Best note-taking apps for students → The Lezen Blog

In the age of digital learning, the crisp sound of a notebook page turning is increasingly being replaced by the soft tap of a stylus or the clack of a keyboard. For today’s student, the right note-taking app isn’t just a convenience—it’s a critical cognitive tool. It can be the difference between scattered, forgettable information and an organized, searchable, and deeply interconnected knowledge base that evolves with you from lecture to exam.

But with a dizzying array of options, each promising to revolutionize your workflow, how do you choose? This guide cuts through the noise. We’ll explore the core philosophies behind digital note-taking, compare the top contenders across key criteria, and help you match an app to your specific learning style and academic demands. Forget the “best” app; let’s find the best app for you.

Why Your App Choice Matters: Beyond Digital Paper

A superior note-taking app does more than just store text. It augments your thinking by addressing the core challenges of traditional notes:

The Tyranny of Linearity: Paper notes are sequential. Finding a connection between a Week 2 history concept and a Week 10 literature theme is nearly impossible. Digital apps allow for non-linear, linked thinking.
The “Black Hole” Folder: Notes filed away are often notes forgotten. Powerful search functions and tags make every word you’ve ever written instantly retrievable.
The Static Page: Paper is inert. Your notes should be living documents—easily edited, reorganized, and integrated with PDFs, images, and audio recordings from lectures.
The Device Divide: Having your notes accessible only on your laptop when inspiration strikes on your phone is a modern tragedy. Cloud sync is non-negotiable.

The right app becomes your second brain—a trusted, scalable system for capturing, connecting, and recalling information.

The Contenders: A Breakdown of the Top Ecosystems

Let’s evaluate the leading apps not just by features, but by their core philosophy and the type of student they serve best.

1. Obsidian: The Knowledge Architect’s Power Tool

Philosophy: Your notes as a personal, interconnected web of knowledge.

Core Strength: Linking and Backlinking. In Obsidian, you create notes and then weave them together using [[links]]. This creates a visual graph view of how concepts relate, revealing surprising connections between subjects. It’s ideal for complex majors like philosophy, literature, or research-heavy sciences.
Key Features:
- Local-First & Privacy-First: All your notes are stored as simple markdown files on your device. You own them completely.
- Extreme Customization: A massive plugin ecosystem lets you add anything from Kanban boards and flashcards to advanced data views.
- Powerful for Long-Form Writing: Excellent for drafting essays and research papers directly within your notes.
Best For: The systems thinker, the researcher, the student who loves making connections across disciplines. Not ideal for those who want a simple, sync-and-go experience out of the box.
Platform: Desktop (Win/Mac/Linux) excellent; mobile apps are capable but the experience is best on a larger screen.

2. Notion: The All-in-One Digital Workspace

Philosophy: A single, infinitely flexible platform for your entire academic life.

Core Strength: Unmatched Database Functionality. Notion isn’t just for notes. You can create databases for your lecture notes, to-do lists, reading lists, and project timelines—and make them all talk to each other.
Key Features:
- Blocks: Everything in Notion is a block (text, image, to-do, database, embed). This allows for incredibly flexible page layouts.
- Templates Galore: Find and duplicate beautiful, pre-built templates for class notes, semester planners, and group project hubs.
- Seamless Collaboration: The best app for group projects. Real-time editing, comments, and task assignments are superb.
Best For: The organizer, the project manager, the student who wants one unified hub for notes, tasks, calendars, and collaboration. Can feel overwhelming for those who just want to write simple notes quickly.
Platform: Excellent and consistent across web, desktop, and mobile.

3. OneNote: The Free-Form Digital Binder (The Veteran)

Philosophy: The digital analogue of a physical binder with infinite paper and tabs.

Core Strength: Unrestricted Canvas. Click anywhere and start typing, drawing, or pasting images. This free-form approach mimics the spatial freedom of paper, perfect for mind-maps, sketchnotes, and organizing heterogeneous content on one page.
Key Features:
- Deep Microsoft Ecosystem Integration: Perfect if your school uses Microsoft 365. Embed Excel charts, link to Word docs, and sync via OneDrive.
- Excellent Inking: Arguably the best handwriting experience on Windows devices (especially with a Surface Pen).
- Hierarchical Organization: Notebooks > Sections > Pages is intuitive for anyone familiar with physical binders.
Best For: Visual learners, STEM students who need to mix equations, diagrams, and text, and anyone deeply invested in the Microsoft ecosystem. Its search can be less powerful than competitors.
Platform: Excellent on Windows, good on Mac/iOS, less ideal elsewhere.

4. GoodNotes (or Notability for iPad users): The Handwriting Virtuoso

Philosophy: The best digital replacement for pen and paper, with superpowers.

Core Strength: Best-in-Class Handwriting and PDF Annotation. These apps are designed from the ground up for the Apple Pencil experience. Writing feels natural, and annotating lecture slides or PDF textbooks is a dream.
Key Features:
- Shape Recognition & Lasso Tool: Draw a wobbly circle, pause, and it becomes perfect. Use the lasso to select handwritten notes and move, resize, or change their color.
- Searchable Handwriting: Their OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is so good it can find words within your own scrawl.
- Audio Sync (Notability’s Standout): Record lecture audio, and your notes are synced to the recording. Tap a word later to hear what was being said exactly as you wrote it.
Best For: The iPad-first student, the visual/kinesthetic learner who retains information best by writing, and any student whose coursework involves heavy PDF annotation (law, medicine, engineering).
Platform: iPad is the primary kingdom. iPhone and Mac apps exist for viewing, but the magic is on the tablet.

5. RemNote: The Student’s Secret Weapon for Long-Term Retention

Philosophy: Notes seamlessly integrated with spaced repetition flashcards.

Core Strength: Knowledge Management Meets Active Recall. You take notes in an outline format, and with a simple shortcut (>>), you can turn any fact or concept into a flashcard that gets scheduled into your personalized review queue using a built-in SRS (Spaced Repetition System) algorithm.
Key Features:
- Linked References (like Obsidian): Create a permanent note for a key concept (e.g., “Mitochondria”) and link to it from all your biology notes, building a knowledge graph.
- Aliases and Portals: View the same note in multiple contexts.
- Focus on Long-Term Mastery: It’s built from the ground up by a medical student for the specific goal of moving information from short-term lecture notes to long-term memory.
Best For: Pre-med, language learners, law students, or any student in a memorization-heavy field who wants their notes to actively help them study for exams.
Platform: Web-based, with capable desktop and mobile apps.

The Decision Matrix: How to Choose Your App

Ask yourself these questions:

What is your primary input method?
- Keyboard Typing & Linking: Obsidian, Notion, RemNote.
- Handwriting & Drawing: GoodNotes/Notability, OneNote.
- A mix of both: OneNote, GoodNotes (typing is possible but secondary).
What is your primary goal?
- Building a connected knowledge web: Obsidian, RemNote.
- Planning & managing all academic work: Notion.
- Annotating PDFs & writing on slides: GoodNotes/Notability.
- Effortlessly mixing media on a free canvas: OneNote.
- Turning notes directly into study tools: RemNote.
What is your device ecosystem?
- iPad-Centric: GoodNotes/Notability is unmatched.
- Windows/Android: OneNote is deeply integrated.
- Cross-platform & web-based: Notion, Obsidian (with sync setup), RemNote.
What is your learning style?
- The Conceptual Connector: Obsidian.
- The Structured Organizer: Notion.
- The Visual Sketcher: GoodNotes/OneNote.
- The Memorizer: RemNote.

Pro-Tips for a Future-Proof Note-Taking System

Adopt a Consistent Method: Whether you use the Cornell Method, Outline Method, or Mind Mapping, apply it within your app. Structure beats chaos.
Tag Relentlessly: In apps like Obsidian and Notion, tags (e.g., #biology_chapter3, #important, #toreview) are your best friends for retrieval.
Create a “MOC” (Map of Content): A master note that links to all notes for a class or project. This is your table of contents and main hub.
Review and Synthesize Weekly: Your digital notes are not a “write and forget” vault. Schedule 30 minutes weekly to review notes, clean up tags, and create new links between ideas. This is where true learning and insight happen.
Export is Your Insurance: No matter how amazing the app, ensure you can export your notes to a universal format (like markdown or PDF). You own your knowledge; don’t let it be held hostage by a platform.

The Verdict: Starting Simple

If you’re overwhelmed, start with this simple, powerful stack that covers all bases:

For Lectures & Readings (Capture): Use OneNote (free, flexible) or GoodNotes (if on iPad) for raw capture, annotations, and free-form ideas.
For Synthesis & Writing (Cultivate): Use Obsidian (free) or Notion (free for students) to distill those raw notes into permanent, linked concepts and draft your papers.

Remember, the most sophisticated app is useless if you don’t use it consistently. The best note-taking app is the one that feels like a natural extension of your thinking—one you’ll actually open every day. Choose one that aligns with how your mind works, commit to it for a semester, and watch your academic clarity and confidence grow in tandem with your digital knowledge garden.