While the note-taking space is wildly competitive, there is something about the Notes app that makes it a must-use for all macOS owners. Whether you want to create a to-do list, write down some random thoughts or upload an attachment, the Notes app is more than capable. Read on to learn some tips and tricks to mastering macOS notes app. Mac apps to open up documents.
Bored of note taking in traditional way , so here you can take a look at the latest note -taking method . Here we list out the Best Note taking apps for PC and Smartphone .
At work, you will surely need to note down bullet points or you will need to note important tasks and other activities to be done. Since these days everyone uses computers and android phones, use of pen and paper has been reduced. So, in these computers and smart phones, where can you note down your important work easily? I am sure that you all might have come across various note-taking apps for computers and smart phones. These apps make it easier for you to remember your tasks and responsibilities.
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Best Note taking apps of the year
You will never miss out to complete any work if you have noted all the points in your phone or computer. Now let us see what all note-taking apps are available these days to use in computers and smart phones. The note-taking apps mentioned below are some of the best cross-platform apps that make your work quick. Fp notebook app mac.
Now of you ever want to note down anything you don’t have to look for pen and paper use these Best Note-taking apps for Android , iPhone and PC to take easy notes .
Best Note taking apps for Windows
If you want to make quick notes in your windows system you can now do it with the comfort of windows note taking apps .
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Best Note taking apps for Mac
Below given is the list of best note taking apps for Mac . https://southerntree609.weebly.com/best-pdf-editor-app-mac.html.
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Best Note taking apps for iPhone / iPad – iOS note taking apps![]()
Like the above seen note taking softwares for windows and Mac , here is the list of note taking apps for iOS users .
Best Note taking apps for Android
Finally given above is the exclusive list of note taking apps for Android users .
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Best Note taking apps for Windows , Mac , Android & iPhone / iPad
1) OneNote
Note Taking Apps Microsoft
OneNote is one of the best note taking apps with a number of features and majority of them are for free. Since OneNote comes from Microsoft, it integrates with Office tools like Ms Word, Excel etc. Thus, the tool becomes more powerful for you to use. In this note-taking app, you can write, type and draw images related to the notes in your own way.
Another advantage of using OneNote is that, you can easily capture an image to add in the notes. You will not have to crop the image and waste your valuable time. OneNote will automatically crop the image you have selected to fit in the notes. Moreover, you can easily take the notes and refer for your future use. OneNote is compatible with both computers and smartphones.
2) EverNote
This is the next note-taking app for your computers and android phones which is very powerful. EverNote can organize all your notes very efficientlyand it has a cloud storage space of 60MB to store your data online. Like OneNote App, you can add images to this note as well. But an extra feature of attaching the pages of a website is also available with EverNote App.
This note-taking app is perfect for students since it can store any kind of data with any size and content. EverNote App is free for anyone to use but it only has a few features and it only provides a few of them to the user.
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3) WorkFlowy
Workflowy note-taking app works fully offline and it is also fast. It also gives an instant access to the notes you have saved without searching for it from a number o tabs in your browser. This app is very simple and it only has a very minimal interface. When you are creating a note and if you want to highlight or mark any points that are really important, you can do so with the help of hash tags.
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You can zoom in or zoom out the notes to read and also navigating this app is very easy. You can just use the mouse pointer to zoom in and zoom out the notes you have added. With this Workflowy App, you can share the notes with others at your office. You also have the option of hiding the notes and add to archive with just one click.
4) Google Keep
With features like location reminder, alerts on pre-select times, Google Keep is our next choice of note-taking app which is hooked up to Google services. This app is compatible with IOS, Web, Android, Windows and Mac and has card based notes. Like Evernote and Onenote, you can add images along with the notes you jot down.
Google Keep App can transcribe the notes you type or write. It has the feature to record even your handwriting. The notes you type will be recorded in the form of messages with its memo feature. You can also synchronize your notes from one device to another with the help of nifty OCR in Google Keep. Apart from these features, you get access to colour codes and attributes to make your notes look unique from the rest.
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5) Standard Notes Microsoft sql server 2005 instance wincc.
You can access this note-taking app online with widget support and it comes with 100% privacy and AES – 265 encryption. The best highlight of using Standard Note is that you can access the notes you have created 5 years back. Isn’t that great? You can recheck all the important notes again if you require. Standard Notes app is the only one note-taking app which has an end to end privacy. Thus, this app sounds suitable for both office and personal work. Standard notes App is compatible with iOS, Android, Windows, Web and Mac.
To make your notes look more attractive, you get access to different themes that are changeable and it also allows you to add power extensions. You will never have to worry about losing any notes you have made in Standard Notes. This app is encryption protected with a secret key and no one can decrypt the notes. Only thing you have to remember always is the secret key. Without this, no one can retrieve the data.
6) Dropbox Paper
This app is a product of Dropbox in which you can work with your team. Dropbox Paper is another note-taking app that supports themes and is integrated to Dropbox. It also offers great collaboration tools. Usually, everyone uses Dropbox to save files in the cloud storage. The main advantage of using Dropbox Paper is, it gives a flexible workspace for the user to make notes easily.
This app is very simple since it has a very minimal design aids. You can type your data or copy and paste the link of YouTube or you can even tweet using this Dropbox Paper note-taking app. If you are working in Dropbox as a team or with any of your team member, you can easily make notes with them, share comments and even embed images. For any kind of creative work, this app is one of the best choices. This note-taking app called Dropbox Paper is free to use if you are an account holder of Dropbox.
All these above mentioned note-taking apps are compatible with both computers and smart phones. You can use it from anywhere you want. Anybody can use these apps in their computers or in android phones. Read about each app and learn the advantages and disadvantages and choose the best app that suits your need. So, do not wait. Make use of these amazing note-taking apps to make your work easier and hassle-free.
The best note taking apps for Mac – markdown, open format, cross platform
Published (updated: ) in Productivity.
With the release of iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 in 2016, Apple introduced a new version of Notes. It added a number of new features for formatting, drawing and sync using iCloud instead of via IMAP. It was lightweight, fast and simple. I started using it shortly afterwards and now have almost 1,000 notes ranging from book highlights to saved web pages to meeting notes to journal articles.
Unfortunately, the iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 releases have been incredibly buggy. I have found that sync is inconsistent across devices (my MacBook, iPad and iPhone each register different numbers of notes) and some notes are not syncing at all. Search also stopped working before fixing itself, and now returns inferior results.
Considering how much information I have stored in Apple Notes, this made me reconsider what I wanted from a note taking app. Mac 930 dmg.
Requirements for a note taking appSimplicity
I only require basic formatting, images and tables. I’m not interested in fancy fonts or colours because the system is better at ensuring the formatting works across devices, screen sizes and rendering into the future e.g. if I ever need to increase font sizes. This means using Markdown formatting saved to a plain text file. Markdown is a well understood format that has many apps that can edit and render on any platform
Non-proprietary format
The “new” Apple Notes app moved away from IMAP to an iCloud based format. This made sync work better (until recently) but was necessarily a proprietary database format. I can’t easily see or edit the individual notes on disk to make backups or import to another app. They are contained in a SQL Lite database in ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes alongside attachments and images organised by internal note IDs. It’s usually dangerous to meddle with app files like this.
Apple Notes doesn’t have an export option except individual notes as PDFs. The only way around this is using the Apple Privacy data download service which allows you to export Apple Notes as HTML with their associated attachments. This is how I have been keeping a backup of all my Apple Notes to date.
Ideally the app will allow editing of individual files on disk. I can then choose my own sync service and run backup as part of my normal approach using Arq. Any app should at least allow export of content to multiple formats.
Regular updates / actively maintained
The problem with Apple software is that their main revenue is generated by the core OS, not any of the apps. They are there to compliment the OS but there is no competitive incentive to keep them up to date, add new features and fix bugs.
The annual update cycle is a legacy from the old days of shipping physical software. This makes sense for annual iPhone hardware refreshes but is totally outdated for shipping software. Microsoft updates Office every month and Windows every 6 months. How do you report bugs or get support for Apple Notes? You can’t.
My experience with the poor quality of these latest Apple releases has changed my approach – if I am going to rely on software then I want the developer to be properly incentivised to maintain it i.e. I need to pay them directly for it.
This is one reason why I use and pay for 1Password vs using Apple iCloud Keychain (as well as all the other features 1Password has). It’s also why I don’t mind the move to subscription business models for software.
Search
My approach to note taking is to save the full text and associated files of things I find interesting or useful so I can search them in the future.
Spotlight Search on macOS is very good (and has some advanced options). Even though I keep my files well organised, I regularly use it to find things because it is quicker and searches inside documents. For some reason, Apple Notes are not searchable from Spotlight though, so I have to search twice – in Spotlight and in Notes.app. I would prefer to have everything searchable from Spotlight, or any other search tool.
Cross-platform
This is not a requirement but rather a “nice to have” if the app I use on macOS also has an iOS equivalent. If all the above requirements are met, I can easily edit open file formats from different apps on different platforms.
My Macbook Air (13″ 2018) is only a year old so I have no plans to replace it soon, although have had to send it in for 1 keyboard replacement already. I don’t mind the feel of this keyboard but the reliability is poor.
Given the state of Apple software quality and the general problems with the Macbook keyboards, I have been following Microsoft’s Surface products with interest. The Surface Laptop 3 is very nice. I’ve been into the London Microsoft store to have a play and I’m eager to see the Surface Pro X when it is released. I’m just unsure about Windows. Over a decade ago it was Windows Vista that forced me to move to Mac due to the poor quality. I’m not quite there with macOS yet but am unhappy with it.
Evaluating note taking apps
All together I have been re-evaluating my choice of key software to ensure that I’m tied to the Apple ecosystem as little as possible. I already use Office365 for my email and calendar but have also started to move my files to OneDrive from iCloud Drive (I’m glad I didn’t try the recent macOS betas!). What’s the difference? I pay Microsoft for these services and they are regularly updated (unlike iCloud for Windows) and maintained, probably because they directly generate $billions of direct revenue.
Ultimately, my goal is to be flexible in which platform I use, selected based on the best core OS and hardware. I don’t want to be restricted by apps and file formats that only work on a single platform. macOS remains the best OS for now (including for privacy) but I don’t want to be locked to it.
My recommended note taking apps
Based on reviewing all the apps below, these are the best notes apps for Mac:
Bear
Bear was my favourite app purely for Apple devices. Good tag support, Markdown rendering, strong search (including Spotlight integration), encrypted notes, embedded images and attachments, and multiple export options. I particularly liked the helper mechanism when linking between notes, which maintains the link even if you rename a note.
It is fully supported and actively developed for the Apple ecosystem. The entire company is based around the product and has a subscription business model, suggesting they are likely to be able to keep things going. The iOS and iPad apps work well and sync across from my Mac was always reliable. It actually uses iCloud behind the scenes which makes Apple Notes failure to sync more unusual.
Macos App Download
Bear would be my recommendation for someone who was happy with staying on Mac/iOS. If needed, you can export to various different formats. I used it for a whole month (which is the length of the free trial – sync is not available in the free version) and it worked well.
The main reason I decided not to continue using it is that Bear uses a proprietary data format so it can sync with iCloud. This makes sense because their time is better spent on the app functionality rather than making cloud sync work, but I ultimately decided that I valued having open, plain text files more than the extra functionality. If I do eventually move to Windows then I would be unable to move my notes easily. Having an open format was the key to selecting iA Writer instead.
iA Writer
Although not designed for note taking, last year iA Writer added support for #hashtags (but only on Mac, not Windows) which makes it much more suitable as a notes app.
I really like the UI on macOS because it fits in perfectly with the system design guidelines. It is very lightweight, simple to use and fits all my criteria for editing files on disk with Markdown. It is very minimalist with few settings, forcing you to focus on the task at hand. There are also apps for macOS, Windows, iOS and Android.
iA Writer does not support attachments and the embedded image support is limited, but that actually forces you to store those files on disk (so files like PDFs can be searched by Spotlight and edited directly e.g. for highlighting, which doesn’t work if you open PDFs from within a Bear note). Naming becomes important for binary files like images so they can be properly searched.
If you use iA Writer on iOS with iCloud then deals with sync for you but there is a limitation with using external file sources such as OneDrive – you have to manually find and add files into the app to edit them, which is a hassle. Otherwise, files are stored on disk and so I can sync them with OneDrive and run my normal backups. Since they are plain text Markdown, I can edit them in any app.
I would like to see the ability to nest tags and add emoji to them, plus helpers for Markdown formatting e.g. linking to other notes and improved image support. However, those limitations are minor enough to overlook and pick iA Writer as my Apple Notes replacement.
VS Code + Markdown extensions
VS Code supports markdown out of the box, including with a live preview, however there are several extensions which add extra functionality.
The final plugin is the crucial one because it allows me to take advantage of organising my notes by tag. Of course, VS Code’s command bar is excellent at search so I could just navigate files by name (or text search), but it is sometimes useful to be able to see and view all associated notes in a list.
Unfortunately, the tag format supported by iA Writer – #hashtags – is not part of the Markdown format. Instead you will need to use the Markdown metadata format by including tags in a YAML block at the start of each file. The advantage of using this format is that it is generally supported by other Markdown parsers, so if I wanted to switch to something new in the future there is a greater chance of it being supported with no changes.
VS Code does use Electron behind the scenes. However, unlike many Electron apps, VS Code ties into the native UX of the OS it is running on and has acceptable performance. This is a rare example of a well-built Electron app, most of which are slow and buggy.
Other note taking apps I triedEvernote
Years ago this was the first notes app I ever used, however it was notoriously buggy and I gave up. The company has been through some challenging times but still uses a proprietary note format and database, which rules it out. I didn’t bother to try it because of the history of poor quality software.
Notable
Notable is still very early in development, and the rough edges show e.g. when copy/pasting it would paste text 3 times. It also uses Electron and has many weird UI elements showing through the cross-platform layer, for example the popover menus for attachments don’t have the same behaviour as menus should on macOS.
The management of attachments was not as good as Typora – it would copy them to an ‘attachments’ directory but the management of those files was very basic. Removing the attachment from the note did not delete it on disk.
This app is too early to take over such an important use case and has no clear business model yet (donations and a pending application to Y Combinator).
Obsidian
Obsidian fits all the requirements – simple, works with Markdown and cross-platform.
It supports #hashtags, but they are shown in order of number of items rather than alphabetically and strangely there is no way to change the order.
It has some good functionality around linking to other notes and backlinks so you can see which notes reference each other. Psp emulator for mac. This makes it more like an organiser than a simple Markdown editor.
The app is nicely designed, but uses Electron so is slow to launch and doesn’t fit into the native OS design as nicely as Bear or iA Writer. When you are using an app regularly, performance and UI consistency matters.
OneNote
Included with my Office365 subscription, OneNote has been improving rapidly and now has a much simpler UI and fast sync. One of the great features is character recognition in images, allowing them to be searched as if they were in plain text.
Notes can only be in a single section or Notebook (like Apple Notes) whereas I feel that tags are more flexible approach to organising things. OneNote supports tags but they are hard coded to specific types, which suggests there’s still a lot of legacy cruft still behind the scenes.
OneNote on the web looks good with the new simplified UI and the Mac app also works nicely, particularly with dark mode. However, compared to all the other notes apps it is always slow to launch. I find this lag exists with all Microsoft apps on Mac – they are very heavyweight.
Using it with Office365 creates the Notebook file in your OneDrive but this is just a URL file that opens the web UI when you load it. There’s no actual content in the file which means that OneNote is using a proprietary database behind the scenes.
Although OneNote is a regularly updated application that works cross-platform (and has a decent app for iOS as well), the lack of open file format means I can’t back up the files and extract my data whenever I want. Like Apple Notes, there is no export functionality. I don’t want to move from Apple’s proprietary format to Microsoft’s, so this rules it out.
Typora
Typora was promising because it is a good Markdown editor with cross-platform apps that manages files on disk. I particularly liked how it managed attachments for notes, creating a .assets folder with the same name as the parent note. However, it doesn’t have very advanced file management features for the library/list of notes and there’s no support for tags.
It also uses Electron and I really hate Electron based apps. They remind me of Java apps that almost get the native OS style right, but not quite. They feel brittle, tend to have poor performance and I found that Typora was buggy (the macOS version is in beta). I understand why developers use Electron because it allows you to build cross-platform apps using web technologies, but I’ve had bad experiences with them e.g. the poor performance of Slack.
Worth a mention
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