Microsoft OneNote is one of the most popular note-taking apps from the beginning. It is simple to use and comes with a user-friendly interface. You will get the most from this app when using your iPad. You can instantly create notes for your daily works. The iPad devices supporting Apple Pencil (e.g., iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad mini, and 9.7-inch iPad) give users far faster and smoother handwriting experience than taking notes on paper. In order to better meet the needs of users, there is a slew of useful note-taking apps launched on the App Store.
Have you taken full advantage of your iPad? With its portability and smooth touchscreen, you can use Stylus or even your finger to quickly make a note or annotate PDF books and files. With the release of Apple Pencil, it becomes easier for us to take handwriting notes just like on a real paper. The iPad, undoubtedly, is a great device for digital note-taking. But to get an iPad is only half the battle. You got to own the right apps to serve your needs. There are lots of note-taking app alternatives in the App Store. Instead of looking here and there, why not get a list of best note-taking apps for iPad directly? To do this job, I have downloaded and tried a large number of apps for note-taking, and then selected the best ones and narrowed it down by 10. Here are my top picks. Let's check it out.
Bonus Tips: To Take Notes with any eBook on the Following Note-taking Apps
Note-taking apps are especially useful for reading a textbook or reference book. Compared with ebook reader apps, the note-taking apps are more multi-functional besides annotation. The most important and distinctive feature of these apps is the handwriting experience just like you are working with a real piece of paper.
If you want to use these apps to take notes with your DRM-protected ebooks purchased from Kindle, Kobo, Google Play or Nook, you need to decrypt such books and convert the ebook formats to PDF. Here Epubor Ultimate, a powerful tool combining both DRM removal and ebook converter, is highly recommended to you to help solve this problem. All you need to do is to add your books to the software, choose the output format as PDF, and then click on the 'Convert' button at the bottom. For more details about decrypting ebooks, you can read A Step by Step Guide on How to remove DRM from eBooks.
![Best Note Taking App For Ipad Best Note Taking App For Ipad](/uploads/1/3/7/5/137542501/104091233.png)
1. Notability
Notability is one of the best note-taking apps for handwriting and sketching. It combines handwriting, drawings, photos, gifs, typing, audio records, custom shapes in a single note. Perfectly compatible with Apple Pencil, Notability allows you to take notes like writing on papers with an actual pen. Compared to other note-taking apps, the distinctive features of this one include the support of audio recordings, A OCR search scanning both text and handwriting notes, handwriting to text conversion, and Multi-task which enables you to take notes while reading another document. Also, it's easy to import and annotate PDFs or webpages. It can be the best all-purpose App for general note-taking, I think.
Supported devices: iPhone, iPad, Mac
Price: $9.99
2. Goodnotes
Goodnotes, an alternative to Notability, is a note-taking app that focuses on handwriting. Thus, those who want to improve the experience of taking handwritten notes on iPad with Apple Pencil or other styluses must check out Goodnotes. Its important functions, including varied paper types and effortless document managements, distinguish it from other similar note-taking apps. Also, the global search lets you search and find any text or handwriting information from your whole library and open the document right away. This can help you always find what you wrote before. It's amazing, right?
Supported devices: iPhone, iPad
Price: $7.99
3. OneNote
Microsoft OneNote has a lot of functionality, but actually it's a good note-collection app rather than the greatest example of a handwriting note-taking app. The specialty of OneNote is that it allows you to share your notes across all of your devices with Microsoft Office. Also, it offers a special collaboration experience to let you work with your team or friends who have Microsoft accounts, which could be a big plus for lots of people. If you are an Office user, OneNote is great and it's free.
Supported devices: iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows
Price: free
4. MyScipt Nebo
MyScript Nebo, recommended by Apple many times, has been a big name in handwriting recognition. It's a good recommendation for those who like to use Apple Pencil. Less of a handwriting note-taking app, it's more like a handwriting converter which turns your handwritten notes into text, titles, paragraphs and bullet points for better organization of notes. This app also features in rich diagram creation options for professional presentations. The notes you take can be exported as Text, PDF, HTML and Word.
Supported devices: iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows
Price: $7.99
5. Marginnote
Marginnote, a brand new e-reader to better study and digest your books, integrates powerful tools for book annotation, mindmapping and flashcards to help you build up your reading notes. Compared with other note-taking apps, the biggest difference of Marginnote is its function of MindMap. It's easy for you to auto-create MindMap from excerpts or just drag PDF selection, pictures, texts to Mindmap. In this way, you can organize multi-book reading notes all in one map. Also, it seems to be the only note-taking app that allows you to annotate both PDFs and Epub files.
Supported devices: iPhone, iPad, Mac
Price: $6.99
6. PDF Expert
PDF Expert is an essential app for people who regularly modify or work with PDF files. This app is primarily focused on PDF editing, but it can work efficiently as a note-taking as well if you need to annotate PDFs. It boasts a variety of annotation tools like readymade 'stamps', highlight options, shapes, diagrams and etc. Moreover, you can rearrange pages of your files, delete some sections, or even add new blank pages to your PDF documents. Also, you could utilize the signature function to sign your documents and set a password to protect them.
Supported devices: iPhone, iPad, Mac
Price: $9.99
7. Whink
Whink, as the most pleasing iOS note-taking app, offers a refreshingly modern UI design. It's an all-in-one app to take handwriting notes with Apple Pencil or other styluses, which makes the process like writing on a real paper. Besides basic document annotation, Whink can also record audios so that you can record your meetings, lectures or conversations while taking notes. With iCloud sync, there is no need to worry about losing your notes since all of them will be saved over the cloud. This app is a little bit cheaper than others, so it can be one of the candidates for note-taking.
Supported devices: iPhone, iPad
Price: $4.99
8. Noteshelf
Noteshelf, a fabulous option for both students and professionals, is another handwriting-focused note-taking app. It combines many features from Notability and Goodnotes such as a range of pens and highlighters, custom page options and audio records. Compared with its competitors, Noteshelf is able to sync with Evernote. Therefore, it might be a better choice for those who already work with Evernote and want a superior handwriting feeling.
Supported devices: iPhone, iPad, Mac
Price: $13.99
9. Apple Notes
Apple Notes, being pre-installed on every iPad and iPhone, is entirely free to use. It can be a good choice for daily note taking since it's simple, efficient and easy to open. However, there are not many features that other apps offer like OCR searching, handwriting to text conversion or different pape templates. It's true that there are many apps that can do more, but there are few that are as accessible as Apple Notes.
Supported devices: iPhone, iPad, Mac
Price: free
10. Evernote
Evernote has been one of the best note-taking apps on lots of platforms for years. It's a great app to collect multiple inputs, including images, texts, recorded audios and clippings of web pages. The iOS app is free to download, but the free tier is restricted to syncing only two devices and uploads are limited to just 60MB per month. If you want to switch between more than 2 devices, you need to buy the Premium tier. The cross-platform availability, thus, becomes the biggest selling point of Evernote.
Supported devices: iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows
Price: free Apartment post boxes.
A Comparison Chart of the Best 10 Note-taking Apps for iPad
Here is a comparison chart of 10 note-taking apps above. You can have a quick look at the accessible functions and features each app provides. Canon scanner software.
Name | Notability | Goodnotes | OneNote | MyScript Nebo | Marginnote | PDF Expert | Whink | Noteshelf | Apple Notes | Evernote |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Price($) | 9.99 | 7.99 | free | 7.99 | 6.99 | 9.99 | 4.99 | 9.99 | free | free |
PDF Annotation | ✔ | v | v | v | v | v | v | v | × | v |
Handwriting/Text Recognition | v | v | v | v | v | × | × | v | × | v |
Handwriting to text conversion | v | v | v | v | × | × | × | v | × | × |
Audio Recordings | v | × | v | × | × | v | v | v | × | v |
iCloud Sync | v | v | × | v | v | v | v | v | v | × |
Varied Paper Types | v | v | × | v | × | v | × | v | × | v |
Apple Pencil Support | v | v | v | v | v | v | v | v | v | v |
Mind Map | × | × | × | × | v | × | × | × | × | × |
Multitask | v | × | v | v | v | × | v | v | × | × |
Export Formats | PDF, RTF, No'te | PDF, image | TXT, PDF, HTML, DOC | PDF, Anki, DOC | TXT, PDF, HTML, DOC | PDF, image | none |
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Best Apple Pencil Note Taking App
Taking notes is significant in our daily study and work as we rely on it to record some important information captured from another source. Nowadays, note taking is no longer confined to papers. The iPad devices supporting Apple Pencil (e.g., iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad mini, and 9.7-inch iPad) give users far faster and smoother handwriting experience than taking notes on paper. In order to better meet the needs of users, there is a slew of useful note-taking apps launched on the App Store. It is somewhat tedious work to pick out the one that suits you most by trying all these apps one by one. Thus, for your reference, we list 8 best free note taking apps for the iPad & Apple Pencil in this article.
1. Microsoft OneNote
With a rating of 4.7 on the App Store from over 291.2K users, Microsoft OneNote is undoubtedly the best iPad note taking app you’re looking for. This application is most often used on the laptop or desktop. But actually, it is more suitable for tablets supporting the stylus like iPads with Apple Pencil. OneNote is like a three-ring binder with labels which allows the users to create notes directly or collect pages from other sources. Even better, you can shift these pages within the spring binder. You can also add comments, process texts, draw pictures, and embed multimedia audio or web links in these pages.
The most prominent part of this app is its built-in searching feature which enables you to search for the embedded text in images, comments, and audio files. In addition, you can make a checklist in OneNote to track your daily errands in the best possible way.
2. Notability
Notability is another one of the best note taking apps for iPad with Apple Pencil, which provides different ways to take notes and capture thoughts. Notability users can annotate texts or PDFs, write drafts, record the audio, take remarks by typing, drawing, handwriting, recording, or photographing. And users can drag and drop texts, pictures, web pages, and more files from other apps into Notability. Moreover, you can process two notes at the same time. You can also freely switch between notes as well as drag and drop texts or pictures between notes.
The information you’ve captured in this application can be converted to PDF version and locked with a Face ID or Touch ID in view of your privacy. With iCloud, your notes in Notability are available on your iPad, iPhone, and Mac.
3. Evernote
Best Note Taking App For Ipad Free
When it comes to the best note taking apps, Evernote must be on the list. It has long been the leader among various note-taking and syncing apps. This cloud-based tool offers unlimited storage for you to take notes and synchronize the notes in near real-time across your devices. Based on these two features, Evernote is not enough to be a leader among the crowd of note taking apps. But it has outstanding organizational functions. Besides grouping your notes into notebooks, this application also supports to tag notes, crosslink notes, save the attachment to notes, and embed checklists. The notes you take can be the typed text, handwritten notes, image, web page, PDF, sketches, videos, and many more types. One more highlight of this note taking app is that it enables multiple users to edit the same shared notebook together and achieve team collaboration.
4. Bear
As one of the best note taking apps for iPad, iPhone, and Mac, Bear is thoughtfully designed. While it has a minimalistic and straightforward interface, it is rich-featured as well. Bear supports sketching and draw with the Apple Pencil or another third-party stylus. It also supports the Markdown, a syntax that allows users to add links and format the text before exporting notes to the content management system. You can add mufti-word tags in a quote, which helps to organize and archive your notes quicker and more convenient. The notes you take using Bear app can be shared and exported in different formats, including HTML, PDF, OCX, MD, JPG, etc. and synced reliably with cloud services.
5. Notes
There is no doubt that the note taking app best suits your iPad with Apple Pencil is the one that Apple has built-in: Apple Notes. Since the release of iOS 9, Apple Notes has definitely become a fantastic note-taking system. It has an intuitive and precise interface. This application supports inline scanning, handwriting, text searching, and annotation. But it won’t let you tag or customize your notes for the organization. And you cannot sync the created notebooks anywhere except for iCloud. Moreover, linking your notes together is quite difficult in Apple Notes. But if you just want to jot down some important points, notes, or simple ideas, Apple Notes would be a perfect choice for you.
Sometimes the notes you’ve taken in the Apple Notes app may be deleted or lost by accident; you can always use Jihosoft iPhone Data Recovery to help you retrieve your iPad notes.
6. Notebook – Take Notes, Sync
Notebook is a completely free note taking app for iPad, and it is also ad-free. It has a fairly clean and straightforward user interface. The unique card-based design makes this application stand out in numerous note taking apps. Different cards have different colors, which makes it easier to sort and view multiple categories of notes. Notebook has custom book covers as well as various ways to take notes. You can type text, add files, create checklists, record audio, capture moments, or handwrite notes with fingers or Apple Pencil. The notes you take in this application can be saved in your cloud service so that you never lose them. And each notebook and note can be locked with a passcode or Touch ID, so you don’t need to worry about your privacy.
7. GoodNotes
GoodNotes is a decent note-taking app for you to take handwritten notes on your iPad with Apple Pencil. This application has a notebook-like shape and provides various customizable ink and paper choices, which gives you the feel of writing with an actual pen. The remarkable feature of GoodNotes is not limited to handwriting. This note taking app for Apple Pencil also supports to type texts, import pictures, or capture moments. It is a powerful PDF tool which lets you handwrite comments in the PDF file and create PDF files. Similar to other apps, the notes you take in GoodNotes can be searched via OCR and synced via iCloud and other cloud services.
Conclusion
Above all are 7 best note taking apps for iPad with Apple Pencil we pick out for your reference. Most of them also work well on the iPhone. All these apps are aimed at providing users with a seamless note-taking experience. Do you have a general understanding of these note taking apps for iPad with Apple Pencil? Have you decided on anyone to install on your iPad? Please tell us in the comment section. If you have some more iPad note taking apps, please also share them with us.