Microsoft OneNote is one of the best note-taking apps out there. I mean, the app is packed with features, available across platforms, and is free to use. That said, despite bringing so many good qualities, the app is not for everyone. For example, the app is too complex for beginners and requires you to create a Microsoft account if you want to sync your notes across devices. My biggest complaint with OneNote is that it just takes too much space on my devices and is too heavy on resources. I mean, a note-taking app should not tax my devices so much. So, for these reasons or some of your own, if you are looking for a OneNote alternative, you have come to the right place, as we are bringing you the top 12 best OneNote alternatives that you can use in 2020.
1. Evernote
Evernote is probably the most popular note-taking app and the best OneNote alternative out there. The app brings all the features that you can think of and is one of the most complete note-taking apps you can find. One of the best things about using Evernote is that it is an app which you can trust to be around for decades. That allows you to completely invest yourself in the app and structure it just the way you want to, as you know that you won’t have to redo it just a few years down the line. Coming to the features of the app, I love how it allows us to organize our notes into different notebooks. You can even create stacks of notebooks which is great if you have as many notes as I do.
As you can see, there’s a lot to like here, and I have just scratched the surface. There are tons of other features such as a web-clipper which allows you to easily save web links and articles, the ability to input your notes in text, audio, or pictures, optical character recognition which allows you to search for text inside images, password protected notes, and much more. The bottom line is if you want the best OneNote alternative, Evernote is for you.
Simplenote, as its name suggest, is a very simple note-taking app which just works. If you are someone who is looking for a simple note-taking app which offers an intuitive and easy-to-navigate UI, Simplenote is the one for you. I personally am a fan of Simplenote, just for the fact that how easy it is to use and how my notes are instantly synced across devices without having to do anything. Simplenote allows you to easily create notes, reminders, to-do list, and more. I love Simplenote’s clean user interface which is a breath of fresh air when compared to the complex and clunky user interface of OneNote. I also love the fact that it comes with a dark mode. For me, Simplenote is a place where I can brainstorm ideas as it gives me a distraction-free environemt which allows me ideas to flow.
3. Notion
No new note-taking app has risen to prominence as quickly as Notion. One big reason behind Notion’s success is that it’s not a simple note-taking app but almost a project management tool. You can create projects, assign it to members, add various types of documents, and much more. But despite these features, no-one can deny that at its core, Notion is a versatile note-taking app. If you work in a team and have a lot of shared notes and projects, Notion can easily replace OneNote for you. Just like OneNote, you can easily create notebooks and notes. You can also use tags to get a non-linear organization structure going. Apart from simple text notes, Notion also supports checklists, list items, note history, team collaboration, and more.
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If you are concerned about your privacy and do not trust private companies like Mircorsoft with your data, Laverna is the right note-taking app for you. Laverna is an open-source note-taking app which focuses on user privacy as it brings an end-to-end encryption and password protected vault which holds all your notes. The app is really easy to use and allows you to create simple text-based notes which are synced across devices using a Dropbox or a RemoteStorage account. I love its no frills and simple user interface which never gets in the way of your note-taking. That said, the simplicity also means that Laverna is not as feature rich as OneNote. For example, you cannot add image or voice notes here.
Supported Platforms: Windows x32, Windows x64, macOS, Linux x32, Linux x64, Android (coming soon)
Google Keep brings a unique approach to note-taking and I quite like it. The best part about using Google Keep is that it displays all your notes in an easy to view colored-card interface which not only makes the notes look beautiful, but also allows you to easily scan the content of your notes without having to open them. The ability to color code notes is a boon for me as it allows me to easily find notes that I am looking for. For example, all the red notes in my Google Keep are the ones that I need to urgently get to.
Just like OneNote is good for a Microsoft product user, Google Keep being a Google product, ties in nicely with other Google products and services. For example, the new Gmail web app has a sidebar which hosts Google Keep among other things. That allows me to transfer emails to notes or draft emails inside notes and then just copy and paste them inside emails. The app also lets you easily create to-do lists, normal lists, reminders, attach photos, and more. Finally, Google Keep also brings a web-clipper companion app just like OneNote which allows you to save articles and links from the web. I love Google Keep, and if you give it a try, I think you will love it too.
Zoho Notebook is yet another feature-packed note-taking app which is available across devices and is a capable alternative to OneNote. What I love about Zoho Notebook is that despite bringing a big feature set, it remains of the best looking note-taking apps in the market. I mean, if Evernote and Google Keep had a baby, it would be Zoho Notebook. The app lets you easily create Notebooks with covers which actually look like a real notebook. Inside, you can create text-notes, voice-notes, add pictures, and more. It also has a web clipping tool which lets you save articles and links from the web.
7. Bear
If you are strictly using Apple devices, Bear is probably the best note-taking app that you can get. In fact, the app is so good looking that it won Apple’s best-designed app award back in 2017. Its markdown editing feature combined with a clean and modern UI makes it really easy to capture your thoughts. One of my favorite features of Bear is its tagging system. Unlike OneNote where tags feel like an afterthought, tagging is the main core of Bear. Bear allows users to easily organize notes using a series of tags which act like folders. That means, just like on Simplenote, your notes can live inside multiple folders.
Elephant is the open-source version of the popular Evernote application. The app feels exactly like Evernote and follows almost similar organizational structure as Evernote. Just like Evernote, you can create individual notes, save them inside notebooks, and create a stack of notebooks. However, unlike Evernote, your notes are saved on your device and note synced on the cloud.
Just like Laverna, Turtl is a note-taking app which focuses on privacy. Turtl acts as a vault where you can keep your notes, research, passwords, bookmarks, dream logs, photos, documents, and anything else you want to be kept safe. When you create an account on Turtl, it uses your password to create a cryptographic key and uses it to encrypt all your data which can then only be accessed by using your password.
Price: Free
Another note-taking app for macOS and iOS devices is “Keep It” which is developed by the guys at “Reinvented Software”, who also developed the now defunct “Together 3” note-taking app for Mac. Just like OneNote, Keep It is a very powerful note-taking app which allows you to easily create and organize notes. However, unlike OneNote, Keep It is very light and doesn’t hog up all your device’s resources.
Supported Platforms: macOS, iOS
If note-taking for you means creating a knowledge base where you can keep everything that you want and make it easily searchable, CintaNotes is for you. The premise of using CintaNotes is that not only you are typing notes, but you are capturing notes from the web, PDFs, ebooks, and any place else by just highlighting the text that you need and using a simple keyboard combo. In that regard, CintaNotes is much more than OneNote. One of the biggest features of CinatNotes is that you can link notes with each other thereby creating your own personal wiki of notes, something, you can not do with OneNote.
Searching notes is also pretty easy as Cintanotes supports sophisticated search query syntax which is a lot more powerful than what OneNote offers. There is a lot more that CintaNotes does which OneNote along with other note-taking apps on this list can’t do including things like allowing you to configure different hotkeys, dividing notebooks into sections, hierarchical tags, auto-tagging rules, and more. CintaNotes is more than just for your notes, it’s basically a repository for all your data which can be accessed anytime that you want to.
This app is a little different from all the other options mentioned on this list. It’s primarily an iPad note-taking app that supports Apple Pencil input. It brings features such as handwriting recognition, PDF annotation, scanning, templates, iCloud Sync, and more. I am including this app as an alternative because our academic environment has changed a lot and more and more students are using the iPad for taking hand-written notes. And while OneNote supports hand-written notes, it doesn’t excel at it. In my GoodNotes is one of the best note-taking apps that support handwritten notes.
