Second year of college, genetics lecture, my professor is flying through slides and I’m still drawing the mitochondria diagram from three slides ago. By the end of class I had four pages of notes that basically stopped making sense halfway down the page. That was the night I finally gave up on notebooks and downloaded my first note-taking app.
That was three years ago. Since then I’ve probably installed and abandoned close to a dozen apps. Some I quit after two days. One I used religiously for a full semester and then just… stopped opening. So this isn’t a “top 10 apps” list scraped from app store rankings — it’s what’s actually survived on my phone and laptop, and why the ones that didn’t survive got deleted.
Quick disclaimer before I get into it: there’s no single “best” app here. What worked for my roommate (a design major who lives in Notion) made me want to throw my laptop across the room. So take this as a menu, not a ranking.
The test I actually use now
I used to pick apps based on whatever looked cleanest in a YouTube review. Bad strategy. Now I ask one question before committing to anything: would I open this the night before a final, running on four hours of sleep and two coffees, without wanting to scream?
If the setup is too fussy for that version of me, it’s out. Doesn’t matter how nice the interface looks at 2pm on a Tuesday when I’m not stressed.
Notion
My friend showed me her class setup in the library one afternoon — every class had its own page, assignments linked to due dates, notes linked to readings, the whole thing. I was sold within about ten minutes.
Setting it up took longer than ten minutes though. I lost an entire Sunday building templates instead of doing the homework those templates were supposed to organize. Kind of defeats the purpose, but I don’t regret it — once it was built, I actually used it.
Where it falls apart: typing during a fast-paced lecture. Notion wants you to think in blocks and structure, and that’s a half-second slower than just typing a raw sentence. When a professor won’t pause, that half-second adds up fast.
I’d point this one at people who are already planners by nature, or who are juggling four or five classes and need everything in one dashboard.
Obsidian
This one caught me off guard. I started using it for a philosophy seminar where every single idea connected back to something from two weeks earlier, and I kept losing track of how.
The whole point of Obsidian is linking notes to each other instead of stacking them in a pile. Write a note on Kant, link it to your note on Mill, and eventually you’ve got this visual web of the entire semester’s argument sitting in front of you. First time I opened the graph view and saw my whole philosophy course mapped out as dots and lines, I actually sat there for a minute just looking at it.
It also just saves plain text files on your own device, so there’s no subscription holding your notes hostage. That mattered to me after losing access to a paid app’s export feature once — long story, not repeating that mistake.
Not going to pretend it’s pretty out of the box, though. If you’re not the type to fiddle with settings and plugins, the blank default screen might turn you off before you get to the good part.
Good fit for essay-heavy subjects — philosophy, history, law, anything where ideas build on each other across weeks.
OneNote
Nobody talks about OneNote anymore and I genuinely don’t get why. For my engineering classes I needed something where I could just click anywhere on a page and start drawing or writing — no rigid structure, just a blank canvas that expands however you need it to.
I paired it with a cheap Samsung tablet (not even a fancy one) and it turned into something close to an actual notebook that never runs out of room. If you’ve got an iPad and pencil it’s even smoother.
Where it loses points: finding an old note later. The search and tabs system feels dated compared to Notion or Obsidian, and I’ve definitely spent five minutes hunting for a note I knew I’d written somewhere.
STEM students, anyone drawing diagrams or writing equations by hand — this one’s for you.
GoodNotes
For statistics specifically, I use GoodNotes and nothing else. Typing formulas is miserable. Writing them out feels natural, and the handwriting recognition has gotten good enough that I can search my own messy handwriting and it’ll actually pull up the right page. That still feels a little like magic to me, honestly.
The catch is obvious: you need a tablet and a pencil for this to make any sense. On a laptop trackpad it’s basically pointless.
Apple Notes and Google Keep
I still use these constantly, just not for actual studying. A professor casually mentions the exam moved to next Thursday — that goes into Apple Notes in about three seconds. A classmate texts me a page number for tonight’s reading — Keep.
These aren’t built for deep organization and I’m not going to pretend they are. But writing them off completely would be a mistake too. Think of them as the front pocket of your backpack, not the whole bag.
How I actually run all of this day to day
- During class, I grab notes fast in OneNote or GoodNotes depending on the subject. Messy is fine. Speed matters more than neatness here.
- Later that same day, I rewrite the important stuff into Obsidian (concept-heavy classes) or Notion (assignment-heavy ones). This step is where the real learning happens — putting things in your own words does more for memory than re-reading ever will.
- Anything time-sensitive goes straight into Apple Notes so it’s the first thing I see when I unlock my phone.
- Before exams, I search back through Obsidian’s linked notes or Notion’s database instead of starting a study guide from zero.
Yeah, that’s four apps. Sounds like overkill written out like that, but each one only has to do one job, and none of them are trying to be everything at once.
Things I got wrong along the way
I tried making Notion handle my handwritten math notes too, at one point, by dragging in screenshots of scanned pages. It was slow and honestly kind of embarrassing looking back. Different note types just need different tools — trying to force one app to do it all wastes more time than it saves.
There was also a stretch where I got way more invested in perfecting my Notion template than in actually studying from it. If you notice yourself tweaking colors and layouts instead of reviewing material, that’s usually a sign something’s off.
The big one, though — freshman year, my laptop died two weeks before finals. No cloud backup. A semester of notes, gone. Every app on this list syncs automatically now, but don’t just assume it’s on — go check your settings today, not the week before finals.
And search matters more than people think going in. Typed notes are instantly searchable. Handwritten ones, even with decent recognition, take longer to dig through. If you’re the type who needs to find one specific fact fast mid-study-session, lean toward typed.
If you just want a quick answer
Want everything planned out in one dashboard — Notion. Want your notes to connect like a web instead of a stack — Obsidian. Need to draw or write equations on a laptop or basic tablet — OneNote. Have a stylus tablet and think better with a pen — GoodNotes. Just need somewhere for a fast reminder — Apple Notes or Keep.
None of these wins outright. The winner is whichever one you’ll still be opening in October, not just during the first excited week of the semester.
Last thing
Honestly, the app matters less than most people think. I know classmates who never left the default Notes app and still walked out with A’s because they reviewed consistently. I also know people who built genuinely beautiful Notion setups and opened them maybe twice all term.
Pick whatever fits how your brain already works, not whatever looks most impressive in a screenshot. Give it two weeks. If it’s not sticking, switch — early in the semester is the cheapest time to experiment, when nothing’s on the line yet.
And seriously, turn cloud sync on today. Don’t be me two weeks before finals.