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About Note Taking/Personal Knowledge Management Apps

Note taking and Personal Knowledge Management apps have some advantages over physical notebooks. They have organizational features, such as folders and tags, and also the ability to search your notes for a word or phrase. With all but the simplest apps, they have the ability to add pictures and other media. They have different levels of complexity. I have categorized them into 3 categories: simple, medium features, and feature rich. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages.


Simple note apps have the least features. They are usually text only. They have the fewest organizational and other features. Most of them are not cross-platform apps (available on different platforms, such as Windows, Android, etc.) Their users are more often people who are having their first experiences with apps and mobile devices, compared with others. They may not use technology to take notes very much, but when they do, they want to use an app that just works.

Advantages:

  •  They are the easiest to learn how to use. 
  • They take the least development effort. Therefore, they are either free or inexpensive.
  • They tend to have less bugs, having less features and less that can go wrong with them.

Disadvantages of simple apps are: 

  • Less organizational features, so it may not be easy to find the notes you want to see if you have a lot of them. 
  • Inability to add images and other types of content.
  • Usually, few text formatting options, if any.

Note App Chart

A comparison of the features of some of the top note and PKM apps - Medium and Full Featured apps

See Chart

Simple Apps Table

Advantages and Disadvantages of Medium and Feature Rich Apps

Feature rich apps are the most powerful ones. These are apps for "power users" and for the more computer savvy users. If you prefer this type of app, you should know that if you can't accomplish something one way, you can find another way to do it. Occasionally, you may need another app to do it. Some apps have good free plans so that you won't have to spend too much on apps.

Advantages:

  • Multiple organizational features that make it easier to navigate among many notes
  • More text formatting options
  • The ability to add multimedia
  • Most have the ability to link notes to each other and also to link to the web.
  • They are often cross-platform apps, which allow you to sync your notes/content on multiple devices.

Disadvantages:

  • Because they have the most features, they take the most development effort, and there is more that can go wrong with them, like bugs to fix.
  • They are the most expensive ones. 
  • They take the most effort to learn how to use.


Medium feature apps have a good balance between power and simplicity. Their advantages and disadvantages are in between those of the simple and feature rich apps. Users of these apps want to take organized notes with pictures and maybe other types of multimedia, without things getting too complicated. 


To see an interactive chart of the features of Feature Rich and Medium Feature apps, click here or on the button above and to the right. The apps can be filtered, sorted, and grouped by any column, using the options at the top right of the window.


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