Best Note Taking With Voice Type Apps For Mac
Whether you’re in high school or college, you spend a lot of time taking notes. You have several excellent options for doing so, and which works best for you depends a lot on your note taking style. It’s best to pick software and stick to it so you don’t to worry about moving stuff around later. Here’s how to make the right choice from the outset.
The iPad is a great note taking tool for classes and meetings, so it’s only fitting to find a lot of really great note taking apps for Apple’s tablet. The Mac Observer rounded up some of our. Circus Ponies have, however, written a full note-taking application for Mac with a wealth of features. With Notebook, you can clip text, entire documents, images and movies and you can add diagrams to your notes to make them more understandable. Taking notes the traditional way with pen and paper works just fine for some, but if you have a smartphone or tablet, using an app specifically designed for note taking can truly change the way you get things done. Best for: Recording voice and turning it to text at the same time With over 20,000 reviews on the Google Play Store, ListNote Speech-to-Text Notes is one of the. AudioNote 2 is a unique note-taking app that allows users to store typed (and stylus) notes with audio files. This app is ideal for assistants, administrative professionals, journalists, students. Google Keep is Google’s free note taking app that’s made to capture notes, lists, photos, and audio. On top of the web version, it’s available on both Android and iOS.
The best apps for taking notes Microsoft OneNote It doesn’t matter which note-taking gadget you’re using — it’s only as good as the application you use to keep your notes organized.
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Evernote’s the Most Feature-Packed Notes App, Provided You Don’t Mind Paying
Evernote has long been the go-to for students, and while it’s not always obvious how you’d use it, once you get the hang of it, Evernote’s a great place to dump everything, which means notes, to-do lists, audio, images, and more.
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Evernote does a lot. On top of the basics, like rich text formatted notes and images, it has in-app image annotation, OCR support for scanning paper or whiteboards, email integration, easy notes sharing, a web clipper, and tons of organization tools. You can keep to-do lists with assignments, then add due dates to those assignments before you share that list with people involved in a group project. Evernote is a behemoth and because of that, it has a consistently improving interface on Windows and Mac, and mobile apps on Android and iOS that are updated with new features often. Evernote’s meant as a catch-all filing cabinet for every thought, idea, and image you come across in your daily school life.
The everything-bucket nature of Evernote means it’s overwhelming for some people and it takes some effort to really master it. It also has so many different organizational methods that it’s easy to spend more time trying to decide where to put a note than it does to actually write it. It can also be a bit slow and cumbersome, especially if you’re trying to use the mobile apps on older devices.
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The other big catch with Evernote comes in the form of a recent price increase. Now, free users are limited to accessing Evernote on just two devices, like your phone and your computer. If you want more than that, you’ll need to shell out for a premium plan. Thankfully, premium plans are currently 75% off for students for a full year (which should translate to about $18 for the year).
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OneNote Is Free and Works Even Better If You Use Microsoft Office
Microsoft’s OneNote has come a long way in recent years and it easily goes toe-to-toe with Evernote in features. Even though OneNote is part of Microsoft Office, it’s still entirely free, which makes it an excellent option for students. It’s even more appealing if you’re already using Microsoft Office for most of your schoolwork. OneNote is available as a desktop app and a web app, as well as for Android and iOS.
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Like just about every other Office application, at a glance, OneNote’s a complicated app to work with. You’ll find it has tons of menus, tabs, and options. While it’s overwhelming to start, OneNote’s great for anyone who likes to really dig in and organize notes. You can create separate notebooks for every class, add rich text formatting to text, draw on notes, highlight text, and tons more.
If you’re actively using the rest of Microsoft Office, OneNote really shines because the whole ecosystem is hooked together. You can embed tables from Excel, pull clips from emails, or link research to Word. OneNote also does a lot of the magic tricks that Evernote does, including importing images into notes, drawing directly on notes with a stylus, recording audio to notes, and easily saving links from any browser. You can also share notes with other classmates easily.
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Like most of Microsoft apps, OneNote’s biggest downfall is its massive scope. It’s packed with menus, which means quickly scribbling down an idea is out of the question. It’s also not particularly pleasant to look at and between the awkwardly colored tabs and the vibrant purple color-scheme, a lot of people might be turned off by the design alone.
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Google Keep Is a Free Short Form Notes App
Google Keep is Google’s free note taking app that’s made to capture notes, lists, photos, and audio. On top of the web version, it’s available on both Android and iOS. We’re big fans of Google Keep because it sits in a middle ground between complex notes apps like OneNote or Evernote, and simple apps like Simplenote.
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Google Keep does pretty much everything you expect of a notes app from Google. You can organize notes easily using a color coded system, look for anything with a powerful search engine, share notes with others, and everything is synced up to your Google account. Students will appreciate the simple voice recording options and the ability to scan images into text easily, which comes in handy when your teachers still give you handouts. Keep also has a clipping extension so you can add URLs to your notes, which should be a huge help when you’re researching different topics.
Unlike Evernote and OneNote, you don’t need to spend a significant amount of time learning how to use Keep. Just load it up and it immediately makes sense. It’s also well hooked into the Google ecosystem so do something like saving emails from Gmail work seamlessly, though there’s still no direct integration with Google Drive.
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There are other downfalls that stem from that simplicity, like the fact you can’t format text, you can’t organize notes into different folders, and Keep doesn’t works great for larger blocks of text. Keep’s best for those who don’t mind using the search function to find notes and who aren’t too verbose with their note-taking in general.
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Simplenote Is Best If You Only Want to Store Text
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Not everyone wants to take massive, complicated notes. Some people just like to write down a few sentences. For that, we’re fans of Simplenote. Simplenote is free on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.
Simplenote is basically a plain text editor with small organizational tools. You can only type text, with no formatting. You can’t add images, audio, or video. You can’t add web clippings or integrate emails. That said, you can organize notes with tags, and the simplicity of plain text means Simplenote’s search is robust and fast.
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That’s it. That’s all Simplenote does. The scarcity of features is a feature in itself though, and if you’re taking classes where you’re just taking basic text notes, Simplenote is all you need.
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Pen and Paper Are Still Great
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You’ll see Extend Display at the top, followed by Mirror Display, Framerate and Pixel Quality. Best second screen app for mac and ipad. If you want to extend the display to the iPad rather than just mirror it, go ahead and select one of the four options: Regular Resolution, iPad Pro Resolution, Retina Resolution, or High Resolution.
Look, you’re probably spending an inordinate amount of time staring at your screen these days. You’re writing papers every other day, taking a couple of classes online, and when you’re not busy being crushed under a mountain of homework, you’re zoning out watching Netflix. Which is all to say, sometimes the best notes app is no app at all, it’s just a normal notebook.
Good old pen and paper can be useful for other reasons too. For one, if you’re easily distracted, a notebook has the benefit of not having access to the internet. Notebooks are also surprisingly customizable, with lots of different organization methods like Bullet Journal or line edges. Notebooks also allow you to take notes in any style you prefer for every subject, whether that’s creating columns, mind maps, or whatever else.
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Pen and paper does have plenty of problems too. You can’t search through notes, easily share them with classmates, or access them from a variety of devices if you accidentally forget your papers at home. Many people can also type much faster than they can write, which means you’ll need to pay more attention to what you write to keep it short.
You’ll still need to pick out a good notebook and pen though. You have a ton of options here, but Moleskine’s are a popular favorite and come in a variety of sizes with different types of paper. Pens are perhaps less important to most people, but if you’re looking for a popular pick, Pilot pens are always a solid choice.
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Photos by: Chris Lott, Guudmorning!
Man, it’s a great time to be a note-taker.
For a couple of decades—first as a student, then as a professional journalist—I filled notebook after notebook with notes, covering classes, press conferences, interviews, and more. When I was done, I’d have to find someplace to store them until (most likely) I’d throw them out. The notes I did keep? Useless. My on-the-fly handwriting is a horrible thing.
The result: A lot of personal and professional history gone to waste.
The process got better when laptop adoption became widespread and I could start typing my notes in real time as a speech or lecture was being delivered. It improved yet again when Google Docs came along, and storage ceased to be a worry.
Mobile devices, though, transformed everything. The productivity charts in the app stores are awash in great note-taking apps, ranging from the complicated—Evernote would let you describe every part of your life with enough detail to satisfy three of the five senses—to the useful-but-relatively-one-dimensional (think of the naive Notes app on iOS). For the first time in decades, I don’t have to carry pen and paper everywhere I go. All I need is my smartphone, and I’m ready to go to class, conduct an interview, or cover a fire as a breaking news story.
So which app is the best?
To determine that, TechHive picked a number of note-taking apps, popular either with the public—as determined by the iOS and Android app store charts—or which have received sterling notices in the tech press. And to test them, I used each in my everyday life—for reporting and writing news stories, as well as everyday tasks like making grocery lists, or to store away a great thought or quote.
I had three criteria for judging these note-taking apps: They had to be versatile. They had to help me get organized, easily and intuitively. And they had to be accessible—a note that will live on my iPhone and my iPhone only is not a note that’s ultimately useful to me: I might take the notes on a mobile device, but I might write a paper or a story on a laptop or desktop— so I want quick, easy access to the notes in both locations.
Oh, and while I used Apple gear in the testing of these apps, I didn’t want to preclude the idea that someday soon I might switch to a Nexus tablet instead: The apps had to be available on both major mobile platforms, to give users maximum flexibility.
The winner: Evernote
Um, surprise?
There’s a reason Evernote (free; iOS and Android) is generally thought of as a best-in-class note-taker: It’s the best in class, and it easily surpassed my desires in each of the three criteria I was judging by:
- Versatility: I took my iPad to a morning breaking-news conference and fired up the app. I typed in notes during the question-and-answer portion of the presser, used the app to take pictures of charts displayed during the event, and after it was over used the microphone to record a quick on-the-spot interview with one of the participants. Shifting between functions was seamless: I just clicked the “Add Attachment” button in the upper right-hand corner, chose which medium to operate in, and moved on from there. Easy as pie.
- Great organization: This didn’t matter so much at the press conference, but Evernote is easily—and endlessly—organizable. You can create notebooks to cover broad topics, and then create individual notes in each. Plus, you can tag the notes, to further refine your searches and your overall ability to find your information later.
- Accessibility: When the press conference was over, I put my iPad away, rushed back to the office, fired up my computer, and immediately opened Evernote on the Web: Everything was right there—and would’ve been if I’d tried accessing it on Android or a Windows computer, too. (I could also have downloaded Evernote for Mac, but I hadn’t done that. In any case, I’d rather shift back and forth between browser tabs than shift between apps; your own mileage may vary.) The story was finished within about 30 minutes. That’s efficiency, folks.
If there’s a drawback, it’s that the free account limits you to 60 MB of uploads per month: Power users beware. But upgrading to a premium account—and up to 1 GB of data uploads per month—costs just $45 a year.
The runner-up: Simplenote
No, this app isn’t nearly as versatile as Evernote. Simplenote(free; iOS and Android)—as the name implies—is simple. You write stuff down, and that’s it.
Then again, the vast majority of the note taking I do is just writing stuff down. And one person’s versatility can be another person’s clutter can be another person’s app overstuffed with features.
When it comes down to it, Simplenote isn’t that stripped down—and it’s certainly an improvement in several ways over the native iOS Notes app: For one thing, cut-and-paste quotes are stripped of coding, so everything you paste and type has the same, simple text-style font and format. And you can tag each note as much as you want, making organization a snap.
What’s more, Simplenote is easily accessible: It’s available as a Web app, and as a download for iOS, Mac, Android, and Kindle devices. But don’t be fooled by this name: In this case simplicity is a virtue, in the cause of simply getting stuff done.
Best for Microsoft users: Microsoft OneNote
While I found Evernote and Simplenote to be the best overall note-taking apps, others stood out for specific features, which you might want to consider depending on your needs.
Microsoft OneNote (free; iOS and Android) is a lot like Evernote—and yet not quite enough like Evernote.
Like Evernote, it’s versatile: It’s easy to add pictures, tables, and hyperlinks to your notes. Like Evernote, you can organize your notes into broad notebooks and narrower note entries. And like Evernote, it’s accessible via a broad array of devices, including for Mac and iOS. So that’s good!
Unlike Evernote, it lacks an audio recording capability, and thus there’s no opportunity to review a lecture or interview to make sure you wrote down everything correctly. Also unlike Evernote, accessing notes on other devices is not a seamless transition. OneNote.com (the app’s Web version) offered me ads for related Microsoft products, but it never showed a way to get past the ads and simply make notes when using Safari. (It performed better in Firefox.)
The app does offer lots of formatting options, but that almost seems like a distraction: It’s as if Microsoft Word had been grafted onto a note-taking app. That’ll be fine for some users, but I prefer the focus of a task-focused app.
So why use it? The prime audience will, of course, be current Microsoft customers, especially users of its OneDrive cloud-based system for creating documents and presentations. If you’re not already a Microsoft fan, this app won’t be quite as alluring.
Best stylus companion: Penultimate
This is a specialty note-taker worth mentioning, because some people just like the feel of a stylus in their hand when taking notes. Penultimate (free; iPad) rewards them with a responsive user interface that allows for both taking notes and sketching. And it’s part of the Evernote ecosystem, making it easy to access your hand-written notes and drawings on other devices aside from your iPad.
Computer Voice Type Words
Others of note
This is a good time to mention that there aren’t really any bad note-taking apps out there. It’s just that some aren’t superlative as others. The following apps all have their strengths, save one: All of them are built primarily for iOS. If you’re an Android user, you might want to turn to well-regarded offerings like Papryus (free), Note Everything (free), or Google Keep (free).
Notability ($3) remains among my favorite note-takers: It’s like a mix of Evernote and Penultimate, letting users create notes using a range of techniques—handwriting, typing, taking pictures, capturing audio, and more. Its best feature? If you’ve recorded a lecture and taken notes simultaneously, Notability syncs the two—just tap a word in the middle of your notes, and the app will find that same spot in the audio, helping you rediscover and remember the context of your half-formed thought.
App developer Ginger Labs recently launched a companion app for the Mac ($10; OS X 10.9 or later), where you can sync your notes via iCloud across devices. If you're not a Mac user, you can still access your notes on a computer, but only by syncing your account with Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, or webDAV. Students may find its audio sync feature especially helpful for taking notes during long lectures.
Super Note (free) shares a lot of Notability’s features, but with a simpler and perhaps more intuitive user interface: It only incorporates typed notes, pictures, and recordings. It may also go a little further in helping you get organized, with color-coded arrows to guide the way. You’ve got one option for syncing to your desktop computer: Dropbox.
NoteMaster ($4) has separate apps for the iPhone and iPad. They both feature plenty of formatting options, easy organizing rules, and the ability to insert photos. You can sync the notes using Google Docs or Dropbox. (However, if you’re thinking about using the Google Docs app to take notes on a mobile device: Don’t. Get this app, and you’ll have a more pleasant visual experience, at the very least.)
Vesper ($3) isn’t really a classroom app: It’s an iPhone-only offering (though that may change soon) that’s built more for an individual’s on-the-fly thinking. Got an idea for that song you’re writing? Jot it down quickly. Want to make a poem about that pretty flower? Take a picture and jot down your thoughts. The app has limited syncing options—basically, unless you send the notes in an SMS message or an email, will only be able to access it from… your other iPhones also equipped with the Vesper app. But stay tuned: This app may have a different story to tell next semester.
Google Voice Type
There is no shortage of good note-taking apps out there, and your criteria may differ from mine. Though Evernote will likely be the best choice for most users, you should feel free to try several of these options—most of them have free versions—and see what works for you.
Editor's note: This article was updated on 09/03/2014 at 4:45 PM PST to highlight Notability's new app for the Mac and to correct a typo.