What’re the Best Note-Taking Apps? Colorfy has a look at several excellent options that permit you to choose, sort, and share notes readily.

1. Goodnotes For Microsoft
2. Sync Goodnotes To Evernote
3. Goodnotes Evernote Sync App
4. Goodnotes App For Windows 10

1. A powerful solution with unique advantages: GoodNotes. Notes sync, so you can work on them across all your devices. And you can share your notes using email, Dropbox, and Evernote.
2. In this article, let's take a look at Evernote's evolution and discover 75 alternatives to use in 2020. Top 75 Evernote Alternatives — The Complete Review 2020 - DZone Agile Agile Zone.

When reading the specs I found the following text. As I read it, the device will not sync anywhere but the own, proprietary cloud servers. You can then send the content to a PC or Mac, and from there probably & somehow into EN. To me it does not sound easy. My solution for handwritten note taking is an iPad with Pencil and GoodNotes 5 app. Check out our PC apps channel: #goingpaperless #paperless #notetaking #productivity Full review of O.

Having a dedicated note-taking app installed on your iPad is a vital part of staying productive once you’re on-the-go. The very best iPad note-taking programs will sync your notes across all of your devices and include many useful features.

Therefore, if you’re trying to find the very best note-taking program for the iPad or iPad Pro, continue reading to learn more.

See also:

Table of Contents

Top Rated 14 Best Note-Taking Apps

Notability

Notability is distinctively designed for each apparatus to provide the most useful note-taking experience at college, home, and work.

The program provides you the choice to create multi-media notes employing note-taking, journaling, drawing programs such as ink, highlighter, text, and sound in addition to constituting and incorporating scanned or deleted textbooks, files, forms, images, GIFs, webpages, and much more. All those multi-media options are why they have an unlimited scroll attribute, which means that you can match all your thoughts in 1 place!

This is only one of the very best iPad programs for note-taking if you are a student that likes to write their notes since the ink is more fine-tuned for your Apple Pencil to provide the most responsive, precise writing encounter nonetheless, such as double-tap gesture for shifting tools, erasing, and much more.

Notability is just one of the most effective programs for college students as it lets you not only record your course lectures but also sync them with your lecture notes, which means that you can replay what has been mentioned while you’re note-taking!

Another cool feature is that the app can convert text to text and convert text into handwriting. Pick whichever method works best for you personally.

Evernote

For people searching for a note-taking system that operates with their iPad Pro and the Android apparatus, Evernote straddles both mobile platforms effortlessly.

Evernote is an excellent program to accumulate many inputs, such as pictures, text notes, recorded messages, and clippings of web pages – all in 1 document for storage and cooperation. They can then be retrieved through the iPad Pro, Android, or even a PC through the web browser interface for ease of use. Additionally, a further blessing is that the notes are all searchable.

The iOS program is free and provides in-app purchases. On the other hand, the free product is limited to syncing just two apparatuses, and uploads are restricted to only 60MB a month. Measure up to this Premium tier to sync all of your devices, obtain a more generous 10GB of uploads at a month, in addition to the extra features of live chat service, and offline access to your notes, for $7.99 a month. Instead, for collaborations, there is a company plan for $14.99 per user per month with enhanced limitations and extra features.

GoodNotes

People who wish to utilize their own iPad Pro to take handwritten notes ought to look at GoodNotes. With the focus on design, this program makes it effortless to enter complicated math and compound formulas that could border on the impossible through a conventional keyboard.

The GoodNotes approach may also be used to annotate PDFs, and you can look handwritten notes and convert text into text. The notes can also be synced through iCloud and may be supported up to your selection of cloud providers, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or Box.

The GoodNotes program is offered at the iOS shop for $7.99.

Noteshelf

Noteshelf was our preferred note-taking program for its iPad before we found Notability, and it is still a superb alternative.

It’s a lot of the features we all adore in Notability, including the choice to annotate PDFs and multitask with all the iPad’s split display. You could even record voice notes to go with your handwritten notes, which is ideal for recapping a lecture or assembly at a subsequent date.

If you speak/write several languages, you will also be pleased to know that Noteshelf can recognize handwriting in 65 distinct languages. This makes it a potent tool for taking a language course or studying a language by yourself.

Ultimately, Noteshelf enables you to export your notes to iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Evernote. The choice to ship to Evernote is missing from Notability, making Noteshelf our best option for severe Evernote users.

Apple Watch users may also gain in the app’s capability to record audio notes utilizing the Noteshelf Apple Watch program.

GoodNotes 5

Up next, we’ve got GoodNotes 5. This program has all you need for taking notes, for example, the capacity to switch between writing and typing. Besides, you may pick from several built-in layouts and templates, in addition to export your own.

Especially, GoodNotes 5 allows you to adjust the sensitivity and hands comprehension of this pencil to meet your writing style. This is ideal if you are like me and have a tendency to press hard when composing.

Ultimately, GoodNotes 5 features a “Demo Mode” that allows you to flip your iPad to an electronic whiteboard. Utilizing either AirPlay or an HDMI cable, then you can project what you are writing onto a bigger screen while still having the ability to observe the GoodNotes interface on your iPad. This can be handy whether you are giving a class demonstration or pitching a company idea.

Microsoft OneNote

OneNote for iPad is not only for note-taking since you can use its built-in inking features for handwriting notes to make sketches and drawings. This is extremely helpful when it’s possible to write better or quicker than you can sort, and ideal for interviews or meetings in which a typing sound may be annoying.

OneNote contains a useful conversion tool, so it is possible to convert text into typed text. This is beneficial if you would like to talk about your handwritten notes in a more legible format, along with different men and women. Best of all, it’s free!

Simplenote

The very best note-taking programs on your iPad or even iPad Pro do not automatically have to be the most complicated. Sometimes, simple is better.

And that is where Simplenote shines. As its name implies, this is not a program packed with unlimited bells and whistles, which you will rarely use. Instead, it targets you to take fantastic notes cleanly and straightforwardly while providing you a few nifty features to enhance your note-taking encounter.

The program does not encourage styluses, PDF annotation, or alternative power-user features found in different programs. Your listing of notes is entirely revealed in the left-hand panel along with your articles’ looks from the right-hand panel.

Nebo

Goodnotes For Microsoft

For note-takers with demands that go beyond the fundamentals, Nebo can deal with the challenge. While many note-taking programs allow text to be input, Nebo may also readily structure notes, letting you incorporate paragraphs, titles, and bullet lists such as business.

Additionally, it manages’rich material,’ like diagrams, sketches (with various colors and pen widths), flow graphs, and formulas, permitting you to incorporate them in the document. Once done, files can be exported in various formats, such as Word, PDF, and HTML.

Nebo is available for several platforms, including Windows 10, Android, and course iOS, for $6.99.

Whink

When is an iOS program that’s both at home shooting notes through text, as it’s with the book? Whether you choose to write with a stylus, sort text or draw using a finger, Whink gets the process as straightforward as using paper.

Other media may be added and integrated, including photographs, diagrams with colors along with”perfect geometric contours.” Documents may also be marked up. Also, it supports multitasking, so notes could be obtained while studying the following record (we’ve seen people walking around with two pills to do this feat once it isn’t supported).

When could be added to an iPad Pro for $4.99?

Read also:Note-Taking Tips

Notion

The Notion is a productivity program whose objective is to help businesses collaborate effectively, share notes, and handle projects collectively.

Their easy interface makes the process of producing, saving, and working over comprehensive project documents as simple as pie (utilizes that the Kan-Ban system).

This is only one of the very best iPad note-taking programs because Notion lets you make note templates. Just use the template that is desired to find a uniform appearance across your notes.

Notion permits you to bring a record, plain text, videos, sound, code snippet, plus much more.

This is an excellent program for somebody who does not need to produce handwritten notes.

Bear

When a program’s design is valuable to you, take a peek at Bear. It is among the most amazing note-taking programs you will find for iPad and iPad Pro.

However, Bear is far out of a program that is all style and no substance. Some of its most outstanding features include hashtags (which means it is simple to discover related content), support to the Apple Watch (letting you dictate sound notes when you are on-the-go), along with the capacity to take notes and create drawings with an Apple Pencil.

Impressively, Bear can also be harmonious with Siri. It is possible to make notes from any Siri-enabled apparatus utilizing merely your voice. Ultimately, Bear delivers the right choice of export formats, such as HTML, PDF, DOCX, MD, JPG, and EPUB.

Zoho Notebook

Zoho Notebook is a free platform for shooting notes which deserves praise because of its user-friendliness and complete functionality. It supplies a card-based approach for proper note administration. Every message you choose appears in the shape of a card. It’s possible to use unique cards for different kinds of content.

You will find cards for big text notes, sound files, checklists, pictures, thumbnails, and documents very similar to PDFs. You could even combine unique items in 1 card.

This app program for iPad features compact synch choices. Each user should have a Zoho account to synch the information. You may also export your notes into some PDF-like Znote file format.

Paper

Dropbox’s Paper enables you to create text, edit it, and use regular bullets, which can be nearly enough to produce quick notes, tasks, and lists. You can insert images directly from the camera or gallery, but you can not record audio or make handwritten notes. Why is Dropbox Paper among the very efficient iPad Pro notice taking program is its collaboration features?

Numerous other fantastic functions make Dropbox Paper ideal for staff use. You can draw the interest of the group member to a specific note by establishing a @username. It’s also possible to use templates to announce meetings quickly, plan a project, or begin digital brainstorming.

While Dropbox Paper is mainly created for collaboration functions, also, it supplies an offline document editing. It is possible to save your files locally, and the modifications will probably be moved to the server once you reconnect to the net.

Penultimate

Produced by Evernote, Penultimate was made to function as a go-to note-taking program for Evernote users. It’s all of the conventional note-taking features you desire, such as an assortment of designs and the capability to search your handwritten notes together with optical character recognition.

If you previously use Evernote, then you can seamlessly add Penultimate for your workflow. As soon as you log in to the program with your Evernote accounts, all of your notes will automatically sync to the Evernote laptop of your choice.

While the other writing features of Noteshelf nevertheless make it our favored note-taking program to utilize Evernote, Penultimate remains a good option (particularly if you’re trying to find a free program ).

Note-taking is personal. It has as much to do with how your mind works as it does with what you’re taking notes about and why you’re taking them in the first place.

Still, search for the best note-taking app and you’ll invariably find Evernote at the top of most lists.

Some notes are for sharing. Some are a reminder. Some are taken and never looked at again.

Sometimes a note is a quick thought, jotted down on-the-go on a mobile device. Other times your notes are prepared at length at your computer over a large project, meeting, or study session.

Evernote is fine, generally-speaking — but you’re not just anyone, and your notes aren’t just any notes.

To find the best Evernote alternatives, we tested and used over 30 apps, reviewed top threads on Reddit, and consulted reviews on G2 to hear what the community had to say.

It’s not all just Evernote vs OneNote anymore. There are a slew of great note-taking apps, each with a key advantage over Evernote depending on what you are doing.

The best note-taking apps that aren’t Evernote:

• Hugo - Best meeting notes app
• CacoonWeaver - Best speech-to-text notes app
• Milanote - Best whiteboard-style notes app for creatives
• Bear - Speediest markdown notepad for iOS & Mac
• Typora - Best distraction-free notes app
• Workflowy - Infinite expandable bullet points
• OneNote - Best free option (not just for Microsoft lovers)
• Boost Note - Best note-taking app for developers
• Google Keep - Best note-taking app for Google fanatics
• Ulysses - Top-of-the line notes for serious writers
• Notability - Best notes app for iPad with Apple Pencil
• Nebo - Best note-taking app for Surface with Surface Pen
  

Why Evernote is no longer the gold-standard for notes

For many years, Evernote was on top of the note-taking game. With its sleek, comfortable interface, enjoyable mobile experience, and easy way of organizing with folders and stacks of folders, Evernote dominated the note-taking world after the iPhone’s original launch in 2007.

However, over the last 4+ years, Evernote has undergone a series of problematic changes, introducing bizarre new products in an attempt to expand its reach. They also changed the free plan in ways that have driven away users by crippling key features unless you pay.

Evernote remains a great product in many ways. It syncs across devices, offers a handy web clipper, and can even search handwriting.

But in trying to be all things to all people, the notes app market has opened up, offering a slew of note-taking apps that are going to appeal to more specific groups of people looking for more specific solutions.

What’s not on this list?

With note-taking apps, you need to be able to quickly take notes. Speed is of the essence. That means not having to waste time organizing and saving your files. You also need to be able to easily search your notes to find information.

Of course, you can take notes almost anywhere you can write.

Some people use the cells in a spreadsheet. Others use word processing apps like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Authors may prefer to jot down notes inside the tools they are already working in, like Scrivener. You can also take notes in project management software like Asana, or collaborative docs like Dropbox Paper.

None of these, however, beat the speed and simplicity of a dedicated notes app.

So in this post, we’re only looking at tools that are primarily for notes. Full-on word processing tools aren’t in the running, nor are project management tools or CRMs that happen to have a notes function. (Ulysses might be a minor exception, as it can be both a notes tool and word processor depending on how you use it.)

With that, here are the best note-taking tools in 2020 that aren’t Evernote.

Hugo - Best meeting notes app

For iOS and in your web browser. (Android, iPadOS, and macOS are on the horizon)

Plenty of note-taking apps are good generally-speaking, but taking notes in meetings poses some unique challenges. Fortunately, Hugo is purpose-built for meeting notes at work.

First, staying organized. Hugo centralizes and organizes all of your meeting notes with the help of your calendar. Notes are associated with your actual meetings, so you basically don’t have to worry about categorizing anything. (You can always add tags if you want to.) This works with G Suite, Gmail, or Office 365 calendars.

Plus, Hugo also integrates with over 20 other apps used for work. It syncs notes to your CRM (e.g. Salesforce), pushes tasks to project management tools (e.g. Jira), and works seamlessly with video conferencing tools (e.g. Zoom).

The Chrome browser extension gives you access to your notes from any page in your browser, which means you don’t have to dedicate your screen to note-taking during a video call. Just open and close the Hugo drawer when you need to check your agenda or jot a note down.

Hugo isn’t designed to just help you (although it will). With accounts for teams, collaborative note-taking, and a library of 80+ meeting note templates, everyone in your organization can use Hugo to centralize your meeting notes together.

During the pandemic, Hugo is offering free accounts to teams of up to 40 users. If you sign up during this period, you’ll get to keep that pricing even after the pandemic is over.

Hugo Pricing:

• Free plan: Yes
• Paid plan: $6/user/month for teams 11+

ALSO: Take a look at this guide to taking amazing meeting notes.

CacoonWeaver - Best speech-to-text notes app

Compatibility: iOS (iPhone/iPad)

CacoonWeaver is the best way to collect audio notes for iOS. Pop open the app and transcribe your ideas, thoughts, memories, and dreams. To organize your notes with voice commands, just say something like, “Cacoon Shopping” and the app will automatically put your notes in the Shopping category.

Unlike other note-taking apps where you need to enable dictation to record an audio note, and then carefully watch to make sure your text is going in correctly, CacoonWeaver records your audio and transcribes at the same time.

You can play back your notes, or read them back, which gives you the peace of mind to know that no matter what, your information won’t be lost, and there are no limitations on the max length of an audio recording.

CacoonWeaver also keeps track of where you had ideas, showing you blips on a map.

The UI is clean and minimalistic for distraction-free recording and offers custom push notifications and nudges to help you be your best self.

Because it is still in its debut phase, CacoonWeaver is currently free and keeps your data private and secure. The app claims to be in beta but it is fully functional and in better shape bugs-wise than a lot of other apps you’ll find on the AppStore.

CacconWeaver Pricing:

• Free app: Yes
• Paid plan: N/A

Milanote - Best whiteboard-style notes app for creatives

Compatibility: Desktop apps for Mac and Windows, plus mobile apps for iOS and Android

The Next Web calls Milanote “the Evernote for Creatives” and it’s easy to see why creative directors, filmmakers, photographers, marketers, and designers of all kinds enjoy using it.

Unlike most note-taking apps, Milanote takes a highly-visual approach, allowing you to organize your ideas and projects in visual boards. Collect images, videos, text, and tasks all together on your screen.

If your creative process includes activities like mood boarding, brainstorming, storyboarding, or mind-mapping, the visual canvas offers a flexible and delightful experience.

Milanote works for teams and clients too, with build-tin commenting, sharing, and notifications. Plus, you can download a high-quality, printable PDF of any board.

You can try Milanote free with no time limit, although it is limited to 100 notes, images, or links (and only 10 file uploads). After that, it’s $9.99 for unlimited storage

Milanote Pricing:

• Free plan: Yes
• Paid plan: $12.50/month when billed monthly, $9.99/month when billed annually.

Bear - Fastest markdown notepad for iOS & Mac

Compatibility: iOS (iPhone/iPad) and Mac

For Apple fans looking to upgrade beyond Apple Notes, Bear offers a good balance of features, design, convenience, and software speed. If you’re coming from Evernote, for example, it’s so fast, you’ll notice the difference immediately.

From your very first note, Bear’s design shines, treating you with elegant typography and theme options which include multiple dark modes.

Bear's speed isn't just for writing notes, either. Searching in the app also runs fast, with minimal delays when searching notes.

With many advanced markdown options (or is it markup?), Bear works great if you like to format as you type. Hybrid markdown support means you can see the formatted text as you’re typing, although if you’re not a regular user of markdown, you might not enjoy the experience at first. You can easily export these nicely-formatted notes to HTML, PDF, and TXT.

It also has quick shortcuts, such as for finding today’s date, and supports checkboxes to help with to-dos. Built-in tagging is powerful and allows you to create tags anywhere in a document that are automatically captured in the sidebar.

Bear uses iCloud to speedily sync notes between iOS and Mac with a Pro membership. Still, some users complain that this should be a free feature like it is with most other note-taking apps.

Bear is rated 4.5 out of 5 on G2 Crowd with positive reviews from many note-taking app power users, such as consultants, software developers, and UI/UX designers. The biggest complaint about Bear is a lack of helpful or effective support.

Bear pricing:

• Free app: Yes
• Paid Plan: Bear Pro is $1.49/monthly, $14.99 annually with a free trial

‍Typora - Best distraction-free notes app

Compatibility: For desktop/laptop computers only (Mac, Windows, and Linux)

Typora is a slick alternative to Bear that is even more minimalist and distraction-free. The app is simple, with very little UI getting in the way. It’s also beautifully designed, with clear, aesthetically-pleasing text.

Typora has a night mode and also supports custom themes so that you can create the perfect writing experience.

It also has two cool modes. One is a unique Focus Mode that highlights the paragraph you’re currently working on, while graying out everything else. Typewriter Mode similarly highlights the center of your screen.

Many of the same advanced markdown features are in Typora, meaning that you can type up nicely-formatted notes without ever having to shift your hand to your mouse. Even so, if you want to get a little bit fancy, Typora supports tables, diagrams, mathematical formats, footnotes, code fences, and task lists.

Typora Pricing:

• Free app: Yes, during beta
• Paid Plan: Not yet announced

‍Workflowy - Infinite expandable bullet points

Compatibility: Desktop apps for Windows, Mac and Linux, plus iOS, Android, and in your browser

Do you love taking notes with bullet points?

Do you wish everything in life could be bullets — Infinite, ever-expanding bullet points, as far as the sky can reach?

Does your whole world spin around lists and bullet points? If not, would you like it to?

If the answer the above is a resounding Yes!, you’ll be in heaven with Workflowy.

The concept is simple. Workflowy lets you create infinite piles of bullet points which are also each their own document. Expand, collapse, move documents, drill in and out — it’s intuitive and natural bullet points at a scale that you may have never dreamed of.

The product works well for outlining and project organization just naturally. It’s novel, intuitive, and requires very little learning to figure out.

The only downside to Workflowy is in organizing more matrixed information. This might be more challenging, because every bit of information may not have a clear place in your stack of bullet points for where it should belong. (Contrast this with Hugo, which organizes meeting notes based on your calendar, so notes don’t live in just one particular place — they’re associated with names, companies, dates, meeting titles, etc...)

Still, for your next novel or work project, especially for people whose minds work in a certain bullet-driven way, give Workflowy a try.

Workflowly Pricing:

• Free plan: Yes
• Paid plan: $5/month

OneNote - Best free option (not just for Microsoft lovers)

For iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and in the browser

Simple, practical, and ubiquitous for Windows and Office users, OneNote is a free note-taking app that seems to be everywhere.

It’s a great basic option, with a familiar UI to anyone who has ever used Microsoft products like Word, and while it does most of the things Evernote does, it stands out because of one big four-letter word that starts with an F.

Free.

You get more advanced functionality here without having to pay.

In OneNote, you can add multimedia elements to your notes, such as audio, video, images, and even websites using the Webclipper browser extension. Task lists are an option, although robust task management in OneNote can be challenging because you can’t put due dates on anything.

OneNote has a large folder organization system, letting you create notebooks and sections, and nest them inside each other. The way that sections get dragged around can be frustrating — trying to move one section below another and can have it end up inside on accident — but again, for a free option, for many, this may be a minor inconvenience. Cross-notebook search is available, although there is a learning curve to finding your information.

OneNote uses OneDrive to sync across all of your Microsoft apps. If you don’t have an Office 365 subscription, you can upgrade your OneDrive to a paid plan for an increase in storage space.

OneNote Pricing:

• Free app: Yes
• Paid plan: Upgrade OneDrive for more storage space, starting at $1.99/month for 100 GB

‍Boost Note - Best note-taking app for developers

Compatibility: iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, and in your browser

Stylish, markdown-enabled, and fully open-source, Boost Note is a developer’s dream. The interface resembles Sublime, the popular text editor, with a slight skew toward taking quick and easy notes.

Boost Note highlights syntax for you and recognizes over 100 programming languages. It also supports math blocks where you can write math equations using LaTeX syntax. Themes are fully customizable.

Notes are stored safely in the cloud, with more file system-based storage coming soon.

Boost Note Pricing:

• Free app: Yes (100 MB cloud storage)
• Paid plan: 2GB cloud storage at $3/month. Boost Note for Teams launches in June 2020.

Google Keep - Best note-taking app for Google fanatics

Compatibility: Android, iOS, and in your web browser

Sync Goodnotes To Evernote

Google Keep is a straightforward notes app that comes as part of your G Suite or Gmail account. It offers a clean, nicely-organized UI that has most of the standard features you’re looking for in a note-taking app, without too many bells and whistles.

If the rest of your life already revolves around Google products, Google Keep may be the right pick for you.

As you create notes, they are organized on your screen visually in a corkboard style. You can change the background colors to give it a post-it notes effect. While if you take a ton of notes, this may feel haphazard, with moderate use it's colorful and fun.

You might be wondering, Why do I need Google Keep when I have Google Docs?

For some users, it may be redundant to have multiple types of Google Docs, but others may enjoy the simpler note-taking experience in Google Keep. And if your notes start to become something more than just a note, there’s always the Copy to Google Docs action to transfer it over.

Google Keep Pricing:

• Free app: Yes
• Paid plan: N/A

Ulysses - Top-of-the-line notes app for serious writers

Goodnotes Evernote Sync App

Compatibility: Mac, iPad, iPhone

For writers and authors, Ulysses is a notes app that will replace your word processor 99% of the time. Fully-featured and elegant, it is a very power writing app.

Export in various file formats, including text, HTML, ePub, PDF, and DOCX, plus a number of export styles for professional-looking PDFs and manuscripts. You can also schedule or publish articles to Wordpress and Medium directly within the app.

Ulysses also excels at organizing, if you’re willing to set it up. With views, custom searches, filters, and tags, it’s the most organizable note-taking experience on this list (except for Hugo, which auto-organizes meeting notes based on your calendar.)

All of this functionality comes at a cost, however. Ulysses is free to try, but if you get hooked, there’s not paired down free version to stick with.

Ulysses

• Free plan: Trial only
• Paid plan: $4.99/month or $39.99 ($3.33/month) when paid annually

Notability - Best note-taking app for iPad with Apple Pencil

Compatibility: iOS (iPhone and iPad)

Combine handwriting, photos, and typing into a single note with Notability. The elegant interface is nicely-designed, letting you choose from a variety of typing and drawing instruments with ease.

Notability has a nice range of sketching tools that make it easy to recolor, scale, and adjust your ideas and sketches. You can also pick from different paper backgrounds, for example, to sketch your notes on graph paper, or more textured art paper.

Notability syncs with iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, AirDrop, and Email for easy sharing with colleagues and study partners.

It’s also great for annotating PDFs.

Notability Pricing:

• Free trial: No
• Paid app: $8.99

Goodnotes App For Windows 10

(Note: Nebo, discussed below, is another great option that works across all tablet platforms.)

‍Nebo - Best note-taking app for Surface with Surface Pen

Compatibility: iOS, Android, and Windows

Microsoft’s Surface Pen offers a delightful drawing experience on the Surface Book, Pro, and Studio, and there’s no reason you can’t use OneNote for this purpose. The anniversary update of Windows 10 also brought the Windows Ink Workspace, which gives you three cool apps: Sticky Notes, Sketchpad, and Screen sketch.

If you have an active pen like the Surface Pen, you might be asking, with all this greatness bundled for you in Windows, can note-taking get any better?

The answer is yes, and the other answer is Nebo.

Draw sketches and diagrams. Easily switch between your pen and keyboard.

There are tons of cool gestures that make the experience delightful, like how you can scratch out a letter to delete it, or swipe up to join two sentences together.

Getting notes out of Nebo is a breeze, with image, text, DOCX, and HTML formats available. You can also copy/paste diagrams to PowerPoint and they stay fully-editable.

Nebo pricing:

• Free app: N/A
• Paid app: $9.99