As of Apple's launch of the iPad Air 3 and the iPad mini 5, all-new model iPad devices support Apple Pencil. That's the 9.7-inch iPad, iPad Air, iPad Pro, and iPad mini. Whether you need to take handwritten notes, annotate documents, record audio, create sports playbooks, and more, the App Store has a number of fantastic apps for note-taking. Here isç the cream of the crop based on our extensive testing.
Starting out? Try The Notes app
The Best Note-Taking Apps of 2018. Zoho Notebook is a free Mac app that makes note-taking simple, but to be really useful. The Best Travel Apps of 2018. Best Mac Apps - Essential Apps for Your MacBook. Some people can make do with simple to-do lists in Apple Notes or the colorful Clear app. Things, an app that first rose to prominence on iOS.
The iPad's default Notes app is perfectly suited for use with Apple Pencil. It has text recognition search, inline scanning and annotation, and sketching or handwriting support. With Apple Pencil 2, you can assign the double-tap tool to either erase or the last tool used. It has more limited features than the best third-party notes app — you can't sync your notes anywhere but iCloud, and there's no easy way to link various notes together — but if you're just jotting down a quick note or sketching an idea, the Notes app is that perfect quick-hit app. Sort of like having a napkin with you at all times.
Notability is the best for general note-taking
Notability is a fan favorite of many note-taking aficionados, including me. It has an excellent interface full of tools for handwriting, drawing, annotating PDFs, making shapes, highlighting, moving objects around, adding audio, integrating photos and web clips, and more. If you want your note-taking experience to feel more real, you can choose from a number of different paper styles, including grids, which is very useful for vector line drawing. Video editor mac os. You can share your notebooks to just about every major service and print them, along with importing notebooks from Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or a WebDAV service. Notability also offers iCloud sync support and a companion Mac app.
Because it's so feature-rich, it can seem a little intimidating to newcomers. Luckily, Notability has a really nice tutorial that guides you through its features when you first open it.
Evernote
It also works flawlessly with the Apple Pencil — whether you're writing, sketching, or drawing shapes. It's an excellent, well-designed app if you want a little bit more power than what the default Notes app provides.
GoodNotes is for the power-using note-taker. It is packed to the brim with a robust list of pro features. I'd never heard of the app until developer Chris Liscio pointed it out, and I'm so happy he did.
For starters, GoodNotes offers a truly massive selection of paper types for its digital notebooks, including lined, graph, design, and music notation; there are even advanced options that let you upload custom templates. Better still, most templates are available in specific paper sizes (if you're working for print). GoodNotes also offers a ton of different cover styles and choices, all of which can be written upon and further designed.
Like the other apps in this roundup, GoodNotes supports writing and drawing with the Apple Pencil — along with a number of third-party stylus options — using two different digital writing tools: a digital fountain or ball pen in a preset or custom color spectrum.
GoodNotes also has built-in handwriting search recognition and text conversion (done via MyScript's engine, which also powers MyScript Nebo).
Note: As friend-of-iMore Jason Snell has pointed out, apps like GoodNotes do this largely by guessing your words. You might get a hit for 'app' after writing the word, but searching for 'ape' might bring you to the same page.
If you're looking for a more extensive option than Notability, GoodNotes is a feature-rich app well worth the download.
For Office users, OneNote is great
Microsoft's note app is more of a note storing receptacle than a full-featured note-taking app. That being said, it's got plenty of useful features for iPad owners with an Office 365 subscription. Even if you don't you can import and edit documents for free. You just need a Microsoft or Skype account. With OneNote, you can share links to your notebooks to the public, email a PDF of your notebook to others, and annotate documents with your Apple Pencil. In a single note, you can sketch an idea, add photos and audio, type notes, create calendars, and more. It's similar to Evernote but is designed to work seamlessly with Office 365.
PDF Expert is the king of PDF annotation and markup
Though you can quickly highlight, edit, and markup PDFs on your iPad using the built-in Markup extension, if you regularly need to annotate PDF files, you should consider PDF Expert instead. It's got a list of comprehensive markup tools to make things easier for you. You can open up PDFs from iCloud or pretty much any other online service with the PDF Expert app, fill out forms, and sign documents; you can also work with items with a digital pen, shape tool, underline, strike-thru, or highlighter option, as well as create 'stamps' for often-used wording. All of these changes, after saved, are not only fully editable in PDF Expert, but in apps like Adobe Acrobat and Preview — so you can move from Mac to PC and back again with your iPad.
PDF Expert also lets you edit the structure of PDFs themselves: You can rearrange pages, delete sections, extract parts of the PDF, and even add new blank pages to your documents. Once you're finished with a PDF document, you can even zip it (or multiple documents) with PDF Expert's built-in compressor, and password-protect crucial documents.
Should you want to further tinker with your PDFs, Expert offers a Pro upgrade in-app that allows you to physically edit the text, images, and links inside a PDF, as well as redact information.
If you need handwriting recognition, get MyScript Nebo
Forget mere note-taking: If you want your scribbles converted to text, you're going to need an app that supports handwriting conversion. We've come a long way from the Newton and egg freckles, but the apps available for such things are still few and far between. Apps like Notes and GoodNotes scan your text for search purposes, but don't offer outright handwriting recognition. In contrast, there are apps like MyScript Nebo, which offers full handwriting-to-text conversion.
MyScript has been a big name in handwriting recognition for years (including a handwriting recognition keyboard), but the Nebo app is the company's first attempt at an app designed for Apple Pencil and iPad Pro, and it's excellent. It's simple enough to use and offers a silky-smooth digital pen tool in multiple colors. In addition, users can add photographic and video content, diagrams, and equations alongside handwriting or digital text.
Nebo's notebooks can be converted a paragraph at a time or as a full notebook; those conversions are entirely non-destructive, too, so you can preserve the handwriting if the type conversion isn't perfect. You can also export notebooks as text, HTML, PDF, or Word documents. Sync is available through MyScript's proprietary service, as well as iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox.
Here are some other great note-taking apps that don't necessarily fit this list, but are still worth mentioning in their own right.
Your favorites?
These note-taking apps are the perfect fit for iPad and Apple Pencil users. They're not the only ones in the App Store, though. Do you have a favorite you'd like to see on this list? Put them in the comments!
Updated April 2019: Updated for Apple Pencil 2 and support for iPad Air 3 and iPad mini 5.
Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.
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For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been on the hunt for a good note-taking app on my Mac. I already use Evernote, but I’ve been looking for quicker and simpler alternative. I wanted an app that lives in the menu bar and allowed me to view my notes right from the menu bar. Also, an easy-to-remember keyboard shortcut to quickly add notes in a single step was a must. As a bonus, iOS integration is always nice to have for viewing notes on my iPad.
So far, I’ve tried ShoveBox, FetchNotes and NotesTab. ShoveBox was the perfect solution, until it was abandoned by its developer; before that I had been using it for about a year. FetchNotes seemed perfect as well, but the Mac app/widget was a huge disappointment; plus it didn’t have a menu bar icon.
NotesTab worked great for me and is still a favorite. I loved it because of its great features and elegant design. The only thing I didn’t like about NotesTab was having to use two keyboard shortcuts to add a new note: one to bring the app into focus and another to create a new note. So, I was back to searching for another menu bar note-taking app.
Recently, I caught Noteworthy+ on sale and decided to give it a try. How does it compare to NotesTab? You be the judge.
Installation
Both Noteworthy+ and NotesTab can be downloaded from the Mac App store. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
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The Noteworthy+ menu bar icon is a bit misleading. Just looking at it, you can’t really tell that it’s an app for taking notes. However, NotesTab has an icon that resembles a writing tablet and a pencil, so you know right away that it’s for taking notes.
Usage
Noteworthy+ is more like a mini version of Evernote, that lives in your menu bar. I say that because you can create notebooks and then add individual notes to your notebooks.
Also, you can format your notes by doing the following: changing the font type, size and color; highlighting text and changing the highlight color; adding bulleted lists; and making text bold, italicized and underlined. Noteworthy+ has conveniently added these formatting options to the side of the app window.
With NotesTab you simply add notes; there are no notebooks. There also aren’t any formatting options in NotesTab. Some may prefer this though. Let’s face it, if you’re just using the app to jot down short and quick notes, this really shouldn’t be an issue.
Keyboard Shortcuts
As I mentioned above, NotesTab requires two keyboard shortcuts to add a note. You can customize these keyboard shortcuts to as you’d like. With Noteworthy+, you can add a note with just a single keyboard shortcut. The only downside to this is that the keyboard shortcut is not customizable.
Personally, I find the shortcut for Noteworthy+ easier to remember. Although, I think if NotesTab only needed one keyboard shortcut to add a note, it would be easy to remember as well. I also noticed that NotesTab seems to be using the same “new note” keyboard shortcut as Evernote. So be sure to change that if you’re using both apps at the same time.
Adding Notes
When you open Noteworthy+, you can immediately start typing to add a new note. With NotesTab, you can use the keyboard shortcut to create a new note and then start typing, or click the plus button to create a new note.
Noteworthy+ is obviously quicker since there’s only one step required to add a note. Just remember, you should already have your default notebook open in Noteworthy+ so that your note will be added to it. If you don’t have a notebook open (meaning you’re still on the “home” page), then you’ll have to select it or add a new one before adding your note.
Searching Notes
Note search in Noteworthy+ works the same way as adding a new note. As soon as you start typing, it starts searching. If a note contains the text you’ve typed, it will show up below the entry bar. You can choose to select that note or just keep typing and add a new note.
NotesTab has a search bar at the top of the app window. You will have to click there and then start typing to search. So again, although it’s not difficult or time-consuming, there are still more steps required with NotesTab.
Other Notable Features
Best ftp for mac. Noteworthy+ has an export feature. You can export all of your notes in a single notebook to a single HTML file. Can you buy word for mac at best buy. You can also change the row height of your notes and show/hide the menu bar icon.
NotesTab has an awesome sharing feature so that you can share your notes via email. You can also star important notes and anchor the app window so that it remains on top of your other windows. This is great if you need to reference a note and want it to stay open and visible until you’re done.
Final Thoughts
So, what’s your verdict? As you can see, both apps are meant for quick use on your Mac, yet both are differently in many ways. The one you choose will depend on what you’re looking for in a note-taking menu bar application.
Do you want notebooks or just a list of notes? Do you want to format your notes or is plain text good enough for you? Do you want to share your notes with others or prefer to keep them private?
In the end, as much as I love the features and design of NoteTab, I have to go with Noteworthy+ because it only requires one keyboard shortcut. I’m really disappointed that neither have mobile counterparts. Hopefully, in the near future they’ll develop mobile optimized websites or iOS/Android apps for reading and adding notes on mobile devices.
Noteworthy+ (Currently Free)
NotesTab (Free)
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