An alien visiting planet earth from the nether regions of the galaxy might wonder what’s up with humans based upon all the notes apps for desktop PCs, notebooks, smartphones, and tablets. Either we’re a species of budding writers or we’re very forgetful. Either way, Mac, iPhone, and iPad users have plenty of notes apps from which to choose. Here’s one I like.
Notefile for Mac, iPhone, and iPad works much the same on each device, and comes with two ways to sync notes between devices.
What most of us who take notes truly need is quick access. Quick access to take a note, and quick access to view the notes we’ve already taken. Nightlife lives in either the Mac’s Dock or the Menubar so it’s accessible from within any Mac app.
Setup keyboard shortcuts to open Notefile quickly, and to navigate through your notes. The dropdown window is big enough to see all the notes you’ve collected, but small enough not to own the Mac’s screen. It comes with all the standard sharing features for Mail, Message, and others, but it’s one of few apps that can calculate math from within a note. That’s a handy and nice touch.
Notes can be opened from text files in other apps, and exported as text files from Notefile. How much different is Notefile than simply using OS X’s (and iOS) Notes app or even TextEdit with iCloud? It’s more convenient, of course, syncs via iCloud and JuneCloud (the developer’s proprietary cloud service, which is free and seems to work faster than Apple’s own iCloud), and the interface is similar across all of Apple’s devices.
You’ll spend more for a fast food lunch for both Notefile versions, iOS and OS X, but what you get is a more convenient, easier to manage notes system that, frankly, is more Mac-like than Apple’s Notes app which makes you want to use it, which is a big step forward for a note taking app.