At Zapier, we love a good free app, but with things as permanent as digital notes, that has to be balanced against the likelihood of the service surviving the next few years and being able to offer server-based features like syncing. You can't be locked out of your notebook because you don't have Wi-Fi.įinally, we had the value for money test.

At a minimum, we required each notepad app to be available on one desktop and one mobile platform, and to have some kind of offline functionality. Similarly, the biggest reason to have a notes app instead of a notebook is that you can access it from anywhere on any device at any time, whether you're at your desk at work, chilling on your couch at home, or flying coast-to-coast. This rule also extended to other features: editing and sorting notes had to feel seamless and natural, rather than require a battle with a horrible user interface. If it wasn't almost as convenient to open a notes app and create a quick note as it was to reach across my desk for a Moleskine and a pen, it didn't make the cut. The real competition here wasn't other note-taking apps, but a pen and scrap of paper. Second, all the note-taking apps had to be quick and easy to use. Not every note-taking app needs to have features like image-to-text conversion or stylus support, but if it boasted about them, they had to be well-executed and nice to use. This sounds like an easy bar to clear, but you'd be surprised at how many apps fell short. With so many apps to consider, we had some pretty strict criteria for what made a great notes app.įirst, the best note-taking software has to be good at what it claims to do. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site-we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software.

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