For me, it’s just a service that stayed stagnant while others around it evolved. Evernote isn’t bad, but I just don’t love it. I feel like OneNote is a better everything bucket, and Apple Notes is built into every Mac and iOS device. My problem with Evernote has a lot less to do with Evernote, but more than there are just more polished alternatives. I used to hate Evernote, and then I loved Evernote. You can load anything you want into Evernote, and it will sync it everywhere else you use Evernote. It’s a perfect example of the everything bucket. It originally launched in 2008 as a web service and has added clients to pretty much every platform over the years. EvernoteĮvernote is one of those apps I sort of don’t remember not existing. Based on the experience I’ve had with note-taking apps for the Mac, I came up with six great options depending on what’s important to you. When looking at the best note-taking app for the Mac, the factors that are important for me are: ability to organize in folders/tags, speed of search, and ease of adding new notes from other apps. On the iPad, handwriting integration with Apple Pencil might take priority. On the iPhone, speed of starting a new note might take priority.

When looking at macOS note-taking apps, your needs may look drastically different from what you’ll want on iPhone and iPad. I’ll run through a few of the apps, and then I’ll help you figure out which will be the best note-taking app for you to try.

Most of the apps offer free trials, so I advise you to check them all out. I’ve used dozens of apps over the years, and I have opinions on what a note-taking app for Mac should look like for my use cases. When I am looking for the best note-taking app for the Mac, I am looking for a few different things: sync to iOS (and web if possible), easy to add new notes, and easy to look up existing notes. You then have apps like Bear and Apple Notes which aim to live somewhere in the middle. There are apps like Evernote which aim to be an “everything” bucket and apps like SimpleNote that only handle plain text notes. Note taking apps for Mac are a fun category to look at because of the variety of options on the market.

Evernote for mac 10.12