Best Note-Taking Apps for School
When it comes to taking notes for class, there is a rising trend of people using apps on their tablets and touchscreen devices to do so. These apps make note-taking efficient and allow better organization and flexibility.
Some people have concerns that electronic note-taking may not be as effective as traditional note-taking. However, the benefits of writing on tablets certainly outweigh the costs.
Here are some of the best note-taking apps for school.*
*Note: the pricing is based on 2021 prices and details.
Price: $8.99 USD, $11.99 CAD
Ranked #4 in App Store’s Productivity category, Notability is one of the most popular note-taking apps available on mobile devices. Some of the best features of this app include multi-note which is working with two notes side-by-side. It also has auto-backup using cloud services such as Dropbox and Google Drive to store notes for archiving or recovery.
Personal Thoughts:
Notability is an app that I use personally. It has a very simple, yet intuitive, user interface. My favorite feature is its multi-note function, which allows me to refer to two notes at the same time. For example, this allows me to reference my document of scientific/mathematical formulas on one half of the screen, while taking notes in class on the other half.
Price: $7.99 USD, $10.99 CAD
Perhaps the greatest rival to Notability, GoodNotes 5, ranks #3 in App Store’s Productivity Category. An excellent feature provided by GoodNotes 5 is paperless document management. It allows the user to organize documents and digital notebooks in folders and unlimited subfolders.
This is a great app if you are feeling creative when taking notes. GoodNotes 5 has many templates that allow you to customize your notes, as well as your digital notebook’s front cover.
Personal Thoughts:
GoodNotes captured my attention at first because of its “digital notebook” concept, which I find very creative and intuitive to use. My favorite thing about GoodNotes is its ability to create infinite subfolders which Notability failed to do.
Price: Free
OneNote is a part of the Microsoft Office 365 family. If your school assigns you a Microsoft account and/or email, then this is one of the apps that you will be able to access for free. It has many powerful features including saving notes to the cloud and collaborating on a shared notepad.
You can quickly organize your notes and pin the pages you use the most. OneNote also lets you secure your notes with a password.
Personal Thoughts:
Definitely not my favorite note-taking app. However, it is very useful since many schools and teachers use OneNote as their primary way to store class notes online. Based on this factor of compatibility with teacher/professor notes, OneNote becomes a good option for taking class notes online.
Price: Free
Apple’s default Notes app is actually a great note-taking app (if you have an Apple device) to many people’s surprise. It has all the necessary features that many people look for in a note-taking app: handwriting, typing, and multimedia support. If you are not looking to download third-party apps, Apple’s Notes might be a great solution for you!
Personal Thoughts:
In my experience, Apple's Notes app is best for quick note-taking. If you suddenly want to jot down an idea or something you need to remember for later, Notes is a great app for that. However, I do have friends who use this as their primary option for taking in-class notes.
Price: Free
Nebo is a rising contestant in the note-taking app market. The prominent feature of Nebo is that it has amazing handwriting recognition and a write-to-text conversion feature. Nebo can accurately convert any handwriting (even the more messy ones) into digital text in 66 different languages. The app also lets you edit handwritten notes with your Apple/Tablet Pencil.
Personal Thoughts:
This is a very cool app. It recognizes certain handwriting gestures and will edit the handwritten notes based on the gesture. If you enjoy the creativity of writing your notes “by hand,” but want the freedom of having your notes in a digital format (as opposed to a notebook), then this is a great solution.
Price: Free
Last but not least, another rising contestant in the competitive market is CollaNote. Created by a student from the University of Hamburg, CollaNote has been awarded “App of the Day” and found its way into a “Favorites of the week” category from Apple. It is a powerful app with real-time collaboration that can go up to “unlimited” participants.
Personal Thoughts:
Collaboration is CollaNote's main selling point in my opinion, which makes it quite similar to Google Docs. It has the option to have public notebooks open to an unlimited number of people - something that sounds cool, but also chaotic!
Bonus Resources
Taking Notes with OneNote
Taking Notes with Google Docs
Other posts about note-taking you might be interested in:
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