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.
