The 8 best Apple Notes alternatives
Apple Notes scores 8.1 out of 10 here, and its weak spots are specific: no windows, android or linux app at all. These are the apps that fix that, ranked by overall score.
Grape
Take the note. The AI does the filing, the studying and the searching.
Mac / Win / Linux / iOS / Android
Gains you: speaker identification, backlinks, graph view. Same territory: minimal & fast.
$3/mo
Obsidian
Plain markdown files on your disk, with a plugin ecosystem bolted on top.
Win / Mac / iOS / Android / Linux
Gains you: backlinks, graph view, databases / boards. Same territory: minimal & fast.
$4/mo
Craft
Documents that look designed before you touch anything.
Mac / iOS / Win / Android / Web
Gains you: backlinks, databases / boards, daily notes / journal. Same territory: minimal & fast.
$10/mo
GoodNotes
Handwriting on a tablet, done better than anyone else.
iOS / Mac / Win / Android / Web
Gains you: daily notes / journal, note templates, merge notes. Same territory: handwriting & tablets.
$9.99/yr
Microsoft OneNote
An infinite paper notebook that has quietly been free for twenty years.
Win / Mac / iOS / Android / Web
Gains you: speaker identification, note templates, merge notes. Same territory: handwriting & tablets.
Free
Day One
A journal that has been quietly perfecting one job since 2011.
iOS / Mac / Android / Win / Web
Gains you: daily notes / journal, note templates, saved searches. Same territory: minimal & fast.
$49.99/yr
Joplin
Open source, end-to-end encrypted, and it syncs wherever you tell it to.
Win / Mac / Linux / iOS / Android / Web ยท Open source
Gains you: backlinks, graph view, daily notes / journal. Same territory: genuinely free.
$3/mo
Noteshelf
Handwriting on every platform, with an AI that reads your pages.
iOS / Mac / Android / Win
Gains you: note templates, semantic search, sync through your own cloud. Same territory: handwriting & tablets.
$9.99/mo
Still not sure?
Filter the whole directory by the one feature you cannot live without, or browse by what you need the app for.