The best note-taking apps for iPad

best note taking apps ipad

The iPad can be a workhorse for your productivity needs if you know how to use it. Whether you are building a business network, making your way through college, or just trying to run a brick-and-mortar record shop, the iPad can be one of your greatest allies.

The iPad is the perfect sized tablet for taking notes. If you are in a meeting, listening to a lecture, or coming up with ideas for your next masterpiece, you can find an app that will accommodate your needs. We’ve got a list of the best note-taking apps for iPad that we think rise to the top. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments section.

Best apps for taking notes on iPad

Apple Notes

Apple Notes App

With the launch of iOS 9, Apple really did a number on its Notes app, adding all manner of new features to help keep you productive You can now create checklists and add hand-drawn sketches and notes. You can add website links directly from Safari, contact addresses directly from Apple Maps, and add any supported content via the App Extensions feature. You can also use the camera from within the Notes app to add images to your document. Thanks to deep iCloud integration, all of your notes can be accessed on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac at any time. Apple Notes is already on your iOS and OS X device right now.

Evernote

Evernote note taking ipad

This is probably the most robust note-taking app around. It has dozens of useful features, like adding website clippings, importing documents from other productivity apps, and sharing your work with others. You can create interactive to-do checklists, write notes with searchable text, import business cards and receipts from Evernote Scannable, and more. Plus, the app has a well-rounded ecosystem with a desktop app, a browser extension, and Apple Watch compatibility. It supports use with Office documents and PDFs, which you can annotate, and lets you keep pictures in the cloud-based storage, which you can access anywhere. The sketch feature is compatible with the iPad Pro for pressure-sensitive note taking. This app is available for free.

Paper

Paper

This app started out as a creativity notepad for people looking to sketch out their ideas. However, over the past couple of years, it has blossomed into a very useful note-taking app. You can sketch ideas using the selection of pens, pencils, and other artist tools, make gesture-based checklists, and annotate pictures with comments and drawings. Fonts can be customized with the swipe of a finger. You can organize your notes into different notebooks to track them down easily. Notes can be easily exported as PDFs, PowerPoint, and Keynote files. This app is available for free.

Penultimate

Penultimate

One of the best features of this note-taking app is that it has a very natural and realistic hand-writing tool. If you are not comfortable using the iPad’s touch screen keyboard and haven’t already invested in some kind of keyboard case, you will love writing on your iPad with this. Of course, you’ll need a stylus in order to make the most out of your chicken scratch. However, Penultimate features smooth, realistic handwriting simulation with multiple paper styles and a variety of pen color options. You can search your text, save your ideas directly to Evernote, and share single page images or full PDF notebooks with others. You can import images, annotate files, and sketch ideas. This app is available for free.

Notability

Notability

If you are in college, you kind of need this app. Not only can you handwrite notes, but you can type text as well. It includes a full-featured word processor with the ability to spell check, add bullet points, and more. You can annotate PDFs, so if your professor sends out a worksheet, you can write notes directly on the iPad without having to switch to a different app. The most useful feature of this app is that it records audio. You can record a lecture while taking notes. The app syncs what you type with what was recorded so that, when you go back over your notes, if something you wrote doesn’t make sense, you can tap a word and it will play back the section of the lecture that took place at that time. This app is available for $5.99.

These are our favorite note-taking apps for the iPad. What are yours? Let us know why in the comments below.