7 iPad apps for note taking, drawing & brainstorming: Ideate, Note Plus & Scribbie

The iPad’s compact size, quick responses and multi-touch screen means it’s an ideal tool for all kinds of note taking, brainstorming and scribbling. Whether you want to use a colourful stylus to take notes from a lecture or use your finger to quickly draw a diagram in a board meeting, there are plenty of apps and accessories to help you.

So ditch your notebook, your post-its and your dictaphone and try out some of these iPad applications, created to make note taking quick and easy.

Related: 7 iPad accessories to make note taking and doodling easier

Becca Caddy

12 comments

  • I can't compare apps but I can certainly give an opinion on what NOT to buy. I've had CourseNotes by Dear Panda for 2 weeks and quickly figured out how to take notes on it. Everything else is a complete mystery still! It is by far the most UNintuitive app ever and I can't get to first base with it. There's got to be better stuff out there than this.

  • They are plenty of apps to take notes on your ipad but very few are really productivity apps able to generate structured reports. Writing down meeting minutes or meeting reports is a painful process which is time consuming.

    iTakeNotes has been released on the appstore recently: the principle is to formalize notes during the meeting and get a meeting report as soon as the meeting is over in pdf and in .txt if you want to review the format. They provide audio recording and camera so as not to lose any data during the meeting. The app exists in english and french and a spanish version is on its way, it is a very productive tool for those who spent desperate time formalizing their meeting notes.

  • As Justine, my essential business app on iPad to organize my work is Beesy. It helps meto organize my day with tasks, toDo list automatically generated. Very usefulalso in meetings to don’t miss a thing. It can record, take a picture, andgives the possibility to draw on your pictures saved. I hightly recommend it http://www.beesapps.com/beesy-…

  •  

    Good article. It's really interesting

    I have been using Ipad for 2 years. I used EverNote and then Awesome Note for a long time and their ability to sync but both had a disadvantage ; thelack of features to accommodate tasks, to-do and make monitoringSo i was seeking an alternative app to save time for my meeting. I have almosttestest all the apps on Notes/ ToDo on the APPstore and I must admit I am stillsurprised they do not fit with a pro use. I have just discovered Beesy, an notetaking and management app ToDo which apparently include taking notes with abusiness way. I have tried for several days and until now i'm really satisfiedby Beesy. It's really efficient and maybe the only disadavantage is you needtime to use it efficiently. I guess this App really  deserve we spend alittle bit time to understand it

    I love shortcuts of Beesy's icons in order touse it quicky and easily add notes. Also, the advantage is to submit easily byemail minutes about my different meeting

     

    Guys, if yu are interested yucan google “Beesy” of go to the website  http://www.beesapps.com

    • Hi Justine,

      Thank you for sharing Beesy, I discover this app few weeks ago on the Evernote Trunk and it's true, it's a really good iPad note taking app at work. Quick note-taking & sharing files is really impressive, I can import and export Microsoft docs and make annotation… Really I advice people to keep an eye if you are interesting by this kind of apps.

  • You don't mention my favourite – ZoomNotes – which is great for notetaking and typed text.  I love the unlimited zoom.  They have just released a free viewer too.

  • I recommend Draw On The Net for collaborative drawing – you can draw together which is nice – but you can also be doing that on top of any webpage which is really cool.

  • nice overview of the main note taking app.
    For business notes, you should have a look at Beesy, http://www.beesapps.com/beesy-ipad-to-do/, interesting way to address the problem of business meeting notes.
    Interesting as well to generate automatic To-Do from your notes and follow-up on them.

  • This a nice review of iPad apps for note taking. Unforntunaletly your ads are popng up to cover your text on several pages making the whole site useless because a comparison of all the apps cannot be made. Please fix the web page operation and consider a few less ads to make your site worth visiting.

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