Notepad Apps to Boost Your Productivity

The Best Notepad Apps

As you explore the Internet (or even the real world around you), you're bound to find things that you want to remeber, stash away for reference, or share with others later. It might be a snippet of text from an online article, or an interesting photo. It could be a note to yourself, a reminder. a grocery list, or a to-do list.

All notepad apps let you input your thoughts in text form, either by typing or copy/pasting. Others permit voice memos, capturing an image, or writing with your finger or a stylus. Some turbo-charge common tasks by converting speech to text, setting reminders, checking off tasks as they are completed, or enabling collaboration with others.

If you don't want to install a third-party app, there are some limited note-taking features in both Android and iOS. For example, you can always tap the microphone icon on your Android phone and say "Take a memo." Your voice memo will be transcribed into text and saved as a Gmail message. On your iPhone, summon Siri and say "Take a note." You're limited to simple text-based memos here.

Other note taking apps are much more powerful. Let's take a look at some of the third-party notepad apps available in the Google and Apple app stores; each has different strengths appealing to different audiences.

Google Keep for Android, iOS (iPhone/iPad) and desktop lets you capture anything in a note and add a reminder alert to it. You can dictate a note and Keep will transcribe it for later searching and reading. Take a photo of a receipt, landmark, or anything else, then add voice notes to it. Google Keep’s sharing features make it easy to collaborate with others on anything from a surprise birthday party to a nationwide marketing campaign. A location-keyed alert pulls up your grocery shopping list just as you arrive at the supermarket. Color codes and labels enable easy finding of note types.

Microsoft’s OneNote is organized like a three-ring binder with color-coded tabs separating notes into groups. It's available for Android, iOS, or desktop. You can scan handwritten text into OneNote and make it searchable. You can type, draw, handwrite, or clip content from the web to create notes. Any item can be positioned and formatted anywhere on a page, much like Word or Publisher. Notebooks can be shared with multiple people, who can leave comments on your notes or edit the notes themselves. The OneNote badge hovers on your phone’s screen and allows quick notes during phone calls or while surfing the web. Being part of MS Office, OneNote integraes with Word, Excel, Publisher, etc.

Evernote is a classic, powerful notepad that’s inspired many of the advanced features in Google Keep and MS OneNote. Like the others, it's available on both desktop and mobile platforms. You can write, capture, and type notes, even insert photographs or videos into notes. Attach MS Office documents, PDFs, or photos to notes. Evernote syncs to all of your devices so you never have to wonder where a note is. Reminders can be set and to-do list items can be checked off as they are completed.

Remember The Milk started as a desktop app to manage to-do lists. It's a popular smartphone app that does even more. RTM promises to "get to-dos out of your head, and let the app remember for you." It will remind you of upcoming tasks by email, text and other notifications. You can share notes and lists with others, and it integrates with Gmail, Google Calendar, Twitter, Evernote, and other productivity apps.

Inkpad is a simple but handy app that lets you capture your thoughts, notes, lists and more. Enter notes and sync to the cloud for access on your desktop, or just as a backup. You can share notes by email or text. A premium version lets you hide ads, or view & restore up to 10 previous versions of a note.

Private Notes is a simple text-only Android notepad app for the security-minded. AES encryption makes it extremely difficult for unauthorized snoopers to read your private notes. Your notes can by protected by a password/PIN, by tap-pattern recognition, or by a fingerprint reading. Encrypted notes are backed up to Google Drive.

Keep My Notes is also a simple, text-based notepad. But it’s also a writer’s notebook capable of storing novel-length entries. Notes can be scribbled with a finger or stylus, or typed. Audio notes can be recorded but not transcribed to text. This notepad can be password-protected, or you can lock individual notes without protecting the entire notepad. A sticky-note widget pastes notes to your phone’s home screen. Pictures can be attached to notes.