in its early stages, but it describes itself as a swarm of thoughts that will visually surface notes related to whichever note you're currently looking at. Finally, there's a big renaissance in visual spatial notes apps, especially for gardeners. Think of these apps like an infinite canvas. This is one of the fastest growing areas of note taking today, and there's no clear winner quite yet, but here are some of the most interesting ones. My Mind Heptabase Scrintal Kinopio Muse Cosmic Milanote if you have a more artist bent, check these apps out on your own time as there's just way too many details to go into in one video. For our last note taking category, we have the Student Archetype. Students are note takers who don't have a strong bent towards any of the previous archetypes. They have specific projects or things in life that require notes and they really just want to get note taking done without overcomplicating it. For the student archetype, I recommend three Apps First Apple Notes if you're on an Apple device, Apple Notes is such an effective, straightforward notes app that will help you get started fast. You can collect notes, add a variety of media, take photos, add them directly into your notes, and if you need to even share and collaborate with others using icloud, it's incredibly easy to capture Apple Notes which is a huge benefit. Plus it syncs across all your Apple devices. If you don't use Apple devices, simplenote is a great similar alternative that's even more minimalistic but gets the job done outside of the Apple ecosystem. Third option is simply using Google Docs. Google Docs are a great way to organize information and the ability to interlink between Google sheets. Google Slides Drive the ability to leave comments to share with others to quickly compose documents shouldn't be underestimated. It's a great option for most who want to start practically organizing their knowledge using a tool that they're probably already familiar with. If you have a practical student like note taker Style, I recommend Apple Notes Simple Note or Google Docs for your note taking, but here are some other alternatives. Bear is a strong markdown based app for Mac that feels like a combination of Evernote and Apple Notes and has been around for a while. Dropbox Paper is a highly visual, highly collaborative note space specifically for teams to organize meeting notes, ideas and documents. Microsoft Word is a great way to compose documents and combined with other features of Office365 can function as a solid notes environment if you like using styluses. Notability goodnotes Margin Note and the Concepts app are very strong choices. Workflowy and and Dynalist are great outliner style note taking apps but without requiring all the additional backlinking complexity of something like Roam. Nucleno is a cool internal wiki for teams. Drafts is a simple notes app for capturing text and audio notes, especially if you use an Apple Watch or set up actions to automatically push captured notes into a different app. Notejoy is like a simple team based minimalist Evernote Notational Velocity is basically a text editor you can navigate navigate through with keyboard shortcuts. Hack MD is great for software developers who want to integrate with GitHub and share simple notes between team members. Noda is a minimalist notes app for notes to do's and organization. Standard Notes is a minimalist high security version of Simple Note or Apple Notes that really emphasizes data encryption. Agenda Notes is a simple Mac notes app that is built to integrate well with Apple Reminders and Apple Calendars. And finally there's a whole segment of notes apps designed to help writers write and organize their writing in general. I think many modern notes apps are capable of accomplishing this, but for those who need something more specialized, check out Scrivener for long form writing, like novels, screenplays and books, or Ulysses and IA Writer for simpler, shorter form writing or composition. Here's my top recommendations by category Once more on screen for you. In the fourth video of this series on how to pick your notes app, I'll be sharing the final piece, which is how to start using your notes app to get the most out of it. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.