What is the best app for taking handwritten notes?

Looking for a clean iOS app with some way of organizing handwritten notes. Bonus points for: * Cross-platform * Text conversion or searching handwritten notes * Including images and pasting text * PDF annotation
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14 recommended
  1. 50
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    Notion Beta

    An expressive and collaborative document editor

    Yoginth
    Yoginth🤟 Designer, Developer, and Toolmaker · Written
    It has kinda everything!
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  2. 32
    NoteLedge

    Take better notes, your way

    Personally, I really like NoteLedge. It's a good app for all kinds of note-taking, both handwritten and typed. It features quite a few pens and paper styles so you can make your notes as creative as you'd like. Another cool thing is that you can draw and sketch in this app and the overall experience does feel quite realisitc (talking about the handwriting functions). All your notes are synced so you can work on several devices, but even if you're just working on your phone, it's still pretty convinient.
    Comments (2)Share
    Jared Young
    Jared YoungC++ Developer). · Written
    What I like most about this app is its ease of use and cool tools - your notes can be as interactive as you want, and it's also easy to keep things organized, which is a big plus. Creating handwritten notes is easy and you have lots of tools at your disposal for that.
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    Juniper Davidson
    Juniper DavidsonDesigner — UI / UX. · Written
    One of my favorite applications out there for handwritten notes. Nice design, useful tools and plenty of ways to take cool notes on your device.
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  3. 30
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    Inbox by Google

    Next generation inbox

    I would always recommend Google Keep for its simplicity and simply fluid user experience. Keep may feel a basic note-taking app at first sight but it does a lot than one can expect. Moreover, Keep Android app just received Google's new material design 2.0 interface, which makes taking notes on your Android phone extremely easy and interesting. It shows you link previews, you can create lists, to-dos add images, color-code your notes, sync it with your Gmail and lot more. While Evernote is the beast of note-taking apps, it may get somewhat difficult to understand the app better. Keep, on the other hand, may not provide all the features of Evernote but it's exactly what you need.
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    Ricardo Alamino
    Ricardo AlaminoFront-end Developer · Written
    I just use that everywhere.
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  4. 28
    Evernote Web - Oct 2014

    Note taking gets even simpler

    Dhruv Agrawal
    Dhruv AgrawalCo-founder, Shipsy · Written
    Amazing product. Both for beginners and advanced users
    CommentsShare
    Shamit Khemka
    Shamit KhemkaM.D. - SynapseIndia · Written
    Merge Several Notes into One Create Stacks and Stacks of Notebooks Add Reminders Make a Task List reliable security
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  5. 21
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    Notability

    Powerful cross-platform note-taking platform

    ElFitz
    ElFitzRocking the 🌍, one step at a time · Written
    It... ...has text conversion & hand written notes search ...includes images and text pasting ...allows you to annotate PDFs! ...even has an option for recording while you write down It does not... ...require a subscription (hello Evernote!) ...allow some random employees to read your notes (hello again, Evernote!)
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    Lauren Jones
    Lauren Jonesengineer/designer/analyst · Written
    Love this app! I used it to record studies, meeting minutes and to even create flash cards. Love it!
    CommentsShare
    Shamit Khemka
    Shamit KhemkaM.D. - SynapseIndia · Written
    Use Notability to combine multiple inputs such as sketching, typing, & handwriting.
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  6. 13
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    OneNote Clipper 2.0

    Now with intelligent article, recipe and product clipping

    Available on all major platforms. Best ink support. Additional features like embed videos, record audio and insert that in the page, OCR, save PDFs, easy math and more.
    CommentsShare
  7. 10
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    Wondershare Mockitt

    Fast and collaborative online prototyping platform

    Celine Carpet
    Celine CarpetProductivity, travel · Written
    PDFelement for Mac is a speedy, lightweight, yet surprisingly powerful PDF editing application. Product page: https://pdf.wondershare.com/?utm... And PDFelement also releases a basic version for those people who require to edit pdf in a simple and fast method with an affordable price. PDFelement Pro for Mac-it helps to read, edit, or annotate PDFs with ease. Convert PDFs to words/text/PPT/EXCEL. Product page: https://pdf.wondershare.com/pdf-...
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  8. 8
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    Good Notes

    Highlight and hand write notes on PDFs

    Eddie Rodriguez
    Eddie RodriguezI make balloons @ Google [X] · Written
    It's great at bringing in PDFs and images to markup quickly. Text recognition is pretty solid. Easy to export!
    Comments (1)Share
  9. 3
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    Medium 2.0

    A new look, app, and features to move thinking forward

    Yoginth
    Yoginth🤟 Designer, Developer, and Toolmaker · Written
    It's great but not cross-platform!
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  10. 2
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    Journal 2.0 for Desktop

    Bring your projects to life.

    I recently got access to this journal, I've been using it regularly and I'm really impressed by how they have added integrations and the UI is very clean and easy to use.
    CommentsShare
    I recently got access to this journal, I've been using it regularly and I'm really impressed by how they have added integrations and the UI is very clean and easy to use.
    CommentsShare
  11. 2
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    Standard Notes

    A simple and private notes app.

    Yoginth
    Yoginth🤟 Designer, Developer, and Toolmaker · Written
    Very secured simple app!
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  12. 1
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    Grasshopper

    The coding app for beginners by Google

    Rico Trevisan
    Rico TrevisanAgile Coach & Visual Developer · Written
    My current workflow is to take notes on pen and paper (Neuland markers, Bikablo technique). Afterwards digest them, take a photo, and scan them to Miro (née Realtime Board). Having it on the board allows me to further annotate the image and the notes will be in context, in the middle of our the team's board, backlog, etc..
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  13. 1
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    Penultimate

    The best digital handwriting on iPad

    Kavir Kaycee
    Kavir KayceeProduct person, Writer, No-code maker · Written
    Been using this on and off for the past 4 years. It syncs with Evernote, so all the handwritten notes are available on the desktop.
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  14. 1
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    Joplin

    Open source note taking & to-do app with sync

    Runs with self-hosted platforms like Nextcloud and supports full end-to-end encryption! Runs on any desktop and mobile platform. Powerful searching, easy attaching images and files. Also, Markdown.
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