1. We've gathered best of the best note-taking apps in Setapp, so you have access to them all for your ideal workflow. Try for free! Taking notes on a Mac is as simple as opening Notes and starting to type. But the best way to take notes actually depends on your own personal habits. The best way to take notes on a Mac.
2. Quicknote allows taking of notes grouped by category. It comes with an atypical user interface, and additional utilities such as a simple drawing tool, reminder, unit converter, screen measurer, etc. It comes with an atypical user interface, and additional utilities such as a simple drawing tool, reminder, unit converter, screen measurer, etc.

• Note Taking Software
• Free Note Taking Program
• Best Note Taking Program
• Onenote

Note taking apps need absolutely clean interface to allow unobtrusive note taking and not a struggle to search for which buttons to click. It focuses on the search feature so much that it doesn't encourage or make it immediately easy to organize your notes and thoughts.

Whether you’re headed back to school this fall or you just want a better way to keep your notes, memos, and other tidbits of information organized, you have a number of applications to choose from. Some of them just help you get your thoughts down quickly, others sync with online services that organize your notes for you. Here are, based on your nominations, the top five apps or services for the job. [jump]

We asked you earlier in the week which applications or services you used to take notes and organize your thoughts so you could get back to them quickly. You responded, and we collected the votes. Now we’re back to highlight the top five. Photo by MagneticNorth.

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Best Note Taking Application or Service?

Class is back in session (or if it's not, it will be soon,) and when you sit down in your next …

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Evernote

Evernote helps you remember everything-and by everything, we really do mean everything. The service’s webapp, desktop apps for Windows and Mac OS, mobile apps for iPhone and iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, and even WebOS mean that Evernote can help you take notes, save them, tag them with a location, create and organize notebooks, and share them anywhere you are and on any device you happen to have on you. Evernote is great for taking notes and organizing them, but it’s just as good at letting you capture, scan, and save objects in real life, clip web pages you browse, and share them with friends, colleagues, and classmates.

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Springpad

Springpad takes the hassle out of organizing your notes and thoughts for you, and organizes everything without your help. You have to set up a few basic categories, but of all of the note taking services, Springpad is probably the best at automatically guessing what it is you’ve just clipped from the web, snapped a photo of, or uploaded to your notebooks and organizing it without your help. Products you’ve saved automatically go into a wishlist and you’re alerted on price drops, notes go into notebooks organized by topic, and more. Plus, Springpad’s webapp and mobile app for iPhone, iPad, and Android mean you’re never without your notes and the ability to access them. Plus, the service just updated to incorporate your Facebook friends’ likes and interests to your account.

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MS OneNote

OneNote grew from a side-component of Microsoft Office (for Windows) into a full-fledged and robust note taking and organization tool in its own right. The tool functions like a basic word proessor, but it saves automatically, lets you enter any kind of information anywhere, create and save notebooks for specific subjects and projects, and then share those notes and notebooks with others. OneNote is easy to get started with and use, and makes note taking and organization incredibly simple. While OneNote is part of Microsoft Office, you can download versions of the suite for the iPhone and for Windows Phone 7, and use the OneNote webapp to take and save notes on the go from any web-enabled device.

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Simplenote

Simplenote is easy to use, free, and has a robust user and developer community behind it creating apps and utilities that plug into the service to make it even easier to use. Simplenote lets you easily jot down your thoughts and organize them by tag, search note contents and tags later to find what you need again later, search through revision history for your notes, share them with others, and access them on any web-enabled device. Simplenote does have premium accounts, but all of the service’s basic functions are free. There are Simplenote apps for the web and iOS, but developers have built dozens of notetaking apps that work in conjunction with Simplenote for Windows and Mac OS.

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Pen(cil) and Paper

Many of you said you don’t need a special app to take notes: you don’t even need a computer or a tablet to stay organized. Sometimes the oldest methods are the best, and you said that when you head to class or into a meeting, you bring pen and paper instead of laptop or tablet. What happens to those notes after the meeting vary; some of you type them up and store them, others just organize your paper notes, but for many of you paper and pen (or pencil) is the way to go. Photo by Ramunas Geciauskas.

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Now that you’ve seen the top five contenders, it’s time to vote for an all-out winner.

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”>What’s the Best Note Taking App or Service?</a>

Honorable mentions this week go out to Notational Velocity and Catch, both of which have a large and dedicated following. Notational Velocity is Mac only, but boasts the ability to sync with Simplenote, the ability to search note content, title, and tags quickly, and make it incredibly easy to encrypt, save, and retrieve your important data. Catch on the other hand sports a robust webapp and mobile apps for the iPhone. iPad, and Android devices. It also keeps your notes secure, lets you share them on Twitter, and allows you to clip and save almost anything you want to keep and remember later.

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Also worth mentioning is the venerable text editor-many of you said you use whatever text editor you have on hand instead of a specific app or service, and that suits you just fine. Have anything to say about the contenders? Did your favorite not make the list? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at alan@lifehacker.com, or better yet, follow him on Twitter or Google+.

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Best note-taking app for Android

Read on for our detailed analysis of each app

Smartphones provide incredible flexibility for the home consumer or business user, not least with the profusion of apps available to use. It doesn't matter whether you're just looking to write a shopping list, make creative notes, or take business minutes and reminders, there are a lot of options available.

This is not least with Android being the most widely-used operating system for smartphones, with over 85% market share which makes it an especially important platform to have the tools you need and want to use.

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 out there. 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.

We'll therefore take a look at what we think are the best in note-taking apps for Android, according to a range of different features and use options.

• Also take a look at the best productivity apps for mobile

• Want your company or services to be added to this buyer’s guide? Please email your request to desire.athow@futurenet.com with the URL of the buying guide in the subject line.

1. OneNote

For decades, Microsoft has dominated the software scene, and things haven’t changed today. Offered as part of the Office family of productivity apps, OneNote is one of the most popular and capable note-taking apps you can get. This app is capable of a great deal, whether you want to capture information from emails or embed Excel tables.

This app is a multi-platform affair which is hooked up to the cloud, meaning that if you’ve written some notes on your laptop, you can pull these up in a meeting via your smartphone. OneNote works across Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices.

The Android app is easy to use and works as a flexible canvas, letting you type, handwrite, draw and clip things you find on the web. What’s more, you can even scan notes made on paper and make them searchable through OneNote. To organize your notes, you can create tags, labels, to-do lists and follow-up items. It’s also possible to categorize notes based on their importance.

OneNote allows for collaboration, letting you share your virtual notebooks with anyone. People can leave comments and follow-up questions on your notes as well. The best thing about OneNote, though, is that it’s completely free to download while offering a plethora of premium capabilities.

2. Evernote

Many regard this as a must-have productivity app

Evernote is a well-respected and powerful productivity app. It’s described as an organization and planning app that lets you take both typed and handwritten notes, create to-do lists, scan documents using your camera, and collaborate on content with others.

The great thing about Evernote is that it makes use of a variety of media. For instance, you can create notes in text form, or as sketches, photos, audio, video, PDFs or web clippings.

Just like Microsoft’s OneNote, this app is underpinned by cloud technology. That means you can sync content across all your devices from computers through to tablets and phones. In other words, if you start a task on one device, you can complete it on another.

With Evernote, you can create, share and discuss content with your colleagues as well. The app is currently free to download, but the business package – which gives you most of the collaborative tools – costs $14.99 per user per month.

3. Material Notes

Note Taking Software

Material Notes is a streamlined app that allows you to create notes, to-do lists and reminders. These are all color-coded and stored within a card-style interface to keep things better organised, and to make it easy to find relevant information. You also get the ability to mark important notes with stars, and these are saved within a category based on the urgency of projects.

To ensure you never misplace an important note or list, you can easily locate anything by making use of the app’s search function. Plus you can create and place widgets on your home screen, which give you quick access to your notes.

Being able to view the formats side-by-side means you can make sure to remove broken links or weird-looking text before sending. Email app program for exchange on macbook.

In terms of security, you can create a four-digit pin for all your notes, ensuring that sensitive information doesn’t get into the wrong hands. And the app allows you to easily and swiftly import content stored on other devices. Material Notes is free to download, with premium plans costing up to $9.29 (£6.70). You can access these as in-app purchases.

4. Google Keep

Free Note Taking Program

Google offers a highly capable note-taking app in the form of Keep, which allows you to create as many notes and lists as you want. And you don’t need to stick to mere text – you can also add images and audio to your notes.

In fact, there’s even the ability to record memos for the app to automatically transcribe. That’s particularly handy if you’ve had a light bulb moment and want to get it noted down somewhere quickly. Similarly to OneNote, you can scan handwritten notes, receipts, invoices and other documents through your camera.

Google Keep is a pretty decent productivity app for teams, too. You can easily share notes and collaborate with others. Other features include color-coded labels, reminders and the benefit of multi-platform support. The app is free to download from the Play Store.

5. Simplenote

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when an app is weighed down with tons of features, many of which you might never use. Simplenote is designed for people who just want a quick, easy-to-use piece of software to jot down spontaneous ideas.

Just open up the app, and right away you can create notes and lists. As you continue to use the software and amass more notes, you’re able to organize them with tags and pins. Every time you create a new note, it’s stored in the cloud and can be accessed through other devices. The app is completely free to download and use.

Keep My Notes

Keep My Notes is a note-taking app for Android that comes with a number of neat features. For starters, you can create handwritten notes using a finger or stylus, plus there's also the option to create notes using a built-in text-to-speech feature.

There are also various formatting options available to bold, underline, or italicize - among other things - plus the ability to add audio to your notes. Even better, for added security, you can password protect notes.

Notes can be set up like sticky notes on your home screen, and notes can even shared with other apps.

There are different light or dark themes available, and the display can be changed to portrait for phones and landscape for tablets.

Additionally, you can also change the text size and color when inputting text for your notes in the first place, which can be very handy.

Altogether, Keep My Notes is a handy little package that backs up to the cloud. You can run the app for free with ads, but there are in-app purchases, not least to run ad-free.

Other note-taking apps for Android to consider

Best Note Taking Program

The above are only a small selection of the number of note-taking apps available for Google's Android operating system. There are plenty more available at the Google Play store and we'll cover some of the most popular alternatives below:
Notepad is a simple but colorful way of working with taking and presenting different notes. It doesn't run like a notepad, more like a notice board where you can organize your notes, such as checklists, shopping lists, writing notes, or business comments. You can organize notes according to color, label, or category, which makes it really easy to use. It's also free, but includes ads.

Samsung Notes is Samsung's replacement for S Notes and Memo, and is a general notepad for organizing text, images, and audio. Where it differs from others are the extra features for scribbling or sketching, with various color editor options that make it as much as an all-purpose sketchbook as a notepad, depending on what you want to get from it.

Notes is another general notepad app which allows you to organize text, images, and audio. It has a simple but clean look that makes it easy to work with. Notes also allows for password-protected areas, and is free to use when running ads, which can be switched-off using an in-app purchase of about two dollars.

Onenote

Classic Notes is one of the simplest apps listed, and this is probably one of its selling points. While it allows for taking basic notes, it doesn't do much more, so people not so use to smartphones and apps should be able to get a lot of use from it without becoming so confused by features and options present in other apps. It's free to use, but contains ads.