In today’s fast-paced world it has become pertinent to keep yourself organized. And what best way to do that than through digital note-taking. Note-taking apps help you in collecting your thoughts, keeping an organized schedule, and even sharing your documents with other people. “Taking notes” is something that has long been important for successful communication and teamwork, but it’s taken on a whole new meaning in our remote world. First of all, setting an agenda before the meeting via note-taking apps helps everyone get on the same page. Without those moments before meetings to chat over the agenda in person, you need to create some sort of format for your meeting. Using note-taking apps to prep the team for the meeting, and sharing the note with everyone beforehand, is essential.
NOTION
Offers a powerful, database-driven note-taking experience that’s unlike most apps out there. Notion has a template engine that allows you to turn pretty much anything into an easily-duplicated template, including a multi-layered collection of pages. It also has great media embedding and previewing tools, including a gallery view for photos and videos. Tables in Notion aren’t just charts; they’re databases. Think of Notion’s databases as Google Docs + Google Sheets: Every row in a table is its own Notion page that you can go into and update.
Notion used to be fairly expensive, and it still can be for team plans. However, the Personal plan recently became completely free.
HIVE NOTES
If you’re a Hive user, Hive Notes is a great way to integrate your meetings with your to-do list. In Hive Notes, you can actually connect a note to a meeting on your Google or Outlook calendar, assign meeting attendees next steps, and easily share the meeting note with everyone after the meeting. This is one of the best note taking apps on the market.
Since Hive Notes syncs up with your calendar, it’ll also send you a reminder in Hive five minutes before your meeting starts prompting you to take notes. If the meeting is recurring, Hive also offers a “notebook” style set-up where you can add multiple entries to the same note. Bonus: real-time collaborative editing is available in Hive Notes, which basically works like a Google Doc so multiple people can add comments at once.
ONE NOTE
Note-taking app from Microsoft, OneNote is a simple app without many bells and whistles. You can manage your notes and documents in different categories, or Notebooks, and further arrange them into sections and pages (something we’re already familiar with). Other features include To-do tags, audio recording, single-click web content saving, and many more. One note is best for people who avoid too many complex or fancy features. Moreover, you can sync your notes on different devices and various other apps. Even the templates are simple and basic that anyone can use. You can also collaborate with your team, group, or students and share notes with each other.
On one hand, as OneNote is simple and easy-to-use, it does come off as too basic for some of its features. There’s a lack of formatting features for the notes, several people cannot edit the same document simultaneously, and the spectrum of integrated apps is not very vast. If you can live with the absence of these features, then OneNote would be your best choice.
ROAM RESEARCH
Roam Research takes a different approach to an organization than most note-taking tools. You can instantly link one note to another to create a web of information, doing away with the need for tags and folders. Roam has strong support for Markdown, and the app is set up so that you can immediately begin writing when you open it. The default page when you open the app is a “Daily Note” for the current day. I’ve found this encourages me to journal in the course of using the app, which often leads to new ideas. Roam features a “Graph Overview” that shows the connections between your notes as a web. It’s an interesting alternative to the hierarchical view that most note-taking apps use. One of the core features of Roam is how easy it is to link notes (what Roam calls “Pages”) to each other. After you get the hang of the syntax, you’ll find yourself automatically linking notes (and ideas) together.
Roam currently works only in the browser, and it requires an internet connection to access your notes. However, the founder claims an offline version of Roam is in development. Roam is very powerful once you learn how to use it, but expect to spend a few hours learning the syntax and overall philosophy of the app.
EVERNOTE
Evernote is one of the most popular note-taking apps and there’s good reason for this. From simple note-taking and documentation to complex task management, the app offers many big and small features to its users. What I find most useful in Evernote are the app integration and multi-device synchronization features. You can integrate different apps like Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, and MS Teams, etc. into your account and share your notes with and from these apps. Similarly, you can sync your notes on different devices that are in your use.
However, most of Evernote’s best features are limited to the paid version only. The free version gives users only a handful of features that too with a monthly bandwidth limit.
SIMPLENOTE
This is one of our favorite note taking apps for those who want something straightforward and simple, as the name suggests. Simplenote allows you to sync all notes across devices, and you can view past changes in markdown mode. Additionally, you can easily share lists/notes and meeting items with other people, as well as publish your notes online.
GOOGLE KEEP
Google Keep is just what the name says – to keep your nites, documents, and reminders, etc. saved for later use. It’s a simple cloud-based app by Google that allows you to jot down your thought process on-the-go or as a team.
With Google Keep, you can create an infinite number of notes and to-do lists, give them labels and color codes, share and collaborate the notes with others, and access them from any other device. You can even record a voice memo and the app will transcribe and save it for you. I did, however, feel a few things lacking in the app as there is no desktop app, no text formatting feature, and no integration with other apps which is a bit off-putting. Nevertheless, Google Keep is a great app if you’re requirement is basic note-taking without having to pay anything.
STANDARD NOTES
If your work requires you to take notes that are a bit sensitive in nature, then Standard Notes would be an ideal note-taking app for you. It is an open-source app that saves encrypted notes that only you can decrypt and read.
Privacy of your notes is the main thing that the app boasts of. The notes that you create are end-to-end encrypted and even the people behind the app cannot read them. Its other best feature is multi-platform accessibility I.e. it works on Web, Mac, Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, and Linux.
Some of its best features are offered through powerful extensions. But unfortunately, these are available only in the premium version. So in the free version there isn’t much but you can still have simple text editing with complete encryption. If privacy is your only concern then I’d say you go for it.
CONCLUSION
Taking notes is one of the best ways to increase your productivity. However, it’s not everyone’s favorite thing to do. A spiral notebook filled with quick notes on individual sheets can become messy and inconvenient pretty quickly. But taking notes electronically has its downsides as well. It’s very easy to run out of battery on your phone or laptop, or lose internet connection while you’re on the go.