Top 68 Apps to Take Digital Notes (2022)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2024
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We evaluated 50+ digital notetaking apps. Then, we organized them all into four notetaking styles. Which will you pick?
🍱 Check out Keep Productive for more app-specific insights:
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WATCH THE FULL SERIES
• PART 1: • Pick a Notes App: Your...
• PART 2: • 75% of Notetakers Use ...
• PART 3: • Top 68 Apps to Take Di...
• PART 4: • The First 30 Days Usin...
CHAPTERS
00:00 - Part 3: Pick Your Notes App Series
00:31 - NOTES APPS FOR LIBRARIANS
00:45 - Evernote
01:22 - OneNote
01:54 - Google Keep
02:32 - Amplenote
02:56 - DEVONthink
03:14 - Supernotes
03:27 - Inkdrop
03:47 - Nimbus Note
04:03 - Zotero
04:17 - Reference Apps (Librarians Archetype)
04:22 - NOTES APPS FOR ARCHITECTS
04:31 - Notion
05:06 - Craft
05:32 - Obsidian
05:46 - Dendron
06:00 - Walling
06:16 - Microsoft Loop
06:26 - UpNote
06:37 - Clover
06:53 - Bundled Notes
07:11 - Mind Maps / Knowledge Palaces (Architect Archetype)
07:15 - Zettlr
07:19 - TiddlyWiki
07:24 - Marginnote
07:29 - Tinderbox
07:35 - TheBrain
07:50 - NOTES APPS FOR GARDENERS
08:02 - Roam Research
08:39 - Obsidian
09:24 - Logseq
09:45 - Mem
10:05 - Athens Research
10:20 - Reflect
10:36 - Saga
10:47 - Organizedly
10:51 - Tangent Notes
11:02 - Weavit
11:10 - Hypernotes
11:21 - Spaced Repetition / Serendipity (Gardener Archetype)
11:42 - RemNote
11:59 - Readwise
12:38 - Napkin
12:48 - Visual Spacial / Infinite Canvases (Gardener Archetype)
13:03 - mymind
13:05 - Heptabase
13:07 - Scrintal
13:09 - Kinopio
13:11 - Muse
13:12 - Kosmik
13:14 - Milanote
13:22 - NOTES APPS FOR STUDENTS
13:42 - Apple Notes
14:07 - Simplenote
14:18 - Google Docs
14:48 - Bear
14:55 - Dropbox Paper
15:04 - Microsoft Word
15:14 - Notability
15:16 - GoodNotes
15:18 - Marginnote
15:20 - Concepts
15:23 - Workflowy
15:25 - Dynalist
15:35 - Nuclino
15:38 - Drafts
15:49 - Notejoy
15:52 - Notational Velocity
15:58 - HackMD
16:04 - Nota
16:09 - Standard Notes
16:16 - Agenda
16:22 - Writing Apps (Student Archetype)
16:35 - Scrivener
16:40 - Ulysses App
16:42 - iA Writer
16:47 - All 68 Apps
16:52 - How to start using your notes app?
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Kudos to your research team! This was one of the best quick look videos on the note taking apps out there. So many new ones! I even saw one I'll go back and make a point of checking out. Thanks, Tiago!
I also find that using a private chat just with yourself is a very good way to take the snappiest sort of notes. One liners, random screenshots and images, etc. The messaging app Signal already comes with this as a feature called Note to Self. Highly recommend.
True, Microsoft Teams recently implemented this feature as well. A chat channel with yourself that's pinned at the top of your conversations for taking some notes like you said.
Yes..I do that too
I use this feature in Discord Nitro
@Productive Elf Either try to create a chat with yourself and it'll suggest it, or look for it under your contacts. Nice username
i do this on whatssapp lol
Please, I beg you to keep updating the stats about the most used or most popular note taking apps. I am truly interested on knowing which apps are more popular. You are the only one I know that has surveyed people on this topic, so I ask you to please keep on updating those stats over time.
Hey! Amazing content as always, I’d just advise you guys to divide the video in sections to make it easier for us viewers to navigate. Besides that, it’s perfect!
I have been trying to figure out which type of program would be best suited for my needs with keeping my notes from my Board meetings more easily stored and be able to find similar topics from notes through the years, so these suggestions are great! I didn't even know that there were different styles for different ways of organizing! Thanks so much for all of these new options!
Thanks for the great video! Since I moved away from Evernote, I have bounced between apps. This series made me realize that I fall more in the 'Student' category. I have used Apple Notes and Bear off an on for years. However, I have been using Agenda for the last few months and I think I am going to forge ahead and see what it really can do. Thanks again!
What a thoughtful overview and helpful supplement to your other material (which you’ve tried hard to keep tool-agnostic)! Thank you for the clear explanation and for your own impressions.
thank you so much for this. im a notion user for years now and i've decided to "reset" or reboot my life and that includes revamping my second brain. your channel is a gold mine and this video is just proof that it is!
Thank you for the very informative video. I appreciate the work you put in to make these sorts of lessons. The video was thorough, simple and extensively informative.
Wow - this video is so comprehensive and a great step toward getting myself in order! Thx.
Brilliant ! Thank for your landscape!
Great video, explained in simplest form possible. Thank you so much for taking out this much effort for people like us. THANK YOU
Great video 😍 Thank you Tiago 🌷
I use Obsidian especially for my research and academic projects and notion for task management and others
Wow that's such an amazing video! Thanks a lot!
Thanks a lot. That is what i was looking for a while.
If anyone here lawyer/attorney or law student i would recommend Milanote as an attorney myself its amazing for your current cases document etc.
You videos are more advanced each time 👍👍👍
Thank you for your sharing💖💖💖
I would love to see this updated for 2023. Apps associated with the Archetypes is awesome! It helps with creating an ecosystem and there are so many apps to make sense of. Thank you and your team for all your hard work and for bringing these concepts into consciousness!🙏
I believe this list should be reviewed and updated on its own.
And of course latest AppleNotes changes would push it to top of the charts.
This was fantastic, thanks a ton!
Whoa! This is comprehensive and mind blowing 🧠💣💥
I capture my thoughts and tasks with todo app from microsoft and then use notion for different areas in my life. I still use onenote for my virtual clinic. This is a great video!
You are amazing. Thank you so much for this!
An important one for the Student type is missing: Samsung notes.
It is only available on Samsung devices and therefore especially apple users tend to completely forget about it, but like OneNote it is already on so many devices and easy to start using. It is also really good with handwritten notes which is why I as an actual student started using it. And apparently it syncs with OneNote too, haven't tried that though.
This is the best note app overview ever! Thanks for all the research that this took.
Thank you!
Great video Tiago. My congrats. I personally use obsidian form my pkm/sb it’s amazing.
I'm really glad Google Keep made it to your top three recommendations cause it's my preferred capture app. Then if I need to flesh out the notes, I move them to Evernote.
Thank You for such good information in this series, I am a student and really able what I was looking for i.e. Notion.
Really Appreciated
You are amazing man! ... So good!
So many apps! I like notion but I dislike the lack of offline accessibility. Not sure if I have the energy or brain space to uproot to another app that does. I appreciate how everything is presented here.
Insightful and very handy video to select note taking app :)
Thank you! That is super cool video for procrastination)) But what I like about second brain - is that you can define your own rules about your processes. I define myself as a librarian but I do my stuff in notion. That's because I had my lesson - it's better to do things done rather than to spend the whole life trying to find perfect system to track your life!
As a student (pursuing an engineering degree), I take my lecture notes in Notion. I would love Notion to have Offline support. If I'm not connected to the internet, I cannot make notes, nor review my previous notes. I do wanna switch to Evernote, but the lack of latex support is preventing me from doing so. I also use Obsidian as my zettelkasten.
What a nice video! Thank you 😊
tysm, i finally found multiple suitable note apps for me
THANKS YOU FOR THIS VIDEO 💫🔥
**iA Writer** has an awesome feature where it highlights parts of speech like a code editor. It allows you to take out adjectives and verbs if you’re writing for a technical audience. It also has features to highlight cliches and reduce repetition.
Also worth mentioning they’ve just added wiki linking capabilities
I would put it more under the category of a "Writing" app (like Ulysses) instead of a note-taking app. I've tried it out, and it definitely has knowledge management capabilities.
Cheers. I'll be checking out a few of these as recently switched over to Android and trying to find something simple to replace AppleNotes. I don't generally need something convoluted to write quick To-Do, Wish and shopping lists but I need the note easy to find when I want it.
Qué increíble explicación. Buenísimo video
Just brilliant !!!
I’m a Notion user personally! I just have not found any other app that has the database functionalities as straightforward to understand as Notion for me
Where have you been all my life!!!!!!! Great videos!
helpful, thank you man
4:03 Highly recommend Zotero for anyone producing academic work in the humanities because it does sync with Word to create footnotes and bibliographies which will update as references are moved around inside a document. If you are using more than a few sources, you’ll immediately discover its utility. For serious scholars
Great research based video.
I’m a librarian type with student needs. I take notes and need to search both the pdf and my own handwritten notes. I’m a big fan of goodnotes and although I’ve tried Evernote, one note, apple notes, notion, notability and others, none work nearly as well as goodnotes and I always come back to it. The OCR is rock solid and the pdf search is better than any other I’ve tried. I’ve recently PARA’d all my notes and it’s working brilliantly!
Little confused..what do you mean by PARA'd... So you write all notes by ApplePen in GoodNotes..and than you transferred it to OneNote?
@@forexplug1957 no I meant I put everything in folders in goodnotes as per the second brain para format. As an aside I've recently moved to onenote, as I needed something multi platform and although the moving process was tricky that's working better overall. Goodnotes is still the king of pdf and handwriting recognition though.
@@jonnyc3884 I see..I do also use GoodNotes... And I use RemNote also too for flash cards.. spaced repetition...as I am doing many courses...so I need to remember various things... I did use OneNote and Evernote...both are interesting app...
what was the reason to select OneNote and not say Notion or EverNote?
I agree excellent search facility in GoodNotes, even able to search little messy handwriting...amazing.. but at times my hand feel tired hand writing...just seeing what other options available..
@@forexplug1957 notion I really liked, but I came across some videos around their security/privacy. I'll let you decide. Evernote for me was too slow to he usable, also doesn't support handwriting. I realised that I didn't really need handwriting searching and onenote takes web clips, pictures, text better than goodnotes and I can see it on my android phone and my mac and my work pc
Thank you for your work, Tiago! It has truly been transformational for me. Quick question: why place Apple Notes under the Student category instead of Librarian? Apple Notes has grown to become a deceptively simple looking app that can hold its own with the likes of something like Evernote. While the capture methods aren’t as robust as Evernote, in the Apple ecosystem, it’s as frictionless as can be.
After realizing I was a Librarian, I tried out Evernote again for the first time in years. While it’s a great app, I ended up back at Apple Notes because of how little friction there is in using it.
And, especially if Google Keep is a Librarian option, Apple Notes should be up there. Just saying. 😁
More importantly: thank you again for all you do!
Many thanks for this amazing summary of all of those amazing apps... So confusing to pick the right one... I'm curious to see where you'll add those promising new comers like "Anytype", "Capacities", "Tana" and "Affine" in your futures updates...
Great video, thank you.
In which category would you place SideNotes?
I use it every day to take quick notes. I also keep here handy useful information such as keyboard shortcuts, text snippets, links, and shortcuts to most used files (and really much more :).
I am already excited for and looking forward to the first future virtual reality/augmented brain mods as a Gardener-Librarian!
A comment on Nimbus Note. I have used it for about a year in parallel with Evernote (I'm a librarian type). I feel Nimbus is more concerned with how a note looks than anything else. I do like separate workspaces and nested notebooks. I'm still leaning towards keeping Evernote as my main app.
15:23 workflowy si dynalist pt notes cu subpuncte fara backlinking ca la roam
16:07 nota minimalist tasks notes
Thanks Tiago! This is a great list. Although, I was pretty surprised you never mentioned Coda at any time. I am very curious on your thoughts about a this second brain app, from my research it is difficult to learn but so much more powerful than Notion in its capabilities.
I’m in the legal field, but I also manage my household, develop recipes, write songs. Definitely the librarian type. My only concern is loving an app, or twelve, and then they don’t last very long. What is the contingency for moving your information? I remember you talked about your apps with Francesco and how they were comprised of long standing ones and that really resonates with me. For all its flaws, which don’t affect me as I’m such a light user of tech, Evernote is great. I love Amplenote for GTD tho.
I’m impressed. I didn’t know I was an architect type but my three favourite apps and two of them are being currently used are in that type. Craft, Notion. I’m even impressed that you found Bundled notes because it’s an app most people never heard of.
Dear Tiago,
Thank you very much for this excellent overview.
A question for you or for others here. What are your tips for integrating an inventory of documents (pdf, txt, ppt, word) already existing on my computer?
I'm probably not the only one: we've been working for years, we've accumulated knowledge for many we've classified the information in folders simply.
Is there a solution that can screen my documents and classify them, even extract keywords and key concepts?
Didn't know there is this much note taking application 🤯
Awesome video. I really enjoyed it!. One question, why Todoist wasn't involved in any category?
Thanks for the video. Really well put together. I was a long time user of Evernote, however, like 1000s of users we left at v10 when it was super buggy and the pricing was ridiculous. Found a nice medium between Keep and Obsidian that really works well for me. I will never go back to Evernote.. the really disrespected their customer base.
Forgot to mention, Notion... Great idea... No offline and android port is terrible.
The lesson I learned from Evernote was to make sure any notes app i use can export its data to other apps.
Hey Tiago!
Love your videos!!
Your videos have been very informative and have me wanting to build a second brain to help structure my life and my notes.
I think I am more of an architect type so Notion has me very interested.
But I am someone who is very concerned about security and privacy and while looking into Notion, they don’t utilize End to End Encryption which has me concerned.
Do you or anyone in the community have any suggestions in alternatives for an architect type that provide more security?
Or even could help ease my concerns?
Thank you!
And keep up the great work!
To the OneNote-users out there: how are you working with links in PARA & in outlines? Sadly, OneNote changes the links as soon as you move your notes to another notebook or section within a notebook. That makes moving notes between projects and areas hard to use
Interesting to see Microsoft getting in on the Notion crowd with Loop. I wonder if they have a networked-notes solution in the works.
Impressive video! I admit I have never used the right app for me. I use partially many apps. Totally frustrated with note apps.
Thanks for the thorough overview! I have now switched back from OneNote to Evernote for its search features. Which would you recommend for librarian types who prefer handwriting to keyboard input?
Onenote
Goodnotes. I’ve found onenote’s search just doesn’t work as supposed to, at least with pdfs
@@d4nhumphr3y93 I tried OneNote for several years. But, like @Jonny C, I find the search unreliable and notebooks seem to corrupt over time, unlike Evernote.
Wow what a list - has what I'm currently using and familiar with which is Workflowy Logseq and Onenote. However my teenage STUDENT son is starting on digital notes and seems to have gravitated Anki which is NOT on your list. It is specialised for flash cards but isn't it still a Digital notes tool?
Great research, but, for many including me, the security of files in terms of transferability and safe format storage is a crucial part. Worst nightmare is to loose all your notes, or the organization of them.
Any idea where I can view my notes interchangeably from my iPhone to my Windows laptop that has the same features of Remnote?
I love the simple UI Design of Remnote and its features, thus, it is not yet available in iOS.
What I especially love in RN is I can create a new page note from my current note. Notion has that kind of feature but they do not have offline features.
Is there an app like google document/Wps to edit text documents with a formatting copy function, but which groups things into notebooks like evernote. I have problems formatting on evernote (few colours, no formatting copy fn, word correction only in the pc system language and therefore not in English). What do you suggest? 🙏🏽☺
Major point missing - how easy is it to write and select it. Notion, craft and. Others are hard to write in, compared to drafts or notes. Also - app called Author is really good.
this heaven for my nerd brain ahah.. thank you
I'm a natural systems thinker and the only one of these tools that has made sense to me so far, is TheBrain. I've tried Notion several times and it is just too hierarchical/linear for me. I like google docs/samsung notes for quickly copy pasting stuff into to integrate later. I used to like notability and paid for it as I liked writing on it with the apple pencil but since they went to subscription mode, I moved to collanote for the handwriting, coloring, stickers,drawing aspect and notebooks. I could then grab the drawings, rich pictures, or things I hand wrote and put them into TheBrain. If TheBrain had an endless whiteboard like Miro to draw, write, etc. that would be even better. I haven't tried Obsidian yet so I might try that. I don't think there will be any one tool for me.
Hey, I find your comment really interesting. I have learned and used TheBrain about 15 years ago. And it has not really gained in popularity. Now I see that with Obsidian this graph like approach has become popular. Really weird.
Maybe it was the subscription policy of The Brain that killed it.
Is there a gardener app where I can write with my stylus on my S22 ultra? I like the handwriting and drawing, but i like the layout of gardener apps that can link things together and being able to input tags in the middle of pages
Come on Tiago, that video is absolutely stunning! When I'll be able to buy Building Second Brain for my Kindle App, please?!
Wow, thank you! The kindle version will be released on the 14th of June 2022!
Hey Tiago, do you still recommend PARA? I keep hearing that it's too outdated for current apps like Notion and Obsidian.
Not necessarily a note app, but the best for spaced repetition is Anki
Tiago I can use Obsidian for architect and librarian style?
I would choose NotePlan
Thank you for this! Such a comprehensive list. But I wonder, why is Coda not on the list, such a great note taking app.
It’s interesting, we viewed Coda as more like ClickUp or Monday - team project management vs. notetaking. Do you use it as your primary notes app or team notes app vs. logistics?
@@TiagoForte Yes, I use it as my personal note taking app. Probably it is not the main focus of Coda, but if you list the features, it is as good as Notion. If you have the time to configure it a bit, you can build tiny apps.
Also, whenever I want to add a quick diagram I combine it with Excalidraw, and import the PNG to Coda
Im too lazy to go through one by one of these. Can someone tell me which apps is similar to Notion but has a lot more fonts and can use my installed fonts from my computer?
Logseq is the most clunky sounding name for a notes app (maybe I'm missing a reference here). However, Tiddlywiki has got to be the best. 😂
NotePlan is good for students as well
Really really useful video, thanks a lot sir, sad it has very low views.
Thanks! Good view count for our channel, but we can already see of ways to make this kind of content more interesting and easy to watch :)
I WANNA HAVE THEM AAALLLL
The Librarian archetype resonates with me and how I known I store and use knowledge on a day to day basis, however I think I've realised that I wish I had more of the systems mindset of the Architect to develop that solid framework with a place for everything even though that's not how my brain naturally works.
As a result I've tried and failed to use Notion reliably over the past few months, I wish it worked for my brain because in theory I love the frameworks you can build but in practice it overwhelms me instead of helping me.
Is there an app you'd recommend in particular for a librarian who wishes (a little) that they're an architect?
My thoughts also. Just installed EverNote and so far it's promissing tho
Evernote Amplenote and surprisingly, Tana
Evernote works altho it's slow
In the same boat , I’ve been using Amplenote. Tried obsidian.
Do you have to give credit for each clip that’s used?
Do you think Notion's bidirectional linking feature will ever be good enough for full-blown networked thinking in the future? And is it within their plans or priorities to develop it for this use case? Or should we just leave this to Roam Research and the likes as the current forerunners in working on this idea of note-taking.
Great video btw! Thanks for sharing.
No
@@Justgoodvids no? 😅
@@Justgoodvids could you please elaborate your answer?
عاشت إيدك يا بطل
Are you planning to produce the 2023 version?
Can you explain differnt type of note takers? I didn't even know there such thing
I use an iPad Pro 12.9 for productivity, but mainstream PKM apps run terribly on this tablet; they simply aren't customized to function well enough. Any suggestions, please?
You missed the best outliner, Omnioutliner. For me nothing beats a dedicated outliner for very deep hierarchal notes. I use rich GUI apps for breadth notes but the information density of an outliner is unmatched.
Workflowy is my best app ever. List thinking is almost same as brain working style.
Clover note looks interesting but they seems to be closing by the end of 2023 :(
Thanks, Thiago. Only missing ticktick u.u
I'm shocked how few mentions OneNote got. Not even among apps for Student type?
Which app is best for mobile note taking? Excluding Apple notes and bear.
wow Devonthink footage out of the last century (Devonthink previouse Mainversion :) - mate it looks and is so much better with the Version 3 out of July '21. but Great Video...
Agreed, the excerpt is not giving a fair shot at DT, version 3 Pro is powerful and with a clean interface, native app with strong automation capabilities. Plus, it goes in the right direction for power users.. looking at you Evernote.
Im looking for a specific notes tool. I forgot the name of this free notes website ive used in the past. Here's how it works: the website lets me insert a website with my study resources and i can i add a slider line which hides the bottom part. I can slide that line down so it only shows the question and i will try to recall the answer. And slide that line down to reveal the answer. If anyone know, please tell me the name of this website. I searched rly hard and can't find it.
Trasno is very good option
I'm still struggling to find the best note-taking app. I'm looking for something versatile like Notion, that's safe like Obsidian (and looks also good like these two), but I don't like markdown... I'll break down each of the apps that you recommended to see if there's a solution for me. Thanks for the effort you're putting onto this series!
May I ask what about markdown is a turn off for you?
@@guilhermeferrao5968 I've difficulty in remembering the various shortcuts to perform the various edits and I don't like to see the keys on my screen. I tried various apps where you click enter and the hastags for the header, for example, disappears. If Obsidian markdown was invisible I wouldn't have any problems.
Thanks for the interest shown 🙂
@@eraldasanna7787 No problem! I just downloaded Obsidian and it seems that under Settings > Editor > Default editing mode you can choose Live Preview which immediately makes things like hashtags for headers become invisible, which might be helpful for you.
@@guilhermeferrao5968 I've just tried what you recommended and it's fantastic! For now is not even messing up with any of the plugins or the theme I have installed, as the tooltip says. Thank you so much for this suggestion! You just made my day (and my journal career) better!
I wish you all the best! ♥️
@@eraldasanna7787 You're welcome! I' quite glad I could help :)
What i struggle with is having these dense apps which i want but when i need to take a quick note i can't use these