Notes apps are where ideas go to die. And that’s good.

What's the point of a note-taking app?

The true purpose of a note-taking app is to facilitate deep learning through three interconnected processes—externalizing ideas, internalizing them into new insights, and resurfacing them over time—and good design should minimize accidental friction while preserving the productive friction that enables genuine understanding.

The Best Note-Taking Apps

We recently polled readers with suggestions for the best note-taking apps. Most of you said you still do things the old-fashioned way with pen and p

Reflect

A beautifully minimalist note-taking app designed to mirror the way you think. Now with a native AI integration.

Notes on my Remarkable Tablet

Some notes on my note taking device

Agenda - Notes meets Calendar

Organize your days with Agenda, the Apple Design Award winning note taking app. Download for free and start getting things done today!

The Linear Oppression of Note-taking Apps

What we lose when our digital notes remove the freedom to move

Best Notes App - Write and Organize with UpNote

UpNote is a clean and beautiful app for writing and organizing notes. It’s easy to use with rich features and delightful experience. Available on Mac, iOS, Android, Windows and Linux.

Note-ifying all the things (with Boris Mann)

Conversation about note-taking, the overwhelm of tools, and future possibilities. (shortlink:…

cybersemics/em

A beautiful, minimalistic note-taking app for personal sensemaking.

I agree with this and my assessment is that notes have to be reader/user-friendly (even if the only user is you), and that requires giving a shit, and we barely know how to teach ourselves to give a shit, let alone automate it or outsource it to a tool

I agree with this and my assessment is that notes have to be reader/user-friendly (even if the only user is you), and that requires giving a shit, and we barely know how to teach ourselves to give a shit, let alone automate it or outsource it to a tool https://t.co/6a2hfkw8ms— Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) November 20, 2022

Vox on Twitter / X

stop just hoarding notes.you save more every week and find less every month. a thousand notes, none of them talking to each other. a better notes app won't fix that. nobody maintains the brain you built.Karpathy's 𝗟𝗟𝗠 𝗪𝗶𝗸𝗶 fixes that: don't have AI search your notes,…— Vox (@Voxyz_ai) June 29, 2026

Dangerous Writing App

Dangerous Writing App. If you stop typing, all progress will be lost. Now with over 500+ writing prompts to choose from.

How to Use Evernote for Your Creative Workflow

Let’s imagine how you would use Evernote if you had a brain

Notesnook | Open source & zero knowledge private note taking app

Express yourself with freedom, no spying, no tracking — only private notes. Unlike Evernote and other note apps, your data is private — not open for everyone to see.

What Isn’t There an App For? (Published 2015)

A writer spent three weeks trying to improve his life through apps.