30th Apr, 2024
As a Mac user, you might be looking for the perfect note taking app to use whilst working on your desktop. We have found ten of the best note taking apps for Mac and gathered them inside this list. Have a read and find the best notes app for your Mac.
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Do you currently have a system for taking notes that isn't working all that well?
Maybe you are using the traditional paper and pen method but losing important information, or your current app doesn't fulfill all your note-taking needs. Without a good notes app for Mac, or any other device for that matter, you risk losing notes, forgetting great ideas, oh and spending a ton of money on notebooks, pens, paper, and so on.
We have created a list of the best note apps for Mac users to enhance their note-taking experience. So, when you are working on your Mac you can work alongside the best notes app to save and store everything that comes to mind.
Looking for best email apps for Mac users too?
Before we dive in, let's take a look at what makes a good notes app for Mac:
What's Important? | Why? |
---|---|
User-friendly interface | Being approachable is one of the most important things for macOS users. |
Security & reliability | With the security and power of macOS, you want your note-taking to be secure. |
Great for organization | These applications can be organized and folderized for later access. |
Let's begin the list of recommendations for you Mac users.
To save you some time, here are the top three apps we have chosen for notes on Mac:
One of the most flexible, popular productivity apps on the market
Availability: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows
Notion is a great note-taking tool for Mac users thanks to its flexibility, AI writing support, Notion templates for easy starting and collaboration features. It's important to note that Notion isn't just a notes app, it's an app with many levels that allow you to create project management systems, ways to organize data, and much more.
For now, in terms of note-taking, you can create pages and use AI to support writing such as generating, summarizing, and rewriting text. You have tons of flexibility with your notes and can create powerful wikis and documents inside Notion. Use headings, tables, lists, add videos, and more by using the Notion Blocks.
Overall, Notion provides a minimal space for users to create a workflow and note-taking system to suit their needs. To learn how to get started with Notion check out our Beginners Guide to Notion.
Bear Notes is great for those who enjoy note-taking with markdown formatting. This means being able to use things such as bold text, headings, highlights, and so on.
You can seamlessly use markdown within Bear Notes if you know the lingo. Just simply start typing and add in everything you need. You can learn more about markdown shortcuts in Bear Notes here. Again, Bear Notes provides more than just a space to write aimless notes. You can organize notes in folders and with tags. You can even create lists, and documents and write a book if you want. If you fell in love with Bear just from the images of the simple and minimal markdown notes experience, then it might be worth exploring all the Bear Notes alternatives too.
Bear Notes is also super secure and safely stored inside your iCloud. This is something to keep in mind if you are worried about losing notes: so if you are looking for a seamless and user-friendly note-taking experience, Bear Notes is worth checking out.
Agenda Notes combines the use of a calendar and note-taking in one place, making this app super helpful and great for boosting note productivity.
With Agenda Notes you can see your calendar alongside your notes. This helps with planning your days and weeks with projects, tasks, and to-do lists. For example, you can prepare meeting notes inside the calendar, or even a shopping list.
A good thing to note is Agenda Notes is free forever unless you want to access premium features such as collaboration features, hiding notes, and using split screens. Upgrading may be a good idea for professionals and businesses.
You can attach dates to notes to add them to your calendar, and also add notes to 'The Agenda' this could help for upcoming events, meetings, or projects you need to complete. Agenda Notes also come with reminders and organization abilities such as adding tags and creating folders and plain text or rich text writing styles.
Overall, Agenda Notes is a perfect notes app for Mac users who would benefit from combining their notes and calendars in one easy-to-navigate space.
Evernote provides a place for all your notes, tasks, and schedules in one. This makes it easy to combine multiple tasks such as taking notes on the Mac, seeing which notes contribute to the tasks, and adding them to your schedule.
The handy thing with Evernote is it can be synced to all devices, so you can type up on your Mac and access it on your mobile on the go. You can also add things such as images, PDFs, recordings, and documents to notes.
Evernote also has a super powerful search, meaning you can find old notes or whatever you want by typing in a few keywords. You can also scan documents to have inside Evernote for safekeeping and to create notes with, also add web clippings to notes to support ideas or to spark inspiration. The task integration is great for busy people who need to combine the two. You can add a task list inside notes with flags, due dates, reminders, and tags to organize. Then tick them off when you are done.
Overall, Evernote is a pretty solid all-round note-taking tool with the added ability to manage tasks and your calendar in one place. If you're running from Evernote, here's some of the best Evernote alternatives on the market.
NotePlan uses Markdown to let you quickly create tasks inside your notes. This includes the ability to add to-do lists, move tasks, add tags, set autocompletion, and use natural language input.
NotePlan looks like a simple and minimal note-taking app for Mac users, however, you can even create a network of notes using bi-directional linking, mentions, filters, and seamlessly sync notes between your devices for easy access.
Much like Evernote, you can also plan your time inside NotePlan 3 by integrating with your calendar, time-blocking tasks, adding notes inside tasks, and managing your calendar in daily, weekly, and monthly views.
Overall, NotePlan 3 is a fast and reliable note-taking app for Mac users to create a space full of connected notes, manage calendars, and use Markdown text.
Obsidian is a really interesting note-taking application for Mac. It offers a very detailed space to take notes, link them together, and create a PKM or second brain tool. The benefit of this is over time you will create a knowledge base you can search inside to spark inspiration or find notes any time.
You can also build Obsidian to suit your note-taking needs thanks to the hundreds of plugins available. For example, you can add a daily notes section, Spotify links, etc.
Obsidian is pretty flexible in terms of what you use it for, you can create a digital journal, a place to store hidden notes, or manage your projects here. Whatever you choose, you can organize with linking, tags, and Markdown formatting.
If you want to, you can even publish your notes online, this requires another paid subscription to do so. However, if you want to share your notes with the world you can customize your Obsidian site and share your knowledge there.
Overall, Obsidian is great for those interested in creating a PKM or second brain app to store their notes and share ideas with others.
Heptabase is a great tool for those who are studying, want to learn something new, or working on projects. It provides seamless a place to visualize notes inside whiteboards and mindmaps.
With Heptabase you can bring all your research and findings into one place, and then create notes around them to assist with learning. For example, add PDFs, journals, and notes to a whiteboard and organize them in a way that helps you learn.
Finally, you can organize your notes into Kanban boards to help create project plans for yourself and others. Use colors to help visually organize and add more notes inside each task. To conclude, Heptabase is more than just a note-taking app, this app is best for those wanting to research, make notes to assist with learning, and plan for projects.
Craft is great for individuals and teams to take notes. If you're using Craft by yourself you can create journals, and documents, and write down memories. Or for your team, you can create informative wikis and documents to assist with projects and learning.
First of all, Craft has a daily notes section for you to add to whatever you want, to then organize later. You can utilize this section however you like, a common method is to use it as a task for today and a brain dump section.
If you are using Craft as a team, you can collaborate inside documents and see who is working on what and where. This helps turn ideas into presentations and completed documents.
The main feature of Craft is to create a knowledge base for either yourself or your team. Inside Craft, you can organize documents into sections with different pages to create a wiki. Super helpful for teams to go in and read the information they need.
Overall, Craft is a unique notes app with the ability to create a knowledge base full of aesthetic and helpful documents and wikis. This is one of the best looking macOS note-taking apps right now.
Acreom isn't just your average note-taking app for Mac, it is aimed more towards developers for tracking progress, breaking down issues, managing PRs, and more all in one easy-to-use interface.
Acreom is great for those who want to cut out the context-switching, by having your knowledge base and notes alongside issues you can seamlessly work in one place. This saves time and means you don't need multiple apps. You can also use Markdown for everything inside Acreom, including rich links, creating code blocks, adding images, and more. By creating actionable pages you can manage your notes as to-dos and projects with labels and schedules.
Overall, Acreom is more suited to those interested in building code, developing, tracking issues, and so on. Acreom also uses a capture-first approach, you can add all notes into your daily note section and then organize them later. You can then use powerful search modes to find all your notes super fast.
Reflect Notes is another clever application for taking notes on your Mac. It's super fast, end-end encrypted, and creates a graph of networked notes to help you better understand your thoughts and ideas.
Reflect Notes now also has AI integration. This means you can use GPT-4 to improve your writing, organize, and ask questions. You can also transcribe human voices, take key takeaways from meeting notes, and of course, fix grammar and spelling.
To connect your thoughts inside Reflect you must use backlinks. This also helps with searching for notes in the future, along with connecting ideas. For example, you can backlink any information related to the same topic to connect them.
Finally, Reflect Notes can be integrated with tons of different apps, including your calendar. From here you can track all your meetings and store your notes inside the app.
Let's help you with some final recommendations for which one to pick for your Mac:
One of the best all rounders for Mac users has to be between Notion and Bear Notes. Notion will give you more flexibility, but apps like Bear Notes will give you a lighter way to manage your notes with great abilities and still the media uploads you'd expect.
For visual thinkers on Mac, both Heptabase and Obsidian have good canvas like modes for visually taking notes and collecting them together. Heptabase much more advanced for collecting notes and connecting them, but Obsidian a solid choice too.
Great for markdown, NotePlan has to come away with this one. Markdown tasks, notes and even calendar integration with macOS loved Apple Calendar.
Obsidian is a brilliant tool for macOS users and PKM lovers combined. Obsidian will do all you need - connect notes, graph view, backlinks and more inside their great macOS app that stores your notes locally too.
Let's hope you find your perfect note-taking app in this, but do feel free to explore more.
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