What is the best note taking app for college students? Are you looking for a free note taking app for students? You have to make sure that you do not miss out on any study time or class because your phone ran out of battery. It is good to look for the best note-taking app for android, ios and windows phone. Make sure you pick up the right note-taking app based on your academic needs.
If you’re a college student, keeping your notes (and yourself) organized can become increasingly difficult with every class, job, club, project, or other task that gets added to your to-do list. With everything you have to remember to do and all the classes you have to study for, those random Google docs, that pile of sticky notes on your desk, and those messy notebooks may not be enough to help you keep track of everything. If you need a better way to stay organized, keep reading.
NOTION
Notion is a note-taking app with a cult-like following, and with good reason. It’s an extremely powerful and versatile option that supports simple to-do lists, longer blog posts and a whole bunch of other get-your-life-together tools, such as Kanban project-management boards, calendars and Wiki-style databases. Pages (Notion’s term for notes) can also link to pages stored in a completely different part of the app. The software can be daunting for newcomers, however, and building the perfect setup takes time. Thankfully, the company has developed a bunch of page templates and posted some helpful guides online.
ONENOTE
OneNote is Microsoft’s dedicated note-taking app, and it’s the only one on this list that most resembles an actual notebook. In OneNote, you can create separate notebooks, divide up your notebooks into sections with colorful tabs, and add pages of notes to each section. You can also search your notes, add videos and images to them, highlight them, and add drawings and annotations to them. There’s even an Immersive Reader mode that will read your notes back to you.
You can use OneNote as part of a paid Microsoft 365 subscription, or you can use the free OneNote for Windows 10 app that should’ve come preinstalled on your Windows 10 device. (You can also install the OneNote for Windows 10 app via the Microsoft Store.) The free Windows 10 app may not have as many premium features as the version that comes with a paid subscription, but it’s still a great option for college students on a budget.
EVERNOTE
Evernote is great for college students who need an all-in-one solution for organizing their life (schedules and to-do lists) and their lecture notes and assignments. With this app, you’ll be able to keep track of your tasks and their due dates, connect Google Calendar to it, share your notes, annotate your handouts, and review your notes on all of your devices.
Evernote comes in two budget-friendly options for college students: Evernote Free and a student-discount version of Evernote Personal. Evernote Free is limited, but it does come with a lot of useful features, including the ability to sync your notes on up to two devices, unlimited notes, access to a dashboard with up to three widgets, a search function, and in-note tasks, and you can insert other file types like PDFs, images, and other documents.
Evernote’s student discount program allows students with a valid school email address to get a full year of Evernote Personal for 50% off. Without the discount, Evernote Personal costs $8 per month. You’ll have to pay to use Evernote Personal, but it does come with tons more features. You’ll get everything in Evernote Free, plus an increase in storage for your notes, more widgets for your dashboard, reminders and notifications for your assignments, offline access, and more.
Evernote is available for MacOS, Windows, iOS, and Android.
GOODNOTES 5
Perhaps the greatest rival to Notability, GoodNotes 5, ranks #3 in App Store’s Productivity Category. An excellent feature provided by GoodNotes 5 is paperless document management. It allows the user to organize documents and digital notebooks in folders and unlimited subfolders. When it comes to the best note-taking with pen support:
GoodNotes 5 is always neck and neck with Notability. They each have some features that the other doesn’t. Both are an excellent choice for students who prefer handwriting notes over typing. Which one is better for you will come down to your personal preferences. This is a great app if you are feeling creative when taking notes. GoodNotes 5 has many templates that allow you to customize your notes, as well as your digital notebook’s front cover
GOOGLE KEEP
Google has its own answer to Apple’s Notes app, and that’s Keep. Keep is free to use and comes standard with a free Google account. Keep isn’t really built for your lecture notes, but you can keep track of your assignments and other to-dos with it. It’s actually a great way to digitize that pile of sticky note reminders on your desk.
You can set reminders (either location or time-based) for tasks you need to complete. You can write grocery lists or other to-do lists and share them with others so you can collaborate with them to complete tasks. You can even search your notes and reminders by things, colors, or type of note. And all of your edits and new notes will sync across all of your devices. You can even add images and create audio notes.
Keep is available for Android, iOS, and as a web app. (It was also available as a Chrome app, but Google ended support for the Keep Chrome app earlier this year.)
ULYSSES
Many people want a single app for all of their notes and school-based assignments. The ideal solution should, therefore, have a text editor that’s competitive with, if not superior to, Microsoft Word and Google Docs. One such tool is Ulysses, which offers a beautiful design and a super smart take on Markdown, dubbed Markdown XL, for text formatting. At the time of writing, though, it’s only available for iOS and macOS users. Bear, another writing app that we absolutely love, shares the same problem. Dropbox Paper is an intriguing alternative but relies on the web for desktop editing. There’s also Scrivener, an expensive but powerful writing app that’s available for iOS, Windows 10 and macOS — but sadly not Android.
APPLES NOTE
Apple’s default Notes app is actually a great note-taking app (if you have an Apple device) to many people’s surprise. It has all the necessary features that many people look for in a note-taking app: handwriting, typing, and multimedia support. If you are not looking to download third-party apps, Apple’s Notes might be a great solution for you! Apple’s Notes app is best for quick note taking. If you suddenly want to jot down an idea or something you need to remember for later, Notes is a great app for that.
SIMPLENOTE
Simplenote is a great option for those who want a note-taking app that has the user-friendliness and clean interface of a simpler notes app like Keep or Notes, and that can display longer notes (lectures, drafts, etc.) in a much more readable way. Simplenote’s interface combines the best of notebook-style apps like OneNote and sticky notes apps like Keep. It’s also totally free to use and is available on Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, and Linux.
Simplenote lets you share your notes, search your notes with tags, and access your notes on multiple devices.
CONCLUSION
A paper notebook is essential while taking notes, but sometimes you will need to search for a page while rifling through stacks of paper. That ruining the flow while you are writing down the lecture. Here are some of the best free note taking apps that are currently designed for students that are available for their devices, whether for Android phones or IOS. It will help you take notes easily while having all your notes organized in one place, and help you study efficiently.In the end, there is no ultimate app that will work best for everyone. Preferences and even your major can play a part is what features you value most.