Handwritten notes, sketches, annotation, web clips, and many forms of content (including audio) can be tapped inside any note. Notability’s clean interface and full feature-set is supplemented by its capacity to share and print notebooks. (Office 365 subscription required) The notes app Apple uses: Notability I don’t like that you can’t export notes as PDFs, which is a slightly churlish limitation to put inside Microsoft’s note-taking app. Notes sync, so you can work on them across all your devices. I like the file system, which lets you create different notebooks for different topics and put notebooks into sections and sub-sections. The app offers Apple Pencil support, audio notes, and support for such things as videos, websites and tagging. If you subscribe to Office 365 for Word, then you also have access to OneNote, Microsoft’s capable app for note-taking and collaboration. The final feature is the coup de grace, as GoodNotes supports the same handwriting search recognition and text conversion as you’ll find in MyScript Nebo. Writing, drawing and Apple Pencil support, plus the capacity to sync via iCloud and back up to services such as Dropbox, Box and Google Drive, complete the features. You can create and use your own paper templates – and notes can be printed. This notes-taking power tool includes a range of different paper types, which may not sound too impressive until I tell you that one of these is music notation, so you can sketch that song on the train. ($7.99) Leif Johnson/IDG A powerful solution with unique advantages: GoodNotes Support for multiple sync services (Google Drive, Dropbox and iCloud) means you can also export your notebooks in text, Word, HTML, or PDF documents, which is excellent for project reporting and legacy. A clear filing structure and numerous export options (including PDF and Word) makes this little app a powerful solution for taking notes on your tablet.

Possibly my favorite note-taking app for iPad, MyScript Nebo can handle most note-taking tasks (images, website links, algebraic notation), but what I really like is the OCR-based handwriting recognition – it’s surprisingly accurate and even lets you create headlines, sub-headlines, and paragraphs as you write. While Notes can scan handwritten notes in order to search them, the Apple app doesn’t yet transcribe these notes into written form.

Onenote with apple pencil