. Pros Syncs multimedia notes across numerous devices. Rich with features.
Version history. Ability to password-protect content. Collaboration features included. Cons Structure and design could use work. Tags not customizable.
Notebook access tools slow down productivity. Bottom Line Microsoft OneNote is a free note-taking and syncing app that works on a variety of devices, including Macs. It's not the North Star of note-taking apps, but it squarely takes second place. Microsoft OneNote is a that works across a wide range of devices, for free, with a decent array of features. In terms of its functionality and ease of use, it's the clear number-two choice, second to Evernote. However, recent changes to Evernote, including a stiff price hike, have left many customers bitter and looking for an alternative.
Jul 26, 2010 - UPDATE: Microsoft has now released OneNote for Mac. If you see something you'd like to keep or read later, simple select it and then go to.
Microsoft OneNote is the only other service at the moment that comes close to Evernote, but depending on your needs, close might not be good enough. OneNote is available on mobile devices, Windows and Mac, and the Web. It provides many of the same concepts as Evernote, but in a different structure.
It's free, includes heaps of storage space, and carries the familiar interface of other Microsoft apps. OneNote is pretty good if you've never used any other service before, but if you're switching from Evernote and are used to the Evernote way, the transition is rough. Evernote remains faster, more capable, and quite frankly better, but at a cost that's hard to swallow. Because nothing else can top it, Evernote still holds PCMag's Editors' Choice. Microsoft OneNote is the second best note-taking service available at this time, which will be reason enough for many people to adopt it.
Just be aware of its shortcomings before you sink all your notes into it. This review focuses on the Microsoft OneNote Mac app. For a deeper dive into the service in general, including a more comprehensive price comparison between OneNote and other note-taking services, see PCMag's review of.
Price and Plan All the OneNote apps are free to download and install, with. It does require a Microsoft account to use, however. A Hotmail, Windows Live, or email address is all you need.
If you have a subscription to Office and use those credentials to sign in, you'll get more storage space. Free users get 5GB of space, whereas subscribers get 1TB all told, shared among other Office Online apps.
Office 365 Personal costs $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year. The annual price is the same as Evernote's Premium subscription, and the monthly price is less (Evernote charges $7.99 per month). An Office subscription gives you Office apps plus more storage space, but nothing else in the way of OneNote. An Premium subscription adds space, note-taking features, live chat support, and more.
A few other note-taking and syncing apps are entirely free, including Google Keep and, but they pale in comparison to Evernote and OneNote's capabilities. In terms of storage, Google Keep works similarly to OneNote, using Google Drive the way OneNote uses OneDrive. Google Drive gives everyone 15GB of storage for free. Zoho Notebook offers unlimited storage with a 50MB max file size for any single upload. Design and Setup OneNote conforms to the general look of other Microsoft Office apps. As mentioned, there are OneNote apps for Windows, Mac, mobile devices (iOS, Android, Windows Phone), as well as a Web app. Here I focus on the Mac app.
The basic structure and terminology used in OneNote is Notebook Section Page. For example, I have a notebook called Recipes, with sections for Sweet, Savory, and Cocktail recipes. Within the Cocktails section, I have pages for Negroni, Gin Fizz, and so forth. The nomenclature roughly maps to Evernote's Notebook Stack Notebook Note.
The OneNote Web app puts editing tools and other functional buttons at the top of the window, while reserving the right side for previews of pages. A page is more like a pasteboard than a word processing document. Every piece of content that's added to a page comes in its own field or box. All images that are added are contained in a box pasted to the page, and the same goes for text and other elements. An Evernote note, conversely, is more like a word processing page or email text field, where you can type text freely, but you can also add other page elements or attachments, too.
In OneNote, you can resize any box, including boxes with text, or drag and drop boxes to change their position. Along the top of the window, below the main editing tools, are tabs. These are for sections. Sections help you organize notes within a notebook. I find the visual placement of sections confusing because they are separated from the pages that they comprise. Visually, it looks as if the page or note that you have selected to read or edit at the moment is the entire content of that tab (or section). Evernote's three panel display (which shows left to right a tree-like display of Notebook Stacks and Notebooks, Notes in preview, and the selected note in the main window) makes a whole lot more sense.
To do anything in the OneNote Mac app, you start by choosing a notebook, but only the four most recent notebooks will appear the dropdown list when you go to select one. To find others, you have to hit a plus sign (which makes it seem like you're creating a new notebook, even though you aren't) to find the notebook you want. This structural design absolutely slows down productivity because it takes unnecessarily long to switch between notebooks. After choosing a notebook, all the pages associated with it appear on the left in a preview list. You can change the view to either show more of a preview, including an image thumbnail, or less.
Features and Performance Microsoft OneNote is well endowed with features, and most of the core ones will be familiar to anyone who has used other Office apps before. Toolbar selections for Home, Insert, View will all seem standard, and you'll easily find all the formatting options and whatnot. Compared with the OneNote Web app, the Mac app is quicker and ever so slightly more refined in its looks. Into any note, you can insert, images, links, symbols, tables, and more. You can record audio right into a note, too. You can enlarge, shrink, and crop images that appear in notes, although you can't annotate them, as you can with an Evernote Premium account. There's a new Digital Ink feature that lets you draw images and diagrams in OneNote, but it's only available to those who work on a, so Mac users don't get it.
There are some neat things you can do with audio memos. For example, you can place bookmarks throughout any recording. If you type notes while recording audio, the app links them so that later, when you listen to the recording, you can jump to the notes you wrote at different moments. It's a feature that's easy to miss because it requires that you know the feature is hidden in a control-click accessed menu. If you have a very important or sensitive notes, you can lock the section in which it lives with a password. There's also a button that shows version history, letting you restore an old version of a note.
You can share notebooks with collaborators, and you can restrict their access to read-only or edit. But be aware that you can't share a single note with others while restricting the rest of their access to whatever else is in the notebook. Sharing occurs at the notebook level only. You can drag and drop pages from one section to another, although I wish there were indicators, like icons, to show that the move was in progress and then successful. Other features include the ability to choose the paper you want for your pages, such as blank or grid, as well as a search tool that highlights your keywords when it finds them. Tags are handled unusually in OneNote. There is a list of pre-made tags that you can add to any note, but you can't change what's in the list or add a custom tag.
You can, however, use a hashtag before a word in your note for custom tags, but they're treated differently. Evernote, however, lets you create whatever tags you want, and you can easily sort or filter your notes while including tags in your search criteria. OneNote has a web clipping tool that I used avidly in testing, and it's decent. The Web clipper is a plugin that copies content from a Web page into your OneNote account with two clicks, rather than doing a cut-and-paste job. Evernote's Web clipper has a few additional options for clipping, and it suggests a notebook intelligently, based on the content, whereas OneNote suggests saving the note to the last used notebook. OneNote Takes Silver Note-taking and syncing service OneNote isn't short on features, and it gives away a lot for free. It also adds a heck of a lot of space to anyone who has an Office 365 account.
It's more advanced than almost all other note-taking and syncing apps on the market, except Evernote. OneNote is reliable, but still needs work to be great.
It has some problems in its structure and design that make it slow to use and inelegant. Tags should be customizable. The Web clipper tool could be more sophisticated.
But all in all, considering the other note-taking apps on the market, OneNote is clearly no. Evernote earns gold, and OneNote deserves silver.
Advertisement Most people take notes in some capacity. But what’s the best way to do so digitally on your Mac? While Apple has its own Notes app for macOS, it’s still a bit lacking for power users, even when you know. Compared to other options, Notes is pretty barebones. So what are the best alternatives for Apple Notes on Mac?
Choose one of these options to help you become a more efficient digital note-taker! Agenda Agenda is a recent newcomer to the note-taking scene, but it has a unique approach to your notes. With Agenda, your notes get organized in a complete timeline, designed to help you move forward with projects and other tasks. Speaking of timelines, Agenda can even integrate with your calendar and detect other notes related to the one you’re currently working on, so referring back and forth between notes is easy. Agenda combines note-taking, task management, and calendars into one, so you know what’s on your plate now and in the future. Agenda is flexible.
Notes get grouped into categories and projects, and you can format each note to your liking, turn it into a checklist, feature code snippets for programmer logs, or whatever else you need. You can assign a date to each note, which acts like a due date or reminder for when you need to finish something. These reminder notes then appear in the On the Agenda section, which shows important notes similar to a task list.
Even better, Agenda’s full feature set is free. But it also has a premium version, which costs $25.
With this, you get more tools like choosing calendars, saving searches, exporting Markdown, hiding watermarks on printed pages, and more. Your purchase permanently entitles you to all the new features released during one year. Since it’s completely free with no limits, Agenda is worth a try. Plus, an iOS version is coming in spring 2018, where all data will sync through iCloud. The generic Text card lets you drop in formatted text, lists (including checklists), audio, and photos.
You could even use the Notebook Web Clipper to add web clippings to your text note. And as you continue to edit the text note, you can browse through previous versions if needed.
Even though you can use a checklist in a Text card, the dedicated Checklist card functions differently. Checked items drop to the bottom of the list so it’s more organized. You can even display Checklist cards in the Notification Center widget, as if it was standalone. Audio cards include complete transcriptions of the recordings, and you can add extra text notes while playing back the audio.
Photo cards allow you to drop in as many pictures, web clippings, or documents as needed, and you can drag them around to rearrange. File cards let you view files, and are different from attachments in a note.
Plus, you can just drag and drop files from your Mac into Notebook. Zoho Notebook has even more features in the mobile version, and all of your data syncs across devices since it’s stored in the cloud. All you need is a free Zoho account. You can take a look at if you’re concerned about security and privacy.
Download: (Free) 3. Bear If you want a powerful yet tastefully designed note-taking app, look no further than Bear.
Bear is a beautiful app, featuring gorgeous typography and themes. But underneath this are powerful features. Like many writing apps, it supports the Markdown is the best way to write in plain text but still create complex documents. Unlike HTML or LaTex, for example, Markdown is simple to learn. As you write in Markdown, Bear’s syntax highlighting makes it easy to see a live preview of how the final product looks. Organization in Bear is a bit different than you’d expect.
Most note-taking apps utilize notebooks or folders, but Bear focuses on tags, which are easier to manage in the long run. Just insert something like #work in a note, and the tag acts like a folder. You can even add sub-tags, like #work/email. You can view all notes under a tag by clicking it in the sidebar. One of the best reasons to use Bear is the interlinking notes. When you want to link to a note for reference, simply type double brackets followed by note you want to link to.
Bear utilizes autocomplete to figure out what note you’re linking to after a few characters. Check out our article on Bear is an excellent note-taking app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Here are several reasons it wins the Bear Notes vs. Apple Notes battle.
Bear lets you add images them inline, so they blend with the rest of your note. You can export your notes in a variety of formats, such as HTML, DOCX, PDF, Markdown, and even images. While Bear looks basic on the surface, it’s packed with a ton of useful features. It’s free to use on one device, but the premium subscription ($15 annually) lets you sync across multiple devices, offers advanced export options, and provides great themes. Download: (Free, subscription available) 4. Microsoft OneNote OneNote is one of Microsoft’s most underrated products, and works especially well if you already use other Office products.
There are a lot of reasons to like OneNote, the biggest being that it’s cross-platform. If you take notes on multiple devices or decide to stop using a Mac, your notes will stay with you. While the Mac version is missing some key features from the Windows offering, it’s still packed with a lot of useful tools. OneNote uses notebooks for organizing, with each note taking a page in a notebook. Notes can consist of anything: plain or formatted text, tasks, diagrams, tables, embedded files, audio recordings, and more. There’s even the option to highlight important text, or you can add tags like Question, Important, and To Do. For those who don’t love typing, OneNote also supports freehand drawing.
You can freely draw or sketch notes using your mouse, trackpad, or even a third-party drawing tablet. There’s a lot you can do with OneNote. Download: (Free) 5.
Pear Note Do you regularly record audio and take notes at the same time? Pear Note is designed for you. The app comes with basic text formatting support, but the real magic is in the audio recording capabilities. As you record audio, Pear Note also keeps track of what you type. When you play the audio back, Pear Note highlights every keystroke you took while recording.
You can even click anywhere in your text to jump to that point in the recording. This is great if you missed something, since you can add in more text if needed.
It also helps you interpret what a note meant. On top of the handy audio recording, Pear Note can record video with the audio when you need visuals. There’s even support for slides, so you can import PDFs, PowerPoint, or Keynote files and PearNote jumps to the moment in the recording when you change slides. Pear Note is an older application that also has an iOS version. While no new features are planned, it still works fine.
The developer plans to fix any issues should they arise with future OS updates. Download: ($40) Your Mac: The Ultimate Note-Taking Machine Notes are an important part of life. Whether taken by hand or digitally, notes help us remember what we can’t keep in our memories. Thankfully, your Mac paired with these apps makes it easier than ever before.
No matter which app you choose, you can benefit from Learn how to take notes the right way. Here are some of the most effective tips for becoming a digital note-taking pro. Explore more about:,.