Comparison of computer software designed for taking notes
The tables below compare features of notable note-taking software. These comparisons highlight differences in platform availability, synchronization capabilities, formatting options, storage limits, and integration with other applications. While some applications like Microsoft OneNote and Evernote offer robust features with cloud syncing across devices, others such as Simplenote prioritize minimalism and speed. Open-source tools like Joplin provide privacy-focused alternatives, allowing users to host their own notes and use end-to-end encryption. These tables aim to help users choose a note-taking tool that best fits their workflow, whether for academic, personal, or professional use.
The tables below compare features of notable note-taking software.
Alarms, check-boxes, bullets, phones, advanced links, autosaving; last cursor position memory,passwords on tree folders,failure-resistant self-healing DB engine
Configurable editor layout with live preview of Markdown; Command pallette; Notes <--> Todo conversion; Plug-ins; Cloud sync available with various services, including a separate server self-hosted server; Configurable note history; Optional client side encryption; Custom CSS (imported from local or remote source) for rendered Markdown as well as app interface;
OLE objects; "virtual nodes" which integrate and edit the content of external plain-text or rich-text files; internal links; mirror nodes.
Text processing; tree numbering and sorting; custom tree icons; node checkboxes; checkbox filtering; search filtering; reminder alarms; compressed or encrypted notebooks; auto-minimize and/or auto-lock when idle; quick access key for fast notes; additional scratchpad; autosave of up to 9 previous file versions; automatic clipboard capturing; read-only notebooks or notes; macros; templates; text shortcuts; plug-ins; bookmarks; custom keyboard shortcuts; program can be made portable through "Options" setting
Plugins, you can present your local images, videos and music to your TV via ChromeCast. You can create a personal "wiki" for tracking of your projects, ideas or memories.
^No support for ink notes in Mac version. Cannot mix ink with text
^ abClips URLs and titles only. Web page content is not clipped
^On Android and ChromeOS uses platform's spell checker.
^All versions can sync with OneDrive and SharePoint. Versions later than Office 2016 can only use online notebooks and cannot use local notebooks.
^OneNote 2010 and OneNote 2007 Service Pack 2 and beyond have it built in. A Save As PDF add-in is available for earlier versions of OneNote 2007. Can save to PDF with add-in.[1]
^As the RTF format stores pictures internally as bitmaps (.bmp), this leads to large notebook files.
^Tables must be created in another program. After pasting the table into Keynote NF, one can edit the cells and add new rows, but changing the size of the columns and adding or removing columns is not possible. These operations can be done by pasting the table into another program (for example, MS Word).