The best note-taking apps for Android make it simple and easy to make manage notes on the go with your Android smartphone or tablet.
1. Best overall
2. Best for productivity
3. Best general
4. Best visual
5. Best simple
6. Best for features
7. Best mobile office suite for Android
8. FAQs
9. How we test
This has become a lot more simple as smartphones have become a common device for use by business as well as general consumers. While note-taking apps are one of the simplest of the best business apps available it is often one of the most essential, especially when it comes to quickly putting down new ideas, inspirations, or general reminders before you forget.
Whether you're just typing text, writing with a stylus, or scribbling with your finger, there are a lot of different note-taking apps for Android out there. Some are focused on just taking notes, while others come with more features and functionality, such as adding multimedia, which can turn your smartphone into a digital notebook, or workbook.
Additionally, while note-taking apps were originally focused on a sole user, these days many now also come with options for collaboration, such as sharing files and folders with colleagues from the notes you make.
We've previously listed the best Android apps and the best free Android apps, so below we'll feature the best note-taking apps for Android currently available.
Also take a look at the best productivity apps.
The best note-taking apps for Android of 2024 in full:
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Best overall
For decades, Microsoft has dominated the software scene, and things haven’t changed today. Offered as part of the Office family of productivity apps, OneNote is one of the most popular and capable note-taking apps you can get. This app is capable of a great deal, whether you want to capture information from emails or embed Excel tables.
This app is a multi-platform affair which is hooked up to the cloud, meaning that if you’ve written some notes on your laptop, you can pull these up in a meeting via your smartphone. OneNote works across Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices.
The Android app is easy to use and works as a flexible canvas, letting you type, handwrite, draw and clip things you find on the web. What’s more, you can even scan notes made on paper and make them searchable through OneNote. To organize your notes, you can create tags, labels, to-do lists and follow-up items. It’s also possible to categorize notes based on their importance.
OneNote allows for collaboration, letting you share your virtual notebooks with anyone. People can leave comments and follow-up questions on your notes as well. The best thing about OneNote, though, is that it’s completely free to download while offering a plethora of premium capabilities.
Read our full Microsoft OneNote review.
Best for productivity
Evernote is a well-respected and powerful productivity app. It’s described as an organization and planning app that lets you take both typed and handwritten notes, create to-do lists, scan documents using your camera, and collaborate on content with others.
The great thing about Evernote is that it makes use of a variety of media. For instance, you can create notes in text form, or as sketches, photos, audio, video, PDFs or web clippings.
Just like Microsoft’s OneNote, this app is underpinned by cloud technology. That means you can sync content across all your devices from computers through to tablets and phones. In other words, if you start a task on one device, you can complete it on another.
With Evernote, you can create, share and discuss content with your colleagues as well. The app is currently free to download, but the premium plan which offers a wider range of features is available for a monthly or yearly subscription.
We've also featured the best free alternatives to Evernote.
Read our full Evernote review.
Best general
Google offers a highly capable note-taking app in the form of Keep, which allows you to create as many notes and lists as you want. And you don’t need to stick to mere text – you can also add images and audio to your notes.
In fact, there’s even the ability to record memos for the app to automatically transcribe. That’s particularly handy if you’ve had a light bulb moment and want to get it noted down somewhere quickly. Similarly to OneNote, you can scan handwritten notes, receipts, invoices and other documents through your camera.
Google Keep is a pretty decent productivity app for teams, too. You can easily share notes and collaborate with others. Other features include color-coded labels, reminders and the benefit of multi-platform support. The app is free to download from the Play Store.
Read our full Google Keep review.
Best visual
Material Notes is a streamlined app that allows you to create notes, to-do lists and reminders. These are all color-coded and stored within a card-style interface to keep things better organized, and to make it easy to find relevant information. You also get the ability to mark important notes with stars, and these are saved within a category based on the urgency of projects.
To ensure you never misplace an important note or list, you can easily locate anything by making use of the app’s search function. Plus you can create and place widgets on your home screen, which give you quick access to your notes.
In terms of security, you can create a four-digit pin for all your notes, ensuring that sensitive information doesn’t get into the wrong hands. And the app allows you to easily and swiftly import content stored on other devices. Material Notes is free to download, with additional features available as an in-app purchase.
Best simple
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when an app is weighed down with tons of features, many of which you might never use. Simplenote is designed for people who just want a quick, easy-to-use piece of software to jot down spontaneous ideas.
Just open up the app, and right away you can create notes and lists. As you continue to use the software and amass more notes, you’re able to organize them with tags and pins. Every time you create a new note, it’s stored in the cloud and can be accessed through other devices. The app is completely free to download and use.
Read our full Simplenote review.
Best for features
Keep My Notes is a note-taking app for Android that comes with a number of neat features. For starters, you can create handwritten notes using a finger or stylus, plus there's also the option to create notes using a built-in text-to-speech feature.
There are also various formatting options available to bold, underline, or italicize - among other things - plus the ability to add audio to your notes. Even better, for added security, you can password protect notes.
Notes can be set up like sticky notes on your home screen, and notes can even shared with other apps. There are different light or dark themes available, and the display can be changed to portrait for phones and landscape for tablets.
Additionally, you can also change the text size and color when inputting text for your notes in the first place, which can be very handy.
Altogether, Keep My Notes is a handy little package that backs up to the cloud. You can run the app for free with ads, but there are in-app purchases, not least to run ad-free.
Best mobile office suite for Android
While we've featured Microsoft 365 as the best overall productivity app, there are other mobile office suites worth considering. Here we'll provide a run down of these:
WPS Office is an office suite developed by Chinese software outfit Kingsoft. The app is free to download but in-app purchases can be made to include more features. The suite comprises of WPS Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheet.
The WPS PDF reader has the ability to convert PDF to WPS and is able to read Adobe PDF files. The app supports a number of file types such as DOC, RTF, DOT, PPTX, TXT and HTML amongst others. All documents are fully compatible with Microsoft Office and Google Docs.
The app allows you to securely encrypt your files with passkeys, and you can edit your documents without fear of losing your work thanks to the auto-save option. Features include the ability to track changes, comments, and run spell checks.
Another handy feature supported by the app is the ability to present documents straight from your smartphone (or tablet) to a compatible TV or projector. WPS for Android also supports 47 different languages.
The downside here is that if you’re not a paid user, you get shown adverts, and they are seemingly quite intrusive.
Read our full WPS Office Free review.
OfficeSuite was first released as a mobile app in 2004 on Palm OS, where it was mainly read-only until 2009. At this time Sony requested an Android version within a very short time span of 12 weeks. This was achieved and OfficeSuite for Android was born. The product is now a fully featured cross-platform productivity suite.
Although OfficeSuite is free to download, there are in-app purchases to upgrade the features available. If you purchase the Pro version you won't be forced to make certain in-app purchases (for example, paying for extra fonts), but you can still make purchases if you wish.
This suite is also fully compatible with a large number of file formats such as ODT, PDF, RTF, TXT and CSV. However, the free app is inundated with ads. Further note that you will need to upgrade to the premium version if you want to open certain file types such as ODT.
The OfficeSuite Drive allows you to store up to 5GB of files in the cloud. The Chats feature helps co-workers to collaborate and swap documents online. The app is fully compatible with all Microsoft documents and boasts support for PDF files with features such as camera scanning and PDF exports.
Read our full OfficeSuite review.
DataViz, the company that established Docs to Go, started off with a product that connected Macs and PCs together. Docs to Go was subsequently created for BlackBerry and is now a multi-platform app.
The Android app allows users to view Adobe PDF and Microsoft Office files. From here you can edit and create Excel, PowerPoint and Word files, all in the palm of your hand. Docs to Go has many formatting tools, such as word count, tables, font color and the ability to track changes.
There's a free and premium version of the app. Both support editing and formatting within the app, along with advanced Excel support. Some features such as cloud services, desktop sync, and password-protected file support require in-app purchases. Both the free and premium applications are optimized for use on a tablet with portrait and landscape views.
Docs to Go has its own versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. These are known as Word to Go, Sheet to Go and Slideshow to Go. The only criticism the solution seems to receive is that PDF files tend to cause the app to crash, with folks being advised to stick with a separate PDF viewer for this purpose.
Quip is an online collaborative software suite that is available on Android devices. The company was founded in 2012 by Bret Taylor, who was a former Facebook CTO, in conjunction with Kevin Gibbs, founder of the Google App Engine.
The main features of Quip are the spreadsheet and word processing functions which allow online collaboration as well as alterations on the corresponding Android apps. All members of the group can view and edit documents at the same time and also have the ability to add comments if need be. Quip also has its own chat rooms and it is used by major players such as Amazon and Dell.
Quip offers a free tier, although it’s based on the activity of the user, rather than on the number of days you use it for. So, the more you make use of it, the more free time you will receive.
The paid tier enables a team to use spreadsheets, chat and Live Apps such as a Calendar. If you need assistance there is also excellent support available. The app allows you to work offline and sync documents when you are next online.
Some online reviews have criticized Quip's ability to load PDF documents saying that it is limited and sometimes can be time consuming. Further note that the app only supports a limited number of import/export formats.
Read our full Quip review.
Other Android office suites to consider
We've covered just a few of the office apps for Android above, but there are plenty more to consider. Here we'll add a few more than are also worth thinking about:
Google Workspace is also worth considering, though while there are limitations to Google Docs and other apps in Google Workspace compared to other offerings, it's still worth considering. This is not least because of the integration between the different Google apps and other Google services, such as GMail and Google Drive (aka Google One) which means it provides a decent if sometimes basic all-in-one office software solution. Perhaps the bigger sell is the collaborative functions that are available to use across Google Workspace, which could make them ideal for small teams.
Polaris Office is another big office software suite, providing word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations in a single app for Android. Advertised as an All-in-One Complete Office Suite, it's compatible with Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat files. In fact, it has a decent list of file types it can work with, not least DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX, PPS, PPSX, TXT, HWP, ODT as well as PDF. Even better, it's free, though it is advertising-driven and in-app purchases are available to both remove the apps as well as expand the available feature list.
Zoho Sheet is just one of a large number of apps from the Zoho Corporation for office and business use, all of which should integrate easily with one another. As with some of the above, collaborative working is available on shared documents. Not only is Zoho Sheet free, it also works easily with Excel files for creating, editing, and saving.
AndrOpen Office works with the OpenDocument format and advertises itself as 'the world's first porting of OpenOffice for Android'. As with other office suites, it provides a platform for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, but also comes with a drawing feature as well as a math editor. AndrOpen Office certainly contains a lot of features and is compatible with a huge range of file types that most other applications can't touch, so for accessibility it's definitely a winner.
We've also featured the best free office software.
Other note-taking apps for Android to consider
The above are only a small selection of the number of note-taking apps available for Google's Android operating system. There are plenty more available at the Google Play store and we'll cover some of the most popular alternatives below:
Samsung Notes is Samsung's replacement for S Notes and Memo, and is a general notepad for organizing text, images, and audio. Where it differs from others are the extra features for scribbling or sketching, with various color editor options that make it as much as an all-purpose sketchbook as a notepad, depending on what you want to get from it.
Notes is another general notepad app which allows you to organize text, images, and audio. It has a simple but clean look that makes it easy to work with. Notes also allows for password-protected areas, and is free to use when running ads, which can be switched-off using an in-app purchase of about two dollars.
Classic Notes is one of the simplest apps listed, and this is probably one of its selling points. While it allows for taking basic notes, it doesn't do much more, so people not so use to smartphones and apps should be able to get a lot of use from it without becoming so confused by features and options present in other apps. It's free to use, but contains ads.
We've also featured the best iPad Pro notetaking apps.
FAQs
Which Android note-taking app is best for you?
When deciding which Android notetaking apps to download and use, first consider what your actual needs are. For example, are you planning to keep your notes mostly as plain text notes, or do you need to add media to them? Additionally, do you need to use your notes in other software such as Microsoft Word? Are you happy to just save locally or in the cloud? In such instances, you will need to look at the features to see whether the app satisfactorily answers such questions or not.
How we test
To test for the best Android notetaking apps we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, then we tested the app to see what sort of features and tools were available for our notes. We also looked to see if we could export our notes to other platforms, and also share them with other users. The aim was to push each software platform to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced options.
Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.
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