The functions of note-taking apps can be split into different feature categories that make it easier for us to compare those apps with each other.
Of course, this course will be free for my Inner Circle Members (if you want to join, then you can sign up here). I’m certain, that in this post, you will learn all you need to know to find the right note-taking app for your iPad. So instead of recommending you the one and only note-taking app that I like to use, But certainly, there is a note-taking app that suits YOUR specific needs. There is not THE best note-taking app for EVERYONE. Although Evernote and OneNote offer Apple Pencil writing support, it is not as well implemented as in the apps I gonna show you here.Īfter I started using and reviewing note-taking apps 3 years ago and even wrote an ebook about it called “Paperless Note-Taking like a Pro”, I realized one thing. But those are not what we are looking for today.
Since MarginNote could not export its annotations (the PDF is flattened), I went back to a stable PDF editor (PDF Expert) and hope to explore the options to sync with external apps some day soon.I am aware that there are options like Evernote, Bear, Notion, OneNote and so. flashcards).Īt the end of the day, I realized that consistency and reliability are more important that the ability to play with annotations inside a PDF annotation app. But from my first tests, LiquidText seems to have the cleaner UI setup to start the process while MarginNote seems to have the deeper toolset to analyze and compare annotations (e.g. In truth, I never took the time to play much with the annotations in LiquidText or MarginNote (e.g. I preferred MarginNote because I could tag annotations, I could write hand notes to annotations, and hand-written annotations were kept as one group.
In my testing on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil 2, I found that LiquidText does not consistently import annotations from other PDF annotation apps and MarginNote does not reliably sync. I consider LiquidText and MarginNote to be comparable in that they both offer the ability to play with the annotations directly within the app itself. That’s why I’m using it for my whole literature reading, quotation, ordering, memo-writing, etc.
This software certainly fits the fourth level reading. If you remember what I posted in another thread, I recommended a QDA software called MAXQDA. Since doing scientific reading and notetaking is a qualitative process, I think a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) would reach at its finest. until our own provisional theory is saturated finally, the ultimate theory is established. That is, at the first step, we collect relevant papers/data then we constantly compare concepts from the papers/data we sensitize concepts, write memos, reflect, etc. I don’t know if someone has ever talked about the similar thing before: I think when we do reading, especially scientific reading, we are actually doing something pretty similar to Grounded Theory.
I’m glad you mentioned Grounded Theory, which is one of the key theories in qualitative research. Although I haven’t tried it personally, from what I saw in the video tutorials provided by the website, it seems that LiquidText can do memo-writing and stuff like that. I completely agree with you! And yes, I think LiquidText does more than comparisons. LiquidText is very interesting – export is better than the other two apps, IMO.ĭon’t forget the other annotation options for PDFs – there are dozens. Some macOS-version bugs were fixed, and an iOS/iPadOS app came to market. As a product, it seemed to be abandoned for a long time, then came back to life. I like Highlights, but unfortunately do not trust it. If you want to focus on one-off PDFs that do not need to be managed as a group, then Highlights is OK for this. For me, MarginNote is unique in its ability to handle that. Personally, I have large corpuses of dual-language source texts comprising thousands of pages of text in deeply intertwined (cross-referenced) documents. I have them all, and prefer MarginNote - though it has some weird and frustrating interface issues.īacking up to the beginning though – the question is what’s your use case? Are you taking notes for academic research? For personal records? Something else? If you are taking notes on a corpus of PDFs that are related to one-another, and want to bring in web-resources into the notes then MarginNote is very good for this. Hmmm, MarginNote, LiquidText, Highlights are not suddenly new – they’ve all been around for several years.