1. Free Note Taking App
2. Best Free Note App
3. Notetaking Apps On Mac Free Download
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5. Best Note Taking Apps For Mac Free
6. Notetaking Apps On Mac Free Downloads
7. Notetaking Apps On Mac Free Online

Editor's note: This article was updated on at 4:45 PM PST to highlight Notability's new app for the Mac and to correct a typo. Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in.

The Surface Pen and Surface Slim Pen are mighty tools that let you get more done on your Surface PC. To maximize the Surface Pen's ability, there are some essential apps you should check out. From note-taking to form-filling to coloring, here are the best apps to grab.

True Paper Feel: Bamboo Paper

Editor's pick

The first time you touch your Pen to the screen with Bamboo Paper open, you'll wonder just how they made it seem so much like real paper. Take notes using the six writing tools, add pictures to your pages, and write over them. And share your ideas with others using Bamboo Paper on other platforms.

Free at Microsoft

Infinite Canvas: Leonardo

Staff favorite

Leonardo is still in its beta stage. But it has a full set of tools for amateurs and pros alike, including infinite canvas, tons of brushes, grids and perspective lines, and a user interface that's easy to navigate. Whether you're sketching, drawing, or painting, this app will accommodate your needs. While it remains in beta, the price is knocked down to $40, 50% off the full price, at least for now.

$40 at Microsoft

Pro Drawing Tools: Autodesk SketchBook

If you were holding out on Autodesk SketchBook because of the price, you can now get the full version — including some Pro tools — for free. This is one of the best drawing and sketching apps for pretty much anyone, with a wide selection of brushes, surfaces, tools, and features to choose from.

Free at Microsoft

Take Control of PDFs: Drawboard PDF

Drawboard PDF is regarded as one of the best PDF apps available, thanks to an enormous selection of tools. It's a document builder that lets you merge multiple PDFs, has annotations that can be calibrated for scale, and a large number of grid and line templates. If you're often working with PDF files in a professional environment, Drawboard PDF should be near the top of your list.

$24 at Microsoft

Write Music With Ease: StaffPad

Musicians out there, take notice: StaffPad is an app designed for Surface that makes it incredibly easy to annotate music. As you handwrite your music, it's automatically and precisely converted into an engraved score. Once you finish writing, let StaffPad playback your creation with its full orchestra of instruments.

$90 at Microsoft

Multipurpose Inking: Sketchable

Sketchable is a free (with paid upgrades) drawing, sketching, and painting app that has been designed with the Surface Pen in mind. Not only can you use Sketchable for notes or to work on existing images and artwork, use it to create an entirely new work of art thanks to its wide array of tools. If you have even a bit of creativity in you, this app will be hard to put down.

Free at Microsoft

Get Organized: Index Cards

There's just something about a stack of index cards that makes you feel like you've got your life in order. Both sides of cards can be marked up with your pen, and a zoom function lets you jam quite a bit of information onto each card. Cards and stacks of cards can be shared with others, and there's no limit to the number of cards you can create.

From $14 at Microsoft

Digital Whiteboard: CollaBoard

For those of you commonly involved in team projects, CollaBoard is an app that works with your Surface device and the Microsoft Hub. It's best described as a digital whiteboard that multiple users can contribute to, all in real-time. With Skype for Business integration and compatibility with PDF, images, videos, and more, the whiteboard can become the central pivot point of your larger project.

Free at Microsoft

Digital Notebook: OneNote

Microsoft's own free note-taking app syncs across all your devices, but it shines when you add the Surface Pen. Take notes on blank or grid backgrounds, highlight text, or draw pictures using various tools, then easily sync with OneDrive to keep your notes with you wherever you go.

Free at Microsoft

Read and Edit PDFs: Xodo

This fantastic PDF reader and editor is completely free, which is frankly surprising considering what you're getting here. Just open a PDF file, and you're given free rein over what you can do. Write all over it, highlight the significant bits, and save it as a new file. This is especially useful for quickly filling out those annoying forms that you usually have to type information into.

Free at Microsoft

If we're making some suggestions

Thanks to most of the above apps having at least some sort of free version, you can give them a try with your pen essentially risk-free to see if they'll come in handy. Wondering exactly where to start? Bamboo Paper is a lightweight app that delivers a true paper feel while writing. Not only is it great for notetaking and journaling — you can add your own photos to a page — it can also be used to sketch or draw thanks to a custom color palette and a collection of tools beyond just a pen.

Need something more suited for artistic ambition? I've been using Leonardo, which is now available straight from the Microsoft Store, for some time and I appreciate the simple UI that scales to any size display and the overall collection of tools. Whether you want to sketch something rough or go for a full work of art, you shouldn't have any problems. The infinite canvas is ideal for letting your artwork flow, and while it's still in its beta stage you can save $40 off off the full price.

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Hook it up!

10 must-have apps for any new PC

You just purchased a new PC and set it up, and now you're looking for some great apps. Look no further. These are the best apps for your new Windows 10 PC.

From that random idea that needs to be jotted down, to making complex notes and mind maps, in today’s day and age, it’s better to stick to a note taking application, rather than relying on physical pen and paper.

In our previous article, we saw some of the best note taking apps for Windows, and in this one, we have got you covered with our list of the best note taking apps for Mac.

Best Note Taking Apps for Mac

1. Apple Notes

The stock Notes app that comes with Mac OS itself, is actually not that bad. It comes with basic note taking functionalities like formatting, lists, checkboxes, drag and dropping pictures/files. While it doesn’t offer anything out of the box, where Apple Notes shines is how fast it is to open and get started with a new note. Also it syncs immediately and effortlessly with the Notes app on your iPhone and iPad. We highly suggest you first checking out this app which already comes with your Mac, before buying or installing another note taking app.

Pros:
– Very fast and simple to use
– Comes pre-installed
– Sync with notes app on iPhone and iPad

Cons:
– Not ideal for handwritten notes or drawings
– No charts, graph support
– Works only within the Apple Ecosystem

Bottom Line: If you are someone who needs to take notes on your computer very rarely, might be for a grocery list or quick information, you’ll get by easily using the stock Notes app. Apple Notes does offer all the basic functionalities you might need and best of all, you don’t even need to install another app.

Price: Free

Link: Use Apple Notes on iCloud here

2. Evernote

Chances are you have heard of Evernote, as it is one of the most popular note taking apps available on almost all platforms. Evernote offers some great ways to keep all your notes perfectly organised. You start off your note by creating/selecting a particular notebook and all your notes are kept organised in these notebooks. You also have a tags to classify all your stuff, and it basically works like a File Cabinet.

In terms of features, it is a beast and it has almost any and every feature you’d want in a note taking app including pie charts and bar graphs to searching text in a picture. We also strongly recommend trying Evernote with its Web-clipper companion which makes taking notes/clips form the web so easy, you can never go back. But all this does come at a price, which makes Evernote a little on the bulkier and slower side.

Pros:
– Feature packed to the brim
– Available on all platforms
– Easy organisation of notes

Cons:
– Heavy app and takes time to start up
– Costly

Read: Don’t Like Their New Pricing, Try These 8 Best Free Evernote Alternatives

Bottom Line: Well, if you are someone who has to take loads of notes and are also looking to keep them organised in the best way possible, Evernote is a really good investment.

Price: Free(Basic), $34.99/Year(Plus), $69.99/Year(Premium)

Link: Download Evernote from here

3. Unclutter

Unclutter is a neat tool which can increase your productivity by many folds. The app works almost like Sticky Notes; you can access it very quickly from any window you are working on. Just go to the top of your screen and scroll down, Unclutter should appear with its three windows: the first being the Clipboard, second being Files and the last being the Notes section.

Creating a note is pretty fast, just make Unclutter appear and start with your new note or even copy directly from the clipboard or even a file. Click on the ‘+’ to take another note and you can also see all your notes or search through them.

But do keep in mind that the notes you can take are pretty limited to text only and the absence of formatting and checkbox lists might be. Ideal breaker for some.

Free Note Taking App

Pros:
– Easy access, one swipe away
– Pretty fast
– Comes with a Clipboard as well as a file holder

Cons:
– Supports only text notes
– No organisation
– No sync, only on Mac OS

Bottom Line: Unclutter is a very cool app where you can take notes in a jiffy, so we’d recommend this app for someone who is looking to take some quick text notes while working on their computer and doesn’t need any fancy formatting or feature.

Price: $9.99 (Free Trial available)

Link: Get Unclutter here

4. BoostNote

Next on our list, we have a note taking app specifically designed for programmers. BoostNote started out as a open source project and has gained a lot of popularity among the programming community over the years.

What this app basically allows you to do is store your code or code snippets as notes. You can access quickly or even take notes in markdown. Once you open the app, you can select if you want to create a markdown note or create a code snippet. And when I said it is meant for developers, I meant it. BoostNote supports code syntax highlighting in more than a hundred languages and it is also very easy to keep all your notes organised.

Pros:
– Supports markdown notes
– Code highlighting
– Plenty of syntax and UI themes
– Open source
– Available on all platforms

Cons:
– Bulky
– Takes time to startup

Bottom Line: Well the answer is obvious, this app is a blessing for programmers as they can now manage all their code snippets and keep them organised while also not losing on the ability to take notes in markdown.

Price: Free

Link: Download Boostnote from here

5. OneNote

OneNote is a full blown note taking application from Microsoft, which has been here for a while now. And over all these years, it feels like Microsoft has almost perfected the note-taking experience.

What separates OneNote its competitors is that it using the app feels very close to taking notes on a real notebook; you can write, draw, add pictures literally anywhere on the page at any orientation, just like on a paper notebook. It also comes with a ton of features, the biggest selling point would be built in OCR reader. While you can get it for free for almost all platforms, the Mac app is huge in size and a little slow to use.

Pros:
– Feature-rich note taking app
– Office integration
– Notebook like experience
– Completely free

Cons:
– Huge size
– Can be sluggish at times

Bottom Line: If you are invested even a little in the Microsoft space, OneNote is a no brainer and even if you are not and looking for a great digital notebook, OneNote won’t disappoint.

Price: Free

Link: OneNote is available here

6. Notability

Notability is our pick as the best note taking app for students. It works exceptionally well with the Apple Pencil on the iPad to create beautiful hand-written notes and sketches. You can rotate, scale, and recolour your ideas and sketches until your notes are just how you want them. You can even markup photos and annotate PDFs and once you’re done you can easily share them through Airdrop or any other storage service.

Notability keeps all your notes neatly organised and also syncs them up between your iPad, iPhone and Mac, so you can access them anytime anywhere.

Pros:
– Great for hand-written notes and sketches
– Support for pressure sensitive strokes of the Apple Pencil

Cons:
– No search tags
– No support for shapes
– Pricey

Bottom Line: If you have an iPad which you use to take or sketch notes, Notability works really well with the Apple Pencil and if you have the money to spend, just go for it.

Best Free Note App

A great alternative to Notability would be ZoomNotes which comes at a lower price, but offers almost all the features of Notability.

Price: $9.99

Link: Buy Notability from here

7. Journey

The next app on our list is Journey, which takes maintaining your daily notes to a whole new level. While Journey is aimed more to be a digital journal, you can still use the feature-packed text editor to take quick notes and Journey will keep them ordered by the date. You can also search through all your notes and even view them by locations. The app backs up and syncs all your notes using Google Drive and it should be imperative to say, it also does provide impressive security features to protect your privacy.

Pros:
– Keeps everything organised like a Diary
– Easy note taking
– Streamlined review of your notes

Cons:
– Costly
– Requires Gmail/Google Drive account

Notetaking Apps On Mac Free Download

Bottom Line: Journey works best for noting down your everyday goals or writing something about your day. If you are looking to make the switch from a physical diary to a digital one, Journey might be your best bet.

Price: $16.99

Link: Download Journey from here

8. Manuscripts

With all the normal note taking apps or text editors, it gets really hard to note down or represent scientific equations, derivatives and mathematical graphs. Enter Manuscripts, a free note taking app made for scientists and scholarly writing. Describing it as just a note taking app would be an understatement as it is capable of much more from a writing a research article to penning down a book.
There are various templates which you can choose from and a plethora of import and export options including LaTeX.

Notetaking Apps On Mac Free Computer

Pros:
– Scientific Notes/Writing
– Solid import and export formats
– Citation and bibliography formatting

Cons:
– Not quick for taking simple notes

Bottom Line: Manuscripts is a capable and powerful app for when the going gets tough. Of course, it isn’t for the average Joe, but rather for taking scientific notes with equations and graphs. If you are looking for more of a digital laboratory notebook with support for experiment templates along with equations and graphs, check out Findings.

Price: Free

Link: Ger Manuscripts here

9. iThoughtsX

Last but definitely not least, we have iThoughtsX, a mind mapping tool that lets you organise your thoughts and at a glance see the whole project. Mind maps are ideal for brainstorming with means of keeping your ideas structured and nothing gets omitted out in the whole process.
Although it has a steep learning curve, it’s really easy once you get the hold of it. There are multiple templates and layouts from which you can start and there’s an impressive amount of built-in icons and clipart images.

Pros:
– Create perfect mind maps for summarising and meeting notes
– Task Management
– Hand-off feature(Start your min map on one device and finish on another device)

Cons:
– Steep learning curve
– Not good for other kind of notes

Best Note Taking Apps For Mac Free

Bottom Line: Mind maps are especially useful for managers and developers or anyone managing a large project. So if you know you need to create mind maps, this app is for you.

Notetaking Apps On Mac Free Downloads

Price: $49.99

Notetaking Apps On Mac Free Online

Link: Get iThoughtsX here

Wrapping Up: Best Note Taking Apps for Mac

We believe that there is an app for everyone with their own particular need. So whether you are a student or programmer or businessman, we really hope that you could find at least one note taking app from this list suitable to your own needs. And that concludes our list of the top note taking applications available for the Mac. Don’t forget to connect with us and tell us your favourite app from the list or if we missed yours.