Generative artificial intelligence (AI). ChatGPT. Google Bard. Baidu’s Ernie.
AI isn't just dominating tech headlines. It can also help you organize your notes and writing so you spend less time searching for information.
Whether you're a student, a professional, or someone who loves taking notes, read on to discover the best AI-powered note-taking apps on the market.
But first, what is an AI note-taking app?
AI note-taking apps use artificial intelligence to analyze and record text or audio, create new content, and make intelligent suggestions based on your prompts.
For this list, we've gone ahead and divided our 14 favorite AI note-taking apps into the following categories:
- AI note-taking apps that search your notes with a personalized productivity assistant
- AI note-taking apps that write for you
- AI note-taking apps that take notes while you listen
- AI note-taking apps that reorganize information for you
- AI note-taking apps that boost creativity
Find out which AI note-taking apps best suit your needs. Let's get started!
AI note-taking apps that search your notes (with a personalized productivity assistant!)
If you're looking for an assistive note-taking app that can answer all your questions about your notes, this is one to keep an eye on (and our only pick in this category for now!).
1. Goodnotes 6
- Price: US$9.99/year or US$29.99 for a one-time purchase
- Platforms: iPad, iOS, macOS
Goodnotes is a digital note-taking tool that allows you to take handwritten notes, markup PDFs, and search your notes. It supports Apple Pencil for precise writing, converts handwriting to text, and even transforms hand-drawn shapes into perfect geometrical ones.
Best of all, with Goodnotes, your handwritten notes are search-able. This means that instead of flicking through pages for a definition or concept, you can find it within seconds!
Enhancing this search power is Goodnotes’ upcoming AI features, including Ask Goodnotes — your personal productivity assistant that can retrieve and use any information from your notes within seconds.
Forgot something in your notes but don't know where to find it? Don’t feel like reading a long PDF? With Ask Goodnotes, you can:
- Ask questions about any notebook or PDF. Find answers with references to the exact page and spot where the information is found, saving you from time-consuming searches.
- Summarize or explain key points in simple language. You can specify certain pages to summarize. What’s more, you can even directly mark the sections you need to learn more about.
- Create your unlimited practice questions to test your knowledge.
Read more: Everything you need to know about Ask Goodnotes, our AI-powered question and answer tool right in your notebook.
Bonus: Goodnotes also has AI-enabled math assistance and AI handwriting checkers!
AI note-taking apps that write text for you
Have writer’s block? Don’t worry, these AI note-taking apps can begin writing for you. Using generative AI, they can not only create new content, but proofread your finished work, translate it into other languages, or create summaries as well!
Whilst useful, we recommend using these AI-generated outputs as suggestions and further review them for accuracy.
2. Notion
- Price: Forever free plan. US$10/month for Notion AI add-on
- Platforms: Desktop, web, iOS, Android
Notion is a super customizable note-taking app that lets you organize your notes and documents in a wiki or database.
Notion’s new AI feature will make writer’s block a thing of the past. You can now write blog posts, essay outlines, and emails at the click of a button. Put in a prompt (“write an essay outline on organic chemistry!”) and watch the words magically appear on the page. You can even provide a text prompt and ask Notion’s AI to summarize it.
Notion’s AI can also jumpstart your writing process by giving you a first draft or outline to work from. It still isn’t robust enough to generate high-quality long-form essays, but it can give you a push to get you started on writing your next great essay!
3. Craft
- Price: Free
- Platforms: Mac, iPhone, iPad apps, Web, Windows apps.
Craft is an easy-to-use and aesthetically pleasing document creator.
Are you having trouble writing a company announcement? You can get ideas about how to continue writing with Craft's AI assistant.
The continue writing prompt in Craft can help you generate logical follow-up text based on what you’ve already written. This AI technology can give you a creative push to finish a draft or simply offer another set of eyes to edit your work.
4. Canva Magic Write
- Price: Free
- Platforms: Desktop, iPhone, iPad, Android
Canva is a simple design platform perfect for people with minimal design experience to create professional-looking designs and study notes. Canva also launched its visual document creator Canva Docs, to help create documents with videos, images, and graphs.
With the Canva Magic Write function, you can get help on anything from writing a more detailed birthday greeting to crafting a simple poem from a prompt within seconds. Canva can do it all.
Enter a prompt into Canva and it’ll create some starting text for you. With its AI-powered suggestions, you can ensure that you will find the words to express exactly what you want.
5. Reflect
- Price: US$10/month
- Platforms: iPhone, iPad, Mac, web.
Reflect captures ideas and builds a searchable index of notes, meeting agendas, and more, while Reflect’s AI assistant acts as a personal assistant and writing coach. You could prompt it to generate analogies to illustrate an essay and speed up your writing or thinking process.
6. Taskade AI
- Price: Free with limited features
- Platforms: Mac, Windows, Microsoft, Linux, Snap store, web
Taskade AI aims to boost your productivity through machine learning. The app includes an AI note-taking template that can help you generate an outline, expand on ideas, rewrite arguments to boost clarity, summarize your notes or even answer your questions on specific topics.
This app makes essay writing a painless experience with a personal writing assistance providing a helping hand along the way. The AI also helps you organize your notes under different headings so that it is easy to find and use whenever you need.
AI note-taking apps that take notes while you listen
These AI note-taking apps change how we capture and remember information during meetings, lectures, and conversations. They're great for capturing key takeaways from meetings or creating written transcripts of videos or audio recordings.
Whether you’re a student who learns better by text or a team that wants a quick meeting summary, these note-taking apps are exactly what you need.
7. Otter
- Price: Free
- Platforms: iPhone, Android, Google Chrome extension
Otter transcribes and summarizes meeting and lecture notes in real time from recorded audio. With AI, you have a virtual assistant to join and transcribe meetings or lectures you can’t attend in real time.
Best part? You’ll get the key written takeaways and important slides to review later.
Students who learn best through text can use Otter to help find key points from lectures while working professionals can get help to recall essential meeting information and work more effectively with their team.
8. Notta
- Price: Free
- Platforms: Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, web
Pricing:
Free
Platforms:
Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, web
Notta lets you transcribe live conversations, online meetings, and YouTube videos in 104 languages with AI. You’ll get a live transcript and speaker information for you to search, edit and organize information more easily.
Attending a class or interviewing someone? Notta automatically transcribes your call into searchable text transcriptions so you can concentrate on interviewing or taking part in class instead of taking notes by hand.
This time-saving feature also works on audio files, video calls, and video recordings like lectures or Zoom meetings.
9. Tanna
- Price: Free
- Platforms: Web App
Tanna produces detailed study notes from lectures, audiobooks, and podcasts using AI. Hit play on your audio and video, and Tanna generates a written transcript while summarizing vital points in the same browser window.
Tanna does the heavy lifting of creating written notes for you, so you can focus on the speaker instead of writing notes. This app is best for students who learn best through text or study English as a second language.
10. Fireflies AI
- Price: Free
- Platforms: Web App
Fireflies.ai summarizes and transcribes virtual meetings in seconds. Virtual conference platforms that work with Fireflies AI include zoom, webex, google meet, and many more.
Transcriptions of meetings can be easily reviewed with the search feature and soundbites can be created and shared with your coworkers. This new AI note-taking app can transform the way you collaborate with your team and make note taking as seamless as possible.
AI note-taking apps that reorganize information for you
These AI note-taking apps summarize papers and give you a starting point for discussions, so you can do literature reviews, write reports, or research faster for your next project.
Students and professionals who need help developing ideas for a future content piece or creating a study plan on a complex topic will love these note-taking apps.
11. Genei
- Price: 14-day free trial. Plans start from £3.99/month (US$5)
- Platforms: Desktop, Chrome extension add-on
Genei is an AI-powered research assistant for writers and academics.
Its power lies in its summarization capabilities. Imagine the long chunks of text in academic research papers condensed into simple, readable paragraphs. You’ll save time analyzing information from multiple sources.
Genei’s Ai paraphrases complex ideas in your own words to make research more digestible. It also has a Chrome extension to help you save web articles for later reading and quick summarization. Whether you are writing a paper for school or publishing a book, Genei Ai can help fasttrack your research process.
AI note-taking apps that boost creativity
Known as 'tools for thought,' these AI note-taking apps capture ideas, find unexpected connections between notes, and review notes regularly to aid information retention. Ideal for creators, writers, and knowledge workers who need to synthesize or organize information.
12. Mem
- Price: US$8/month
- Platform: Desktop, iPhone
Mem makes capturing and organizing your notes, calendar events, and emails more accessible with AI.
This self-organizing digital workspace tags and organizes your notes, emails and links according to topic and theme. It’ll also suggest similar notes in your workspace, helping you pull out relevant information quickly.
13. Napkin
- Price: US$10/month, 30-day free trial available
- Platforms: iOS, web app
Napkin acts as a central hub for your notes and ideas. It also encourages creativity and information retention by resurfacing notes regularly for review. You’ll never forget what you read again with Napkin AI.
Whether you are a creator looking for an alternate point of view or need to make a decision, reviewing ideas helps you make unexpected connections or explore alternatives and boost your creativity.
14. Whimsical
- Price: Free
- Platforms: Web
Whimsical is an easy-to-use mind-mapping and flowchart tool for studying, planning, and visualizing ideas. Their AI feature is now in public beta, so you can generate fresh ideas for your mind map in seconds without switching apps.
Type in a topic like organic chemistry and ask the AI to generate more ideas within the app. You’ll get a few topic suggestions to help you break down a complex concept into smaller chunks for your next essay outline or study plan.
15. Ayoa Ultimate
- Price: US$13/user/month. Educator discount is available
- Platforms: Desktop, iPadOS, iOS, Android, web app
Ayoa is a mind-mapping and visual project management tool for teams to help with brainstorming and sharing ideas.
On the Ultimate plan, Ayoa lets you build mind maps of ideas, questions, and research using its AI auto-complete feature. This is a great tool for team discussions and creating content outlines to discuss and refine.
Ready to bring your note-taking to the next level?
Beyond AI, here are the best note-taking methods.