Top 7 Best Note-taking Apps for iPad with Apple Pencil 2024 (Free & Paid)

Notability

Pricing：Free plan available; $14.99 per year for the premium plan.

Notability is hands-down the most powerful, fun and well-rounded iPad note-taking app. It has tools for handwriting, drawing, annotating PDFs, making shapes, highlighting, moving objects around the page, adding audio notes, integration with photos and web clips, and so much more.  Notability lets you type notes with a keyboard, write them out with a stylus, or use both. And the customizable paper options—like grids, dots, plain, or even textured or colored backgrounds—are bound to make your Organic Chemistry notes more organized and exciting. Go nuts customizing fonts, colors, and pen sizes to put on top of that graph paper, and don’t forget to add in some GIFs for good measure.

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. In addition, it's easy to import and annotate PDFs or web pages.  Notability also includes a variety of flexible layout options. This allows you to, for instance, have a slide or reference material open on one side of the page while you take notes on the other. And beyond the layout of individual pages, you can also organize your notes using digital “Dividers” (which is perfect if you’re used to taking notes in a physical binder). Notes can be shared via email, and cloud-based services including AirDrop, Google Drive and Dropbox.  If I had to recommend just one iPad note-taking app, it would be Notability. By combining multitasking tools and technologies like handwriting recognition and math conversion, Notability makes it easier than ever to take notes during classes, meetings, conferences, and everything in between.

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GoodNotes

Pricing: Free (limited to three notebooks). Upgrade for $7.99 to get unlimited notebooks and handwriting recognition.

GoodNotes is similarly to Notability, also has an Editor's Choice Award on the Apple App Store.  It is packed with plenty of robust features, including handwriting and sketching with Apple Pencil. You can choose from a massive selection of digital paper types to suit any need you have: lined, graph, design, music notation, and more. If that's not enough, you can also upload your own custom template too, and there are different cover styles for digital notebooks that you can write or sketch on for further personalization. GoodNotes can also be used to annotate PDFs, plus you can search handwritten notes and convert handwriting into text. The notes are also synced via iCloud, and can be backed up to your choice of cloud providers, including Dropbox, Google Drive, or Box.  

One of the biggest differentiators between GoodNotes and other competitors is its abundance of organizational tools. By default, GoodNotes allows you to create Notebooks and store everything within them. This is a fundamental difference from a tool like Notability or Apple Notes, where your ability to organize is somewhat constrained by the software. But the GoodNotes also lacks the ability to record audio that Notability and other App have.  Even so, with so many great features like massive collection of page templates, amulti-level organisation system, supporting multiple tabs and having real-time collaboration,  GoodNotes is still a great note-taking app.

Noteshelf

Pricing: $9.99.

Noteshelf is a perfect note taking app for iPad users which is known for its user-friendly interface. The software doesn’t add extra menu options or selecting tools to your workspace. Instead, it creates as much white space as possible to allow you to work comfortably. Of course, Noteshelf also includes many amazing features such as you can write as smooth and as fluid on a notepad, variety of pens, pencil, and highlighters, different colours and sizes to suit your needs. With Noteshelf, you’ll also enjoy a diverse range of audio recording tools, photos and annotations, diagrams, and highlighting notes.

Noteshelf has handwriting recognition for over 65 languages. Apple Watch users will also benefit from the app’s ability to record voice notes using the Noteshelf Apple Watch app. In addition, you can split your screen between Noteshelf and another app or import files, like a PDF, to annotate it. If you need to share your notes with a classmate or coworker, you can easily do so via iCloud and third-party sources like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Evernote. The option to export to Evernote is noticeably missing from Notability, making Noteshelf our top pick for serious Evernote users.

MyScript Nebo

Pricing: Free version available; $2 for Essentials Pack; $5 for Connect Pack; $4 for PDF Pack. Packs are sold individually or can be purchased as a bundle for $8.

Where apps like GoodNotes and Notability emphasize (and mostly stick to) the idea of handwritten notes, Nebo tries to marry the concept of handwriting and text together within its notebooks. Nebo features advanced AI that automatically converts your handwriting into text. The app recognizes 66 different languages, and unlike other apps on our list, Nebo can even convert hand-drawn diagrams into perfect shapes. There are multiple digital pen tools offered in Nebo, so you can choose whatever you like best, and you can add photos and videos, diagrams, and even equations alongside your text.

With Nebo, you can convert handwritten text a paragraph at a time, or as an entire notebook. You can also export as text, HTML, PDF, or Word documents. Syncing is also available through MyScript's own service, or you can choose iCloud, Dropbox, and more. Nebo also features free-form pages, which are great for drawing and brainstorming.With the free version, you’ll just have access to the basics, including a limited number of notebooks that you can create. However, you can get a dictionary, convert PDFs, and share your content out in various formats by purchasing the appropriate upgrade pack for a relatively low cost. In a word, Nebo is the best handwriting converting app on the market.

Microsoft OneNote

Pricing: Free, Premium features with Microsoft 365 subscription (approximately between $70 and $100 for the year).

OneNote is Microsoft’s contender for the best note-taking apps available on iOS and Android platforms. Being a free-form information gathering app, OneNote lets you capture just about everything and place it anywhere on a flexible digital canvas. You can type, write by hand (using a stylus), clip Web pages and even scan handwritten notes or pages. The app uses virtual notebooks for organizing content and has a design similar to a physical three-ring binder. You can have separate color-coded sections for adding different types of notes, and each section can have multiple pages. OneNote's powerful search feature lets you quickly find information either on a particular page or across all notebooks. The notes can be organized using custom labels and tags, and you can revise notes with highlights and ink annotations.

OneNote integrates with Outlook and the other MS Office apps like Outlook and Powerpoint. It also handles Excel, Word and other MS Office attachments better than the other note-taking tools featured here. In addition, OneNote integrates with OneDrive, allowing you to easily access your notes via the cloud on any device. You can organize notes in notebooks, jot down ideas quickly, or put together shopping lists or to-do lists with Sticky Notes. Users can upload pictures of documents, import images, and create sketches. For privacy, you can secure notes with passwords. OneNote lets users create shared notepads for collaboration as well. If you're vested in the Microsoft Office ecosystem, then OneNote is a good option.

Evernote

Pricing: Free (premium subscription is $7.99 monthly; business subscription is $14.99 monthly per user)

Evernote is one of the good note-taking apps for iPad that is worth having on your device. This app has been one of the top note-taking apps for years on all major platforms. It lets you take notes in a variety of formats, including text, pictures, audio and video recordings, annotated Web page clippings and more. These notes can be organized into virtual notebooks and managed using tools such as tags and shortcuts. From checklists to external files, anything can be added to notes. You can add configurable reminders to notes, as well as share them with other users via e-mail.

 Evernote's Web Clipper extension lets you save Web pages with one click and annotate them with highlights and visual callouts. Using your smartphone's camera, the app can scan and digitize everything from documents to business cards in a snap. Evernote has a free version that allows you to take notes, format them as needed, record audio, and make to-do lists. But it only allows you to sync your notes to two devices, and has just 60MB of upload storage a month with a 25MB limit on file sizes.More advanced features like version history, PDF annotation, cloud connection, and multi-person collaboration require a subscription.

Bear

Pricing: Free with limitations. To unlock all the Pro features, you can subscribe for $1.49 monthly or $14.99 annually.

If you are the type that loves the designed app, then you should take a look at Bear. It’s one of the most visually appealing note-taking apps for iPads which integrated with code snippets, to-do lists, and embedded photos and texts. Also, it supports 20+ programming languages. Bear makes it more convenient and easier for you to browse through all your notes by letting you filter your search with tags such as @files, @tagged, and @tasks. Another noteworthy feature of Bear is its compatibility with the Apple Watch and iMessage, providing flexibility and more ease of access.

With Bear Pro, you can convert basic texts into HTML, MS Word, and PDF, among others. You can also automatically sync all your notes across different devices. For iPad users, you can create sketches or write your notes manually with Bear Pro since it supports the Apple Pencil. Some of the more advanced functionalities include Siri search and shortcuts, creating notes with Siri, collecting web pages, and autocomplete for code, notes, and tagging. The elegant design and user-friendly interface make Bear an ideal app for making quick notes, lists, or even as a primary writing app (like a stand-alone text editor).

Best Note-Taking App: Notion vs. Evernote vs. OneNote vs. GoodNotes vs. Notability vs. Roam?

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