Best note taking app for iPad with Apple Pencil.
Do you love taking notes on paper, yet want these notes to be digitally stored on your mobile phones? We would love this too.
Gone are the days when hand written notes were digitized with the help of software and applications. While this may have worked for few, truth be told, these applications were not consistent.
After experimenting with numerous applications, we are finally eager to share our consolidated list of best note taking app for iPad with Apple Pencil. This post gives you a comprehensive, in-depth rundown of the best iPad notes app including the highlights, upsides and downsides.
Notability

Noteshelf

- User interface is not good compared with Notability.
- Finding your own saved document is difficult.
- The size of selected text can be adjusted, but the selection cannot be rotated.
- Not much of the content can be selected at once; there is a limit to the amount of content selected and copied at once.
GoodNotes 5

Comparison of GoodNotes vs. Notability vs. Noteshelf
Best free note taking app for college students
If you are in school or college you know the importance of taking notes. Doing it by using apps makes it little easier. You do no really need to purchase the latest models of iPad to be in the game since Apple iPad Pro, iPad, Air, or mini all support Apple Pencil. Thus any good application will allow you to take hand written notes, sketch, plan your day, organize and study directly from your iPad. Let us take a look at the best free note taking app for iPad along with their pros and cons.
- Apple Notes
- Penultimate
- Microsoft OneNote
- Evernote
- Google Keep
Apple Notes
Apple Notes is a minimalist note taking app for anyone to take notes without wasting a lot of time. The unique features include its synchronization with SIRI. You can activate SIRI and ask her to take a note of what you are saying. The voice automatically gets translated into text and is saved in your apple notes application.
Apple Notes provide an amazing writing experience and is one of the best among the free note taking app available in iStore. There is a zero lag while writing giving it a more natural feel. The highlighter has 5 fixed sizes and does not overlay the text.
You can convert your text into a tabular form and vice versa, same can be exported without the format getting distorted.
Apple Notes consists of a single pen tool with 5 different sizes. There are 5 default colors available to choose from and are changeable. It has two paper templates to choose from, the toolbar with in the app can be moved as per your comfort and can also be minimized.
You can pin your important notes, to put them on the top of the list. Private notes can be locked with password.
Downsides:
- There is no zoom-in and zoom-out tool to edit text in detail.
- It comes with a single font
- Options of Bullets and Numbered lists are limited.
- Cannot mix hand written notes with text. The blocks are separate for both and there is no way we can add notes to the text.
Penultimate
Microsoft OneNote
- Custom tags are not available and vary from device to device; the tag present in Mac may not be available in iPad.
- Password protection tool only protects sections and not individual pages.
Evernote
- It does not support much customization with colors and file management making it shear displeasure for users.
- Complex tables and info graphics are not very well supported.
- Premium version with all the tools is expensive.
Google Keep
- Multiple strokes of highlighter will bury the text beneath.
- Lasso tool provided is rectangular, unlike other applications where free hand tool is provided.
- Does not have a built in scanner, you can capture images from camera and add these to your notes.
Best free note taking app for iPad
Being a college student one of the first things you look forward is choosing a good note taking app. App store is filled with overwhelming list of applications, we have personally tried and tested whole bunch of applications before coming to the results. These applications are free to use and have all the basic editing tools that are required in your day to day activities. So let us take a look at the best free note taking app for college students and review them as per their functionality.
- Notebook
- Nebo
- MetaMoji Note
Notebook
Nebo
MetaMoji Note
- Split screen is not very stable
- Files cannot be imported from Google drive
Conclusion
Although we agree that there is a significantly different feel when it comes to writing on iPad as compared with actual notebook. But owing to advancement in technologies, the need to store digital data is a prerequisite.
Writing, editing and sharing the data is now easier thanks to advanced note taking applications, which have in turn made life simpler.
Tip: The most efficient way to improve your writing skills on an iPad is by using screen protector.
We hope that this article has made you clear which note taking application is best among the enormous list of applications available in apple store. Good Luck.
Also Read: Best Online Jobs for College Students