Before we wrote everything down in yellow, pink and all color post-it notes. Now with smartphones, we no longer need to leave pieces of paper all over the house with notes, the shopping list and our last great idea for that script that would certainly succeed in Hollywood if someone with a little head decided to invest in it.
The note-taking apps are super practical: you don’t waste paper, they’re easy to use, and they allow you to have all your ideas together in one place. Today, we review some of the best applications of this type available for Android mobiles and tablets.
The 10 best apps for taking notes and notes on Android
Many mobiles usually include their own factory app for this type of work. If we don’t like the one we have, or simply don’t have one installed, we may want to take a look at some of the most popular ones available on the Play Store.
Google Keep
One of the great advantages of Google Keep is that we can access it from virtually any device with Internet access. Although we only have it installed on our mobile, if we have a browser at hand, we can also access all our notes by logging into Google from the application drawer.
Keep has been optimizing over the years, and now, apart from taking notes, it also allows us to make lists, small pictures, record voice memos or take photos. Free and helpful, like almost everything from Google.
Evernote
Evernote is one of the most powerful note-taking apps. It has a ton of functionality – various note types, organizational features, shared notes, cross-platform support, and more.
However, starting in 2016 they started layering the free version, and it’s no longer as appetizing as it used to be in the past. Their subscription plans offer a good number of additional functions and storage space in the cloud. One of the best paid apps, but as a free service, other alternatives easily eat your toast.
OneNote
The Microsoft app is also among the most popular. A powerful tool that, in addition to being compatible with other Office formats – you can use Excel tables – forms a deadly team along with the rest of Microsoft’s productivity apps.
It is a multiplatform app (Android / iOS / Windows / Mac) linked to the cloud, which means that we can access from the mobile, for example, the notes we have created from the PC and vice versa.
It allows you to write, draw, take captures and even scan documents. We can create tags, labels, lists and even, classify the notes according to their importance.
ColorNote
ColorNote is a very complete notebook for Android. It does not require a login, but if we do we can synchronize our notes and have online backups. It is 100% free and ad-free.
Among its outstanding features we find things like:
- We can create reminders for a specific day or time.
- Lets you pin notes and lists to the status bar.
- Autolink: Detects internet links and phone numbers inserted in the notes.
- Organization by calendar.
- Color notes.
- Password note lock.
- 3 different themes (including dark theme).
In short, a true wonder.
FairNote
FairNote Notepad is a security focused notepad and checklist. It can perform well in the business world, or if we simply want to protect our most sensitive notes in the best possible way. FairNote uses AES-256 encryption to protect the notes we take in the app, and it also allows us to use the fingerprint as an authentication mode to encrypt and decrypt notes.
We can organize ourselves by using labels and tags, and although it does not offer as many options as other apps on this list, it is undoubtedly the one that thinks the most about user privacy.
Material Notes
One of the most pleasant note taking apps we can find. It has a simple and colorful interface, and is very easy to use. It allows us to lock notes with a 4-digit PIN and star tag the most important notes to save them in a separate category.
It facilitates the location of certain notes thanks to an integrated search engine, and of course, it also has a desktop widget. He doesn’t invent the wheel, but what he does, he does well.
ClevNote
One of the best note taking apps on Android. It is perfectly organized, and comes with several default subcategories to make life easier for us:
- Bank accounts.
- Shopping list.
- Birthday list.
- Manage page ID.
- Text memo.
Especially interesting is the “Manage page ID” function, thanks to which we can store the users and passwords of the websites that we regularly visit. It has AES encryption and allows you to create backups on Google Drive.
Save my notes
A notepad that can serve as a private notebook or as a personal diary, thanks to the spell checker included. It has several added functionalities, such as the possibility of drawing and making audio recordings.
We can adjust the size and color of the text, and it works both vertically and horizontally. Create folders and password protect notes. Free, although with integrated ads.
Lecture Notes
This note-taking app is specially designed for the academic world. It was one of the first to support stylus, and is still considered one of the best. It offers support for PDF documents, and allows to record audio and video. It is compatible with OneNote and EverNote. In short, a great tool for taking notes in class.
The full version is paid, but it also has a “trial” version that we can try for free.
Squid
We finish the list with Squid. This note-taking app is also compatible with stylus and active pens, it has a vector graphics engine, notes and notebooks, and a good handful of features.
The free version allows you to export documents to PDF. But the best is undoubtedly in the paid version, where we can import PDFs and make annotations, underlines and others, while reading any type of document or book.
Honorable mentions
With these apps we just mentioned we would have more than enough, but if there are still many other apps for taking notes on Android that are quite worth it.
Final Words
Application that we can use as a notebook, agenda or personal diary. The tool allows us to classify the notes in different folders: Daily, Finance, Health, Personal, Shopping and Work. In addition, we can also protect our annotations with a PIN, password or fingerprint.
It can be synchronized with Google Drive, which is not bad, but on the negative side it must be mentioned that the app contains ads and shows integrated purchases, which is not usually very pleasant in this type of utilities. In any case, an excellent app with a 4.5-star rating and more than a million downloads on Google Play.