24th Jul, 2024
Take better notes in class or bring ideas together in one base. These note-taking applications are perfect for students that need an all-round notes day-to-day.
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Looking to be more productive in class with note-taking?
Students collect class notes, PDFs, presentations, ideas, research titles, and millions of links across a typical study day. That's enough to make your head explode if you're not using some app or system to bring that all into one location.
Many students have apps like Apple Notes, Google Keep, or maybe even notebooks, which are good but might not be able to provide the large-scale function our curated list of best student-focused note-taking apps can help with.
Leveling up your notes app in university or college is probably one of the best investments you can make during your studies. Let's explore the best apps for it!
A good student notes app is all about a combination of abilities students can use to better capture and revise for exams, study, and organize their time at college or university. The pricing is lower than that of normal tools to upgrade or have a generous free plan.
Recommendation | Best For | Pricing (approx) |
---|---|---|
All round use & flashcards | Free, $7.50 per month | |
Sharing notes | Free, $6 per month | |
Capturing & organizing | Free, $14.99 per month | |
Capturing & organizing | Free | |
Sketch-based notes | Free, $9.99 per year | |
Markdown note-taking | Free, $29.99 per year | |
Projects & Planning | Free, $10 per month | |
Tasks, notes & calendar | Free, $6 per month | |
Encrypted notes | Free, $6 per month | |
Connecting notes | Free, $10 per month | |
Documents | Free, $8 per month | |
Easy note-taking | Free | |
Networked thought | Free, $4 per month |
Looking for the best note-taking apps overall?
RemNote is one of the best student notes apps because it is, at the core, designed for students with flashcards, unlimited notes and an app on all your devices. Inside RemNote, you can instantly create a note and turn it into a flashcard.
RemNote also packs powerful PDF annotation (Pro feature) and connection to notes, meaning you can connect to any presentation or PDF your lecturer sends. This makes for an easy experience, but you can also annotate it to add more value. You get 3 PDF note annotations as part of your free plan on RemNote.
RemNote is best for more intense student note-takers and is excellent for structured note management. A little education is required, but this is the best of our list for all-around student note-taking management.
Supernotes provide us with a firm base for your notes. It has grown on many people using things beyond student note-taking thanks to the clean, minimal nature of the app and the focus on notecards instead of constant folder organization. This makes it easier to connect notes up using backlinks and to share notes with other students.
Collaborative notes are one of the gem features of Supernotes. Students can take notes and share them with other students using Supernotes, too. This makes life so much easier when missing a lecture (intentionally or not) and sharing those notes after it happens.
Supernotes is a clean, beautiful way to take notes, with daily notes too, for light journal entries, to-dos for bringing items together, and many more note abilities. With the limit of 100 cards, there's a chance you'll be looking to get the premium pricing unless you have many friends (note referral gives you 20 extra cards).
Powerful search, powerful PDF management, and powerful extended abilities with tasks and calendar management. This is more of a notes app for students, but beyond that, think of Evernote as a notes app for life, allowing you to store work project notes, meeting notes, and lightweight tasks, too.
Evernote used to be the hottest app for student note-taking, purely because of the ability to add attachments to notes. However, one feature that still appears to student note-takers is the ability to capture notes into notebooks with the Evernote Web Clipper. It remains a brilliant notes app clipper for capturing links or snippets from pieces you're researching, searching for links and references three times as easily.
Advice: Evernote is much more extensive if you go over the limitations. The more powerful features like tasks, search, offline, and large uploads are locked under premium. So, while the free plan is good, it will only take you so far (yes, that is a line from Oppenheimer).
If budget is your concern, look no further than Microsoft OneNote. It offers the best free notes app for students, hands down. The notes experience allows you to take notes in a tab format, giving your notes app almost a ring-binder feel. It also has a solid iPad and Microsoft Surface apps, meaning you can make notes and sketches all in one.
We always recommend Microsoft OneNote when managing your notes with a Microsoft account. Suppose your school, university, or college offers a Microsoft for Education plan tied into your email. In that case, you are highly likely to have OneNote with free access and storage, so we recommend taking advantage of that.
Advice: Microsoft OneNote is practical and offers an excellent free experience. It isn't for everyone. Some people don't like their notes being in the Microsoft ecosystem, but for many, it'll hit the nail on the head for an upgraded, more focused Microsoft Word-like notes application that meets the bill.
GoodNotes has had a big facelift in the last year and is much more focused on AI note-taking, meaning better handwriting support, typed notes, and beyond. GoodNotes works wonders for taking sketch notes and recording lectures or audio files to revisit essential notes you've made.
GoodNotes offers good levels of customization for notebooks, including stickers, templates, and even a big store (locked under premium). This level of customization appeals to many students wanting a BuJo-style notes app with sketch abilities.
Advice: If you don't have an iPad, there's no point in looking at GoodNotes, but if you do, this will be one of the best investments at the low cost of $9.99 for a year.
Bear Notes is a solid iOS and macOS app for handling notes. Many people like Bear for its markdown abilities, and students looking for something more than Apple Notes, Bear Notes is an excellent option.
Bear Notes allows you to organize your notes by focusing on hashtags and note regular notebooks, meaning you can create nested hashtags perfect for multiple spanning notes. This means that a note with a revision for an exam that spans numerous classes could be connected to various places. You can use the sketch abilities on the iOS app to handle ideas and thoughts better you're bringing together.
Bear Notes has one of the best experiences for macOS users for note-taking, it is lightweight and provides one of the better mac experiences and winner of the Apple Design in 2017 for just this.
This is a tough one because it depends on your needs, so let's determine based on the needs we have above us and pick the best notes app for your study endeavors.
The functions and AI focus of GoodNotes 6 make it a great companion for iPad users. There are many iPad note apps that take advantage of Apple Pencil, and GoodNotes is only one of the many.
Want to save a buck? Well in this case Microsoft OneNote might be your best option. It works wonders for managing your digital filing cabinet and with sketch make notes more interactive if you do have an iPad or tablet device.
This is perfect for all round user, pre-and-post university or college. So we'd recommend Evernote for making the most of your notes.
If you want to commit to a notes app, upgrade and be with it longer than 3 years, RemNote is the best app on the market for students and the premium features offer superb features ideal for hunkering down with your notes and optimizing.
The build quality of Bear Notes presents a great experience for students looking for a better way to take notes on their new Macbooks as they start university, the low cost fee of $29.99 makes it a light, yet approachable way to take notes that can be shared and exported to other people for use later on.
As a former university student, one of the key lessons I learned was that I cannot store everything in my brain. This was paramount from concepts in books I'd read, like Getting Things Done by David Allen and Tiago Forte's newly formed concept, Second Brain.
"Your brain should be a thinking tool, not a storage tool" is a quote from David Allen's book, and this quote has always stuck with me as an effective way to think about how your brain uses knowledge and information.
So, students think of it this way: the more you store in a notes app, the better—the more your brain can be freed up for thinking through a problem or concept, the more insightful results you'll have in the long term. This changed the way I thought about notes and can really activate true learning for many people trapped in "your brain needs to store all this."
A studio for your mind | A place to make sense of the world and create amazing things.
Best For
It's free. No credit card required.
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