How to take notes on Android

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Google Keep, OneNote, and Evernote are hitting popularity records on Google Play. If you are looking for a memo, it is quite logical to pay attention to these services. But the choice between the two can be tricky.

Although this article is about Android, the listed services are available on all popular platforms. Thus, with Keep, OneNote, and Evernote, you can sync your notes across any computers and modern mobile devices.

1. Google Keep

Completely free service that is perfect for working with short notes. The application's simple interface allows you to instantly add text entries, lists, sketches, hyperlinks, images and audio files. You can attach a reminder to each note.

Keep cataloging is simplified so you don't waste a lot of time managing your collection of notes. The service allows the use of simple text labels and colors to group and quickly find the added records. In addition, you can filter notes by type: lists, images, or links.

Since Keep is part of the Google ecosystem, this notemaker interacts with other services of the company. For example, reminders are displayed in Google Calendar, and notes can be added to Keep directly from the Google Docs web interface.

2. Microsoft OneNote

OneNote is a more functional and complex note-taking tool than Keep. This service is better suited for creating complex documents. For this purpose, OneNote supports text formatting and page scaling. But with the help of the service, you can also save short text, graphic, sound and other notes.

To make it convenient for you to manage a large collection of notes, the developers have created a complex, but very visual system. OneNote's interface is very similar to paper notebooks: you can create notebooks, divide them into sections, and add new pages (notes) to these sections.

OneNote is integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem and supports the export and import of documents from Word, Excel and other company services. The added notes are stored on the Microsoft OneDrive. To get more than 5 GB of cloud space, you will have to subscribe to a paid subscription. Otherwise, OneNote is free.

3. Evernote

In terms of the number of possibilities, this note-book is comparable to OneNote. Like a competitor, Evernote goes beyond a simple digital notepad and provides a host of features for working with documents of varying complexity. You can add pictures, audio files, sketches, lists and, of course, texts to it. The editor built into the application gives you full control over the markup of your posts.

Evernote offers perhaps the most powerful tools for organizing your notes. You can group records using notepads and text labels. If you nest some tags within others, you will have a system of over- and subcategories. Thus, you can change the structure of your collection of notes as you like. But if you overdo it, you will quickly become confused in the documents.

When it comes to interaction with other services, Evernote keeps up with the competition and even ahead of them. Although it does not have its own developed ecosystem, Evernote perfectly syncs with calendars, cloud drives, action automation and other third-party services.

Alas, the free version of Evernote is full of serious limitations. For example, without a subscription, you cannot fully work without a network connection, synchronize data between a large number of devices and search through the content of documents.

What to choose

For users who are only interested in simple notes such as a list of books or valuable ideas, Google Keep is more than enough for sure.

But for more complex documents, it's better to choose between OneNote and Evernote. If cost matters to you, look towards OneNote. If you are willing to pay for a tagging system and advanced integration with external services, choose Evernote.

If these services are not enough for you, you can read about less popular note-taking apps on Android.