Bin your post-it notes and notebooks thanks to these innovative apps.
The mobile revolution has made it easier to ditch a pen and paper for a smartphone or tablet when taking notes during conferences and events.
It saves the environment, and it keeps all of your notes in one handy location that is harder to lose.
Looking for a note taking app ready for your next event? Take a look at our top picks…
EVERNOTE
Evernote champions the ability to capture a wide range of digital information and organizational features.
The app lets you take notes in a variety of formats, including text, pictures, audio, and video recordings, annotated web page clippings and more. You can organise these notes into virtual notebooks using tags and shortcuts to make them easy to find.
You can add reminders to notes and even share them with other users to multiple different devices. The Evernote Web clipper extension also lets you save web pages with one click and annotate them with visual callouts.
Using your smartphone’s camera, the app can scan and digitize everything from documents to business cards in a snap.
To use Evernote, click here
ONENOTE
OneNote is a feature-packed note-taking app from Microsoft lets you capture just about everything and place it anywhere on a flexible digital canvas.
You can type, write by hand, clip web pages and even scan handwritten notes or pages to capture the information.
The app uses virtual notebooks for organizing content and has a design similar to a physical three-ring binder. You can have separate color-coded sections for adding different types of notes, and each section can have multiple pages.
Since it’s a part of Microsoft’s Office suite, OneNote plays well with applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
To use OneNote, click here
DROPBOX PAPER
Dropbox Paper is perfect for collaborating with friends and colleagues alike.
The programme offers you and your team a collaborative workspace where you can not only add and edit notes but also brainstorm, review ideas and even handle meetings.
Its task management tools let you assign to-do lists, add due dates and mention others, directly from the active document.
From images and audio to YouTube videos and GIFs, you can add almost any type of content to Paper’s workspace. It works seamlessly with external applications such as Sketch and Invision, enabling instant file previews.
To use Dropbox Paper, click here
SIMPLENOTE
As the name suggests, Simplenote is an easy to use application for you to create and store notes.
All you have to do is launch the app, type away, and you’re done. You can create as many notes as you want and edit them whenever you require.
You can use tags and -pics to organize sizeable collections of notes, that are all stores to the cloud.
It also synchronizes your notes across multiple devices, allowing you to access them from any PC, tablet or phone.
To use Simplenote, click here
APPLE NOTES
If you use an Apple iPhone or iPad, you can use the inbuilt Apple Notes.
From long-form textual notes to to-do lists, Notes lets you jot down everything. You can also add Web links, scanned documents, and sketches to notes.
You can ever use Siri to create a new note and dictate its content for hands-free note taking, as well as using your finger to draw right in a note.
Apple Notes lets you add attachments such as maps and documents to both new and existing notes directly using the Share option in other apps like Safari.
Your notes are stored in the cloud, and iCloud synchronization means you can effortlessly access them on both iOS and macOS devices.
GOOGLE KEEP
Google Keep is a first-party note-taking app made for Android.
You can keep textural information, photos, videos and more in note form as well as speak a voice memo for the app to transcribe.
The notes are organized as digital sticky notes, and each note can be assigned a different color for easier visual identification.
You can add individual reminders to each note, plus information such as date, time and place when you want to be reminded. Important notes can be pinned to the top for quicker access, and you can invite other users to collaborate on notes.
To use Google Keep, click here
ZOHO NOTEBOOK
This app allows you to create different types of notes with ease.
Zoho Notebook utilises a card-based design with unique colours that lets you differentiate between a bunch.
Each card also has customized functions, which makes it simple to manage the notes associated with them. Text notes allow you to write, and File notes allow you to attach PDFs and other content to cards. Smart cards even automatically formats the content saved in Zoho Notebook to make it look better.
Zoho Notebook also supports numerous gestures, such as pinch to group notes into a stack, and flick to find the note that you’re looking for.
To use Zoho Notebook, click here
SAFEROOM
Saferoom is a secure app that aims to keep your notes safe
The app works in conjunction with other apps to encrypt notes you have already taken to keep the information within private.
It lets you encrypt your notes with a zero-knowledge principle, which can then be saved to any compatible cloud services.
The encryption password is thus only known to you, and what’s more, Saferoom never changes the type or medium of notes during encryption.
To use Saferoom, click here
BEAR
Bear is a smart note taking app that allows you to link notes to each other to build an extended body of work.
You can also use hashtags to organise your work and connect different notes.
A focus mode helps you concentrate, and advanced markup options are an online writer’s best friend.
Different themes and typography can be used to make your notes look great before sharing with external users, with tools to help you reach specific word counts and reading times to boot.
To use Bear, click here
BOOSTNOTE
Designed for developers, Boostnote is an intuitive and stylish note-taking tool.
For code snippets, the app is able to highlight code syntax in more than 100 languages, including Javascript, Python, HTML and CSS and you can store multiple code snippets within the same snippet.
You can use the app both online and offline, as well as across devices.
There are a lot of code block, editor and UI themes so you can make Boostnote totally personalised.
To use Boostnote, click here