People say that the best camera is the one you have with you, and we think the same thing goes for note apps. If you always have an iPhone or iPad with you, either is great for taking notes. But which app should you use?
Note-taking apps litter the App Store, and at one point it felt like we couldn’t go a day without a big new app launch. Since then many have fallen by the wayside, including some high profile apps, but what’s left is a collection of apps that range from the brilliant to the abysmal.
So which should you be using?
When choosing an iPhone or iPad app for taking notes, there are a few prerequisites at play depending on your particular use. For some, Dropbox integration is a must-have, while others are perfectly fine so long as the app supports iCloud. Some people might need support for exporting as Markdown, or perhaps they need live previews of those Markdown notes. There are so many different requirements out there that it’s impossible to consider them all here. What we can do is share what we think are the best note-taking apps for the iPhone and iPad, for most people.
With that said, let’s jump in.
Apple Notes
The obvious place to start here is with Apple’s Notes app because it ships with every iPhone and iPad. Right out of the box those devices have one of the best note-taking apps around, but it isn’t without its flaws, and those flaws are enough to make it a second-class citizen on a lot of people’s devices.
The best thing Notes has to offer is that it syncs effortlessly between all of your Apple devices, but that also brings with it an obvious problem. Getting at your notes on an Android device or Windows PC is a case of using third-party apps that unofficially gain access or the iCloud.com website. Neither solution works well enough to be a real option as far as we’re concerned. If you’re all-in on Apple’s gear, this isn’t going to be a problem for you at all.
