15 Best Note-Taking Apps for Students & Teachers | Best Reviews

What are the best note-taking apps for students and teachers in 2024?

Note Taking is important to both students and teachers to keep track of all that is being read or taught during a class.

While the traditional notebooks and pens kind of note-taking is gradually fading away, there are note-taking apps for students and teachers.

This post on the 15 best note-taking apps for students and teachers is a review you should read.

The human brain can only process 300 to 500 words per minute during a speech. However, it can only articulate only 150-200 in normal circumstances. On the other hand, humans say 1500 words per minute. These statistics posit that it is almost impossible to pick everything said in a class by your teacher.

It also shows the possibility of forgetting all your thoughts on a topic. Hence, the importance of note-taking by both students and teachers. Whether you are just reading alone or in your study group, every student should have a note to jot down all essential information.

Previously, a pen, jotter, sticker, or small note could do the job. But, ninety percent of activities in your classroom are done either with a system, tablet, or even a smartphone. Also, remember the layman’s definition of a machine. It is said to be any device that makes work easier and faster.

Several note-taking apps can save you time and stress in a class or a presentation. All you have to do is get them installed on your smart device or system.

Take a glance at the table of content below to get a hint of all you will comprehend if you choose to read this article.

What is a Note-Taking App for Students?

Oxford English Dictionary defines an App as the short form for an application downloaded by a user to a mobile device.

An application is a software that allows people to perform specific tasks. Some of them are compatible with desktops others can only be used on mobile devices. Hence, applications used on desktops are called desktop applications, while those compatible with mobile phones are called mobile apps.

On the other hand, note-taking is recording information captured from another source. Note-taking is mostly employed to ease the writer from the stress of remembering everything.

From the foregoing, a note-taking app is downloaded by a user to perform a specific note-taking task. It is a digital way of recording information to free the mind from trying to recall all that has been said.

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What is the Best Free Note Taking App?

It is important to note that note-taking apps most times are not free. Although some of them have trial editions. However, the best free note-taking app thus far remains Microsoft OneNote.

This digital note-taker became 100% free in 2015. Currently, it is one of the most popular note-taking apps. Despite being free, it has amazing features and is useful for tagging and searching notes, writing and drawing with your fingers, and even clipping from the web.

This digital app for note-taking has a layout that makes it easier for new users to learn. Microsoft Onenote is a great option for collecting and organizing long-term data like recipes, story ideas, and lecture notes.

In summary, this free app can be used by students, teachers, and, interestingly, programmers.

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Which is the best notes app for Android?

As earlier stated, some of these applications are compatible with desktops, while others are specifically developed to work on mobile devices.

A mobile device is a portable computing device such as a smartphone or tablet computer. So, if you are using a Samsung tablet, Huawei, Nokia, iPhone, or any smart mobile product, you should consider downloading a mobile app.

Whether you’re just typing text, writing with a stylus, or scribbling with your finger, there are a lot of different note-taking apps for Android. Some are focused more on just taking simple notes, while others come with more features and functionality that can turn your smartphone into a digital notebook or workbook.

If you are currently using an Android product from any companies above, below is a list of note-taking apps to explore this 2024.

• OneNote
• Evernote
• Material Notes
• Google Keep
• Simplenote
• Keep My Notes

What is the Best Note-taking App for Mac?

If you are looking at taking quick notes, then your android note-taking apps may do a perfect job. However, if you want an amazing note-taking experience, you should turn to your MAC for that experience.

Even though desktops enjoy larger features when it comes to apps, most great note-taking services offer Mac apps to take advantage of. Our best apps for Mac are very efficient for note-taking. If you exclude word processors, and text editors, these apps will still do a great job.

The note-taking apps that make it to our list for Mac are quite easy to use. They also have pleasant UI and a responsive editor, creating an amazing user experience. Below is a list of the best note-taking apps for Mac.

• Apple Notes
• Evernote: If you need all the features of a note-taking app regardless of how much it may cost, then this app is best for your Mac.
• Microsoft OneNote: This has beautiful features, and services are free. 
• Bear: This is best for Markdown notes
• Simplenote: This note-taking app is best who need n app for plain text. 
• Boostnote: Boostnotw is the best note-taking app for people working with code. 
• Quip: This note-taking app is best for students working as a team, especially as Salesforce users
• Zoho Notebook: It has a simple and visual approach to note-taking

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What are the Best Note-Taking Apps for Students and Teachers?

Note-taking apps are essential for both students and teachers. Whether you are studying online, in a Physical class, or just listening to a presentation, you should have a note-taking gadget.

Interestingly, technological advancement has your best interest at hand. Hence, developers have come forward with great note-taking apps to make your note-taking easier and faster.

The best note-taking apps for students are carefully selected to meet immediate needs and requirements while recording information. All these apps are good enough for all students and teachers. However, some of them have special features to cover all fields.

By implication, some apps are great for programming students, science students, artists, literary students, and other essential services.

The best app for you as a student will depend on your answers to the questions below

• Why do you need a note-taking app?
• What is your budget?
• What features are most important to you?
• What are you studying?

Our selection of these apps is based on reviews, user experience, and, more importantly, available features that make them great for students. 15 Best Note Taking Apps for Students and Teachers include:

1. Notability

This note-taking app is best for students using an Ipad or Apple pencil for academic purposes. It is highly recommended for students because it has a general look and side rail organization.

Students, teachers, and business professionals use Notability daily to take notes, sketch ideas, annotate PDFs, mark up photos, record lectures, provide audio feedback, and more.

It is uniquely designed for each device to provide the best note-taking experience at school, at home, and work. Interestingly, you can type or write notes on notebooks and organize them into folders inside the app. However, it also lets you annotate PDFs, which can be great for grading student papers.

In summary, Notability is an excellent iOS-based note-taking option that can help you organize, plan outlines, and capture and share your notes with others using minimal effort. You can purchase this product from Ginger laps, and for $8, you may get numerous additional themes.

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2. Notion

This IS another note-taking app great for students and teachers. It supports simple to-do lists and allows longer blog posts, calendars, and other tools to help you arrange your life.

This app is great for students using a Mac, iOS, Android, Windows, and even Browser. This note-taking app has flexible pages that allow you to turn anything into an easily duplicated template.

Depending on what you need a note-taking app for, the notion has great media previewing tools that make it great for both photos and videos.

The notion has a nested hierarchical organization that helps teachers organize ideas and topics in a dropdown to access information easily. This app also has a hybrid editor that allows you to use normal keyboard shortcuts and UI elements to format your text.

This app’s only free account is a demo account that gives you 1000 blocks. However, you can get full access by paying 44 dollars every month.

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3.  OneNote

Microsoft Onenote is a free app for note-taking. The note-taking app allows you to place elements like text boxes and images on the page by dragging and dropping.

It is best for students and teachers and good for note-taking, including mixing different recording forms. It supports notetaking with handwriting. You can mix different media types within a single note, like videos and audio clips, and even attach external documents.

This makes it one of the best for students studying and downloading materials online. This amazing app has a data one drive storage of up to 5GB and is free. Both students and teachers can enjoy the amazing features for free.

4. Google Keep (plus Docs)

This great note-taking app for students is best for quick notes and setting up reminders. This app for students is best for making shopping lists, tracking tasks for a project, and storing single notes.

In fact, if you prefer searching for notes rather than browsing through piles of folders, you should consider using this app for your note-taking.

Students can teachers can use this app to organize their daily tasks and reminders than long-term archives of in-depth notes and files.

Google Keep is a dead-simple tool for capturing quick-and-dirty lesson summaries, deadlines, and daily to-do lists. You can also create, view, and edit your Google Docs content offline with a dedicated Chrome extension.

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5. Evernote

Evernote is one of the best note-taking apps for students. The app is designed to capture everything exhaustively. It offers different templates to help with your note-taking. It is best for students and teachers who want to lose weight or organize meeting agendas.

Also, it allows you to create as many notebooks as you need and group relevant notebooks in stacks for further organization. Interestingly, depending on what you wish to take note of, you can arrange your files in tags and browse by tag.

Fortunately, it is compatible with Browser, Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. So, every student and teacher can enjoy the basic Evernote account, which is free. For its premium account that offers digitizing receipts, searching PDFs, and seeing the version history of your note, you may need to pay $7 a month.

6. Zoho Notebook

This is one of the best apps for students using Apple. Though it is also compatible with Ios, Android, and windows. You can synchronize your Zoho account with all these platforms.

Note-taking is done on cards. This means you can use text cards for writing, audio cards for recording, and attachment cards for attaching documents to your note-writing. Other card features on Zoho include sketch cards, photo cards, and checklist cards.

One of its amazing features is its Web clipper which is available on Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. This note-taking app is free and great for students and teachers to create a to-do list, audio recording, and even an image thumbnail.

7. Ulysses

This great app for students is good enough for note-taking and writing essays and articles. If you are looking for a single app for simple notes and school-based assignments. Then Ulysses is best for you. It has a text editor almost superior to the one obtainable in Microsoft OneNote.

Ulysses offered a beautiful design and a super-smart take on Markdown and dubbed Markdown XL. This app is compatible with iOS and Mac and has one of the best organizational layouts and great customizable themes.

Ulysses is the best note-taking app for you if you are a student blogger. You can also easily publish on WordPress after editing your article on Ulysses. However, these amazing features are not free at all. It costs about $5 a month and $1.83 for a student’s discount account.

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8. Simplenote

This is one of the best apps for note-taking, especially for students who intend to jot down words. This app does not support images or attachments of any kind. You can only write your notes in plain text.

This app has versions available on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and the web. It is best for students because it is completely free. True to its name, Simplenote is one of Android’s most lightweight note apps. If you’re tired of overly bloated apps with features you’ll never use, try Simplenote.

Tags organize notes, and they show up in the sidebar on the left. It also has a beautiful layout with total simplicity, which gives pleasurable satisfaction while taking notes. However, to enjoy this app, you need a WordPress account.

In summary, a simple note is like a cut-down version of Apple Notes, except it works on virtually any platform.

9. Boostnote

This is a note-taking app that is best for students and teachers who are dealing with codes. The app is best for students who intend to store code snippets. You can take either a plaintext note or a snippet note. You can store multiple snippets within the same note.

If you are a programming student, you can use the snippet to store HTML, JavaScript, and any other programming language differently as single notes under a single title.

The app features syntax highlighting for over 100 programming and markup languages, including GitHub Flavored Markdown, JavaScript, Python, HTML, and CSS. Notes can be organized by folder, using tags, adding stars to notes, or pinning notes to the top of a folder.

You can insert a link to the note by right-clicking the words and choosing the copy note link.

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10. Scrivener

This note-taking app is best for literary students and teachers. It has a word-processing program that makes it one of the best for authors

It is designed so that writers can easily organize notes, concepts, and research. You may attach rich text, images, PDF, audio, and video. It has amazing templates for screenplays, fiction, and non-fiction manuscripts.

The options for customization are countless, and Scrivener is also a powerful planning and writing tool. The app comes with a corkboard feature, which lets users plan scenes or chapters on digital notecards which can be rearranged as much as needed.

After writing a text, the user may export it for final formatting to a standard word processor, screenwriting software, desktop publishing software, or TeX.

Teachers can also use this note-taking app to arrange their topics for screenplay and novel writing classes.

11. Quip

This is one of the best note-taking apps for students offering marketing or business sales courses. It has an amazing feature that allows you to create and update documents automatically.

You can collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. This means you can work on a single file with your team from any part of the world. This penchant for data is seen in how Quip allows you to incorporate spreadsheet elements within your documents.

You can also create a Slack-like chat community on Quip. However, this is quite expensive, and only students who intend to use it for commercial purposes should consider this option. This note-taking app costs $30 a month.

12. Bear

This easy-to-access note-taking app for students is one of the best. Bear note app stores all notes in plain text, making it easy for you to search and find your content.

Its organization is done through hashtags on the main sidebar to the app’s left. It has elegant writing features as its programmers provide great choices with text sizes and color schemes. Programmers can also use this app as it has over 20 programming languages. You can also import and display images

This note-taking app for students has a free account, but you can access its pro account for $1.49 a month.

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13. Typora

This note-taking app is great for students because of its amazing features. First and foremost, the app is free app though it may cost some dollars in the future.

Secondly, it has a hybrid text editor that allows you to type fast. It has other features like the table of content mode that allows you to look closely at headings and outlines.

It also has a customizable theme and a language that lets you design how you want your content to appear. The app is compatible with Windows, Mac, and even Linux.

Sadly, this app has no storage and only works on desktops.

14. Standard Notes

If you are concerned about the security of your daily note-taking, you should consider the Standard notes app for students. On this app, everything you write is encrypted, and only you can access it.

This app is best for medical students or legal students for taking notes. It has a rich markdown editor, text editor, and code editor.

This app is also best for every student because of its compatibility with every device. So whether you are working with a mobile device or a desktop, a standard note is a great option.

15.  Slite

This note-taking app offers an amazing editing experience, and its free edition offers enough storage for most students.

It has unlimited private and fifty shared notes per month for students on its free account. It allows you to import images, videos, and tables. Also, it has a table of contents view that allows you to maneuver on headings and outlines.

Despite its amazing features for student-free accounts, it appears as number fifteen on our list because reviews show that the app’s user interface is quite poor and needs some development.

Note Taking App for students’ FAQs

Conclusion

Note-taking is an essential part of learning. Statistics show that it is almost impossible to retain all information in a class. The importance of note-taking cannot be over-emphasized.

Before now, students usually take notes with the aid of a jotter and a pen. However, technology has become so advanced that you can now take notes with digital apps.

This article reviews the best digital apps for students to take note of. Some are free and best for some studies, while others are entirely paid services. Read through this article to find the one that best suits your academic needs.

References

• https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/computerbasics/understanding-applications/1/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note-taking
• https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/best-free-note-taking-app-android/
• https://www.engadget.com/2019-07-24-note-taking-apps-school-college-guide.html

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