THE BEST NOTE-TAKING APPS FOR MAC

Apple may have improved its Notes app, but there are plenty of other options if it's not for you

- KENNY HEMPHILL

ON TEST…

Apple Notes 

Agenda

Bear 

Evernote 

Notability 

Simple Note

WHY BOTHER LOOKING for another note–taking app when there’s a perfectly good one built into macOS? For the same reason you might use a different email client or web browser. While Apple Notes has become a very good note–taking app, it’s not perfect. Take a look at the others here and you’ll see that Bear isn’t just beautiful, but has so many of the features you’d find in a writing tool, you can use it as one. Agenda organizes notes by date and allows you to create and share projects, while Evernote’s web clipping tool is a class apart from the one in Notes.

Notability takes a different approach in that it focuses on creating notes using multiple media. Sure, you can type notes, but you can also record audio and sync it with your notes, annotate a PDF and deliver a presentation.

If all of those features are too much, and you don’t want Notes’ Quick Note or sharing features, Simple Note lives up to its name and may be just what you need. If Apple Notes isn’t the one for you, one of the others on test here definitely will be.

How we tested

To test each of the apps here, we installed them on our Mac, iPhone and iPad and used them to create notes from scratch. We tested how easy it was to grab content from websites and add them to a note, or to use the content to create a new note. Where other features like audio recording were available, we tested those too.

We added images, drawings, annotations and links to apps. And we examined how easy it was to organize notes and to search for them.