From that random idea that needs to be jotted down, to making complex notes and mind maps, in today’s day and age, it’s better to stick to a note taking application, rather than relying on physical pen and paper.
In our previous article, we saw some of the best note taking apps for Windows, and in this one, we have got you covered with our list of the best note taking apps for Mac.
Best Note Taking Apps for Mac
Oct 23, 2019 Well, there are many note taking apps available for macOS but choosing the right one can be quiet difficult. Consequently, in this article, we have compared some of the best note taking apps for mac. So in no particular order, these are the five helpful note-taking apps that are worth checking out. Disk Inventory X. Disk Inventory X is a disk usage utility for Mac OS X 10.3 (and later). It shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way called 'treemaps' If you've ever wondered where all your. Mar 07, 2019 Best bookmark manager for your Mac VideoStream: Allows you to stream locally stored video files (and audio files) from your Mac to your Chromecast. List of 11 best Mac apps for developers 1. A free open-source package manager. A free open-source package manager. FlexiHub is among the most efficient Mac apps for developers who are building software. ITerm2 is an open source replacement for Apple's.
1. Apple Notes
The stock Notes app that comes with Mac OS itself, is actually not that bad. It comes with basic note taking functionalities like formatting, lists, checkboxes, drag and dropping pictures/files. While it doesn’t offer anything out of the box, where Apple Notes shines is how fast it is to open and get started with a new note. Also it syncs immediately and effortlessly with the Notes app on your iPhone and iPad. We highly suggest you first checking out this app which already comes with your Mac, before buying or installing another note taking app.
Pros:
– Very fast and simple to use
– Comes pre-installed
– Sync with notes app on iPhone and iPad
Cons:
– Not ideal for handwritten notes or drawings
– No charts, graph support
– Works only within the Apple Ecosystem
Bottom Line: If you are someone who needs to take notes on your computer very rarely, might be for a grocery list or quick information, you’ll get by easily using the stock Notes app. Apple Notes does offer all the basic functionalities you might need and best of all, you don’t even need to install another app.
Price: Free
Link: Use Apple Notes on iCloud here
2. Evernote
Chances are you have heard of Evernote, as it is one of the most popular note taking apps available on almost all platforms. Evernote offers some great ways to keep all your notes perfectly organised. You start off your note by creating/selecting a particular notebook and all your notes are kept organised in these notebooks. You also have a tags to classify all your stuff, and it basically works like a File Cabinet.
In terms of features, it is a beast and it has almost any and every feature you’d want in a note taking app including pie charts and bar graphs to searching text in a picture. We also strongly recommend trying Evernote with its Web-clipper companion which makes taking notes/clips form the web so easy, you can never go back. But all this does come at a price, which makes Evernote a little on the bulkier and slower side.
Pros:
– Feature packed to the brim
– Available on all platforms
– Easy organisation of notes
Cons:
– Heavy app and takes time to start up
– Costly
Read: Don’t Like Their New Pricing, Try These 8 Best Free Evernote Alternatives
Bottom Line: Well, if you are someone who has to take loads of notes and are also looking to keep them organised in the best way possible, Evernote is a really good investment.
Price: Free(Basic), $34.99/Year(Plus), $69.99/Year(Premium)
Link: Download Evernote from here
3. Unclutter
Unclutter is a neat tool which can increase your productivity by many folds. The app works almost like Sticky Notes; you can access it very quickly from any window you are working on. Just go to the top of your screen and scroll down, Unclutter should appear with its three windows: the first being the Clipboard, second being Files and the last being the Notes section.
Creating a note is pretty fast, just make Unclutter appear and start with your new note or even copy directly from the clipboard or even a file. Click on the ‘+’ to take another note and you can also see all your notes or search through them.
But do keep in mind that the notes you can take are pretty limited to text only and the absence of formatting and checkbox lists might be. Ideal breaker for some.
Pros:
– Easy access, one swipe away
– Pretty fast
– Comes with a Clipboard as well as a file holder
Cons:
– Supports only text notes
– No organisation
– No sync, only on Mac OS
Bottom Line: Unclutter is a very cool app where you can take notes in a jiffy, so we’d recommend this app for someone who is looking to take some quick text notes while working on their computer and doesn’t need any fancy formatting or feature.
Price: $9.99 (Free Trial available)
Link: Get Unclutter here
4. BoostNote
Next on our list, we have a note taking app specifically designed for programmers. BoostNote started out as a open source project and has gained a lot of popularity among the programming community over the years.
What this app basically allows you to do is store your code or code snippets as notes. You can access quickly or even take notes in markdown. Once you open the app, you can select if you want to create a markdown note or create a code snippet. And when I said it is meant for developers, I meant it. BoostNote supports code syntax highlighting in more than a hundred languages and it is also very easy to keep all your notes organised.
Pros:
– Supports markdown notes
– Code highlighting
– Plenty of syntax and UI themes
– Open source
– Available on all platforms
Cons:
– Bulky
– Takes time to startup
Bottom Line: Well the answer is obvious, this app is a blessing for programmers as they can now manage all their code snippets and keep them organised while also not losing on the ability to take notes in markdown.
Price: Free
Link: Download Boostnote from here
5. OneNote
OneNote is a full blown note taking application from Microsoft, which has been here for a while now. And over all these years, it feels like Microsoft has almost perfected the note-taking experience.
What separates OneNote its competitors is that it using the app feels very close to taking notes on a real notebook; you can write, draw, add pictures literally anywhere on the page at any orientation, just like on a paper notebook. It also comes with a ton of features, the biggest selling point would be built in OCR reader. While you can get it for free for almost all platforms, the Mac app is huge in size and a little slow to use.
Pros:
– Feature-rich note taking app
– Office integration
– Notebook like experience
– Completely free
Cons:
– Huge size
– Can be sluggish at times
Bottom Line: If you are invested even a little in the Microsoft space, OneNote is a no brainer and even if you are not and looking for a great digital notebook, OneNote won’t disappoint.
Price: Free
Link: OneNote is available here
6. Notability
Notability is our pick as the best note taking app for students. It works exceptionally well with the Apple Pencil on the iPad to create beautiful hand-written notes and sketches. You can rotate, scale, and recolour your ideas and sketches until your notes are just how you want them. You can even markup photos and annotate PDFs and once you’re done you can easily share them through Airdrop or any other storage service.
Notability keeps all your notes neatly organised and also syncs them up between your iPad, iPhone and Mac, so you can access them anytime anywhere.
Pros:
– Great for hand-written notes and sketches
– Support for pressure sensitive strokes of the Apple Pencil
Cons:
– No search tags
– No support for shapes
– Pricey
Bottom Line: If you have an iPad which you use to take or sketch notes, Notability works really well with the Apple Pencil and if you have the money to spend, just go for it.
A great alternative to Notability would be ZoomNotes which comes at a lower price, but offers almost all the features of Notability.
Price: $9.99
Link: Buy Notability from here
Top Apps For Mac Os
7. Journey
The next app on our list is Journey, which takes maintaining your daily notes to a whole new level. While Journey is aimed more to be a digital journal, you can still use the feature-packed text editor to take quick notes and Journey will keep them ordered by the date. You can also search through all your notes and even view them by locations. The app backs up and syncs all your notes using Google Drive and it should be imperative to say, it also does provide impressive security features to protect your privacy.
Pros:
– Keeps everything organised like a Diary
– Easy note taking
– Streamlined review of your notes
Cons:
– Costly
– Requires Gmail/Google Drive account
Bottom Line: Journey works best for noting down your everyday goals or writing something about your day. If you are looking to make the switch from a physical diary to a digital one, Journey might be your best bet.
Price: $16.99
Link: Download Journey from here
8. Manuscripts
With all the normal note taking apps or text editors, it gets really hard to note down or represent scientific equations, derivatives and mathematical graphs. Enter Manuscripts, a free note taking app made for scientists and scholarly writing. Describing it as just a note taking app would be an understatement as it is capable of much more from a writing a research article to penning down a book.
There are various templates which you can choose from and a plethora of import and export options including LaTeX.
Pros:
– Scientific Notes/Writing
– Solid import and export formats
– Citation and bibliography formatting
Cons:
– Not quick for taking simple notes
Bottom Line: Manuscripts is a capable and powerful app for when the going gets tough. Of course, it isn’t for the average Joe, but rather for taking scientific notes with equations and graphs. If you are looking for more of a digital laboratory notebook with support for experiment templates along with equations and graphs, check out Findings.
Price: Free
Link: Ger Manuscripts here
9. iThoughtsX
Last but definitely not least, we have iThoughtsX, a mind mapping tool that lets you organise your thoughts and at a glance see the whole project. Mind maps are ideal for brainstorming with means of keeping your ideas structured and nothing gets omitted out in the whole process.
Although it has a steep learning curve, it’s really easy once you get the hold of it. There are multiple templates and layouts from which you can start and there’s an impressive amount of built-in icons and clipart images.
Pros:
– Create perfect mind maps for summarising and meeting notes
– Task Management
– Hand-off feature(Start your min map on one device and finish on another device)
Cons:
– Steep learning curve
– Not good for other kind of notes
Bottom Line: Mind maps are especially useful for managers and developers or anyone managing a large project. So if you know you need to create mind maps, this app is for you.
Price: $49.99
Link: Get iThoughtsX here
Wrapping Up: Best Note Taking Apps for Mac
We believe that there is an app for everyone with their own particular need. So whether you are a student or programmer or businessman, we really hope that you could find at least one note taking app from this list suitable to your own needs. And that concludes our list of the top note taking applications available for the Mac. Don’t forget to connect with us and tell us your favourite app from the list or if we missed yours.
Emailing is probably the activity we do the most on our computers. Even if you don't work on a computer during the day, you probably sit down in front of it to check your inbox at the end of the day. If the Mail app that comes with your Mac doesn't provide the features you need, you're in luck. There are dozens of great email apps in the Mac App Store. I've tested many of them and these are my favorites. Each one has a little something special that makes it unique.
Polymail
I was a little late to the game with Polymail and only started using it recently on Mac (though I downloaded it on iOS when it first launched). It turns out, I love it on the Mac. It has a fantastic interface with cute little buttons everywhere so you don't have to think about what to do next. It actually looks like it belongs on a mobile device, except that you click the buttons instead of tapping them.
There is a fourth section that appears whenever you select an email, which displays all of the past correspondences you've had with that particular contact or group of contacts. It's great for quickly tracking down something you've talked about in the past.
You can set up new mail with a pre-made template, send calendar invites, get notifications when someone has read your email, and schedule an email to be sent at a later time.
You can also write or respond to emails with rich text formatting. So, if you want to change the font, add bold lettering, bullet point a section, or just slap an emoji in there, it's all available right from the toolbar at the top of your new email. The only thing it's missing is Touch Bar support, which would really make this app shine.
Polymail can be used for free, but you'll need to sign up for a subscription if you want all of the awesome features that make Polymail stand out, like read notifications, send later, and messaging templates. You can add these features for as low as $10 per month. If you are a heavy email user and these features entice you, give the free trial a run to see if it's worth your money.
If you want your computer email experience to look and feel more like a mobile experience, with big, easy-to-find action buttons, Polymail is the one for you.
Spark
Spark has this 'Smart Inbox' feature that separates out what is Personal, Notifications, Newsletters, Pinned, and Seen. That is, any email that is from someone in your contacts or otherwise looks like a personal email will be filtered to the top of the inbox list. Below that, in a separate section, emails that look like alerts from companies you deal with, like your gas company or Amazon, that include some kind of alert or notification. Below that, you'll see a section called 'Newsletters' which is exactly that. Below that are emails you've flagged or tagged as important in some way. Lastly, emails you've seen, but haven't moved to another folder.
Spark also allows you to snooze an email and come back to take care of it at a later time. This is invaluable when you regularly get emails that you need to respond to but don't have time for until the end of the day. I use it all of the time.
It also has gesture-based actions for getting to inbox zero. You can swipe to the right or left to delete, archive, pin, or, mark an email as unread.
And it has Touch Bar support, which I love.
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Spark is best for people that like to have their inbox organized before they go through and move emails to new folders, address them, or delete them entirely. If that sounds appealing to you, try Spark.
Airmail
Airmail treats your emails like a to-do list. You can triage your inbox by scheduling when you are going to take care of an email. If you can't get to it right now, snooze it for later. If it's an email that requires an action, send it to your to-do folder. If it's something important that you'll want quick access to, mark it as a memo. And, when you've finished dealing with your email, send it to the 'Done' folder to get that sweet satisfaction of having completed something on your task list.
If you get more done by treating everything like a to-do list, get Airmail and your inbox will be empty in no time.
Kiwi for Gmail
If you have one or more Gmail accounts, you should consider switching to Kiwi. This all-in-one triumph brings the look and feel of Gmail for the web to the desktop in the form of an app. With the service's unique Focus Filtered Inbox, you can view your messages based on Date, Importance, Unread, Attachments, and Starred. In doing so, you can prioritize your emails in real time.
Perhaps the best reason to use Kiwi for Gmail is its G Suite integration. Thanks to the app, you now get to experience Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, as windowed desktop applications. Kiwi is available for Mac and Windows.
Your favorite?
What's going to be your next email client for Mac?
Updated March 2019: Guide updated to reflect price changes. Added Kiwi.
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