Full integration of hand writing means Evernote that can be compared to Microsoft OneNote. I have still Premium subscription of Evernote. I use it less and less since I am working with MS Surface and handwriting my notes. Evernote product does not bring real value for me without full integration of Handwriting. Kind regards, Hynek. The likes of Microsoft OneNote, EverNote and GoodNotes are as good if not better than notebooks - and they create shareable, online documents for all meeting attendees. If nothing else, the highlights, details and dates of meetings will forever be easier to find.
If you’re a student or are interested in a note taking app for any reason, I’m sure you’ve run into Evernote and Notability. Evernote for sure, since it’s the most obvious recommendation for all things ever. Notability on the other hand is known for getting specific things right. It’s only available on Apple devices as a paid app, and it stores notes in proprietary format like Evernote. Its big perk is that you can scribble things on the screen with a stylus or just your finger, while being able to record audio.
If you’re tossing and turning in your head, not sure which one to go with, hopefully you’ll have a clearer idea by the end of this page.
The Basic Differences
Cross platform availability: You’ll find Evernote apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and most importantly, the web. And Evernote does a commendable job at trying to keep the same functionality between the apps. Notability on the other hand is only available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
The money: Evernote is free to use. Notability’s iOS app costs $4.99 and the Mac app is $9.99. Though Evernote does have a premium plan for $4.99 a month that enables features like offline support, which is built into Notability’s app by default.
Notability Syncs Voice Recordings with Textual Notes
If you’re a student, you’re going to love Notability. When you create a new note, you get a big white area that you can draw, scribble or type on. You can also add images, PDFs and audio recordings, and you have the ability to highlight.
If you’re using an external or built-in keyboard to type, Notability will also map the typed words against the point in the recording. So you can quickly jump between lecture notes and start listening to the snippet you want. But this functionality only works when you’re using the keyboard. If you prefer to take notes by scribbling with a stylus, you’re out of luck.
Evernote Can Record Voice as Well
When you create a new note, you’ll see a Mic button. Pressing this will start the voice recording. Much like Notability, you’re free to type your notes while the audio is being recorded.
Note Taking in Notability vs Evernote
The biggest difference between the two is that Notability provides an integrated note taking experience. You have 4-5 different sources – audio, scribbled notes, drawings, typed text, imported images, and PDFs – and Notability binds them into one whole contextual bundle. If you do it right, all the things you need to revisit a lecture can live in one note.
Evernote, on the other hand, lacks all this contextual stuff. Yes you can have audio and text in one note but that’s it. If you need to annotate documents inside a note, they need to be in PDF format and you need to be a Premium member.
This is it. This is what it all comes down to. If you want the contextual, packaged note-taking experience, you’re gonna have to go with Notability, there’s no other way about it.
Where Evernote Wins
Notability is focused on creating this singular experience. Evernote is much more than that.
Some of the things Evernote can do: You can use it as a task management system, as storage for old documents, a life logger, or anything you want. And Evernote has features like the amazing operator based search to make finding things easy.If your note taking takes place beyond classrooms and meetings, Evernote might have a lot more to offer.
Notability is also limited to iOS and Mac. This leaves out Android and Windows users, which is a sizable population.
Evernote is also free to start. But if you’re a heavy user you’ll get past the free usage quickly and you’ll want to have your notes available offline. This is when you’ll have to pay $5 a month or $45 a year for Evernote Premium. Notability on the other hand will cost you $15 total on iOS and Mac. No upgrades or monthly pricing there. Notability uses iCloud to sync between devices while Evernote uses their own servers.
When it comes to exporting content, Evernote and Notability are both pretty tied down thanks to their proprietary formats. Notability can export the notes as PDF and audio separately. You can also export notes as a Notability file to share it with other Notability users.
Evernote’s sharing features are far better. Multiple users can collaborate on the same document. It’s not as good as Google Docs but it’s still something useful that Notability doesn’t have.
Evernote Also Has a Secret Scribbling Weapon
A couple of years back Evernote acquired Penultimate, another handwriting/note-taking app where you are free to draw or write on the iPad screen. Lately, the app has seen integration with the Evernote experience. Penultimate is a free app but you can unlock features by paying for Evernote Premium.
One cool feature is that Evernote scans all your handwritten notes and lets you search through them. And yes, Penultimate is just a handwriting/note taking app with tight Evernote integration. But for some, that might be all you need.
Conclusion
There’s so much Evernote can do, people have written books about it. So I can’t go into full detail here. But it’s safe to say Evernote will let you scan all your handwritten notes/PDFs/images and allow you to search through them easily.
Notability is a pretty targeted app. That’s not a bad thing. They are the best at what they do. But you should be aware of the limitations before you jump in.
Which One Did You Go With?
I tried Notability and I’ll keep trying it, but right now I’m an Evernote man myself. What about you? Which did you finally choose? And if you’re not sure, don’t feel bad, we’re all in the same boat. This comparison was only about two of the leading services, and there’s still a lot more out there.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
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I’ve long used Evernote for my resource and reference materials. all of my research is stored there, along with notebooks that contain living documents that I want to share with those who are helping build Productivityist and my virtual assistant. Pretty much everything that is any source of reference material is kept there, and even ideas for blog posts and other content spend some time in Evernote before making their way to Scrivener for bigger projects or Desk.pm for blog posts.
Todoist has been my task app for nearly a year, although it seems much longer. The majority of my tasks live in Todoist, with the exception of those being the ones in Asana (which I use for some of the projects I’m working on with others, including the Do Better With Asana project I’m part of with Jeremy Roberts of Cloud Productivity). All of my personal, professional, and Productivityist tasks otherwise live in Todoist.
So how do I use Todoist and Evernote together to create a workflow that is as frictionless as possible? I mean, they don’t speak to each other very well out of the box. And while there are some automation tools you can use to link them up – IFTTT and Zapier immediately come to mind – I tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to build automation before developing the best approach to the apps I’m using.
My way of getting Todoist and Evernote together isn’t all that difficult to assemble. It just involves working with the two apps with similar triggers and identifiers, as well as developing a routine that I get to know and follow every day.
1. I Build Common Threads
I break down Todoist in the following way:
- Top tier projects are Areas of Responsibility.
- Tiers below those top levels are projects of varying sizes.
- Tasks are…well, tasks.
- Labels are the equivalent of contexts to me (or modes).
Goodnotes Evernote Integration Test
I break down Evernote in the following way in order to create an easy shift from my task app to my reference app:
- Notebook stacks are categorized by Areas of Responsibility.
- Notebooks found in those stacks are projects of varying sizes.
- Notes are…well, notes.
- Tags are the equivalent of contexts to me (or modes).
See how I’ve created some common threads between the two apps? Now when I switch back and forth I spend less time getting used to the change of environment and more time making progress. (Note that I do keep Productivityist Coaching as a notebook stack because it contains notebooks that are local notebooks and not synced…for privacy reasons.)
Let me give you an example.
I’m currently working on my next book. I have a project called “My Next Book” in Todoist that lives under the top tier Area of Responsibility called “Professional.” When I look at the same project in Evernote, I’ll find “My Next Book” as a notebook inside the notebook stack called “Professional.” The difference is that tasks related to the project live in Todoist, while reference notes related to the project live in Evernote. I can also copy the URLs from either a Todoist task and put it into an Evernote note related to said task or copy the URL from the note from Evernote and place into a Todoist task if I want. I may do the former when I want to work on finalizing some research in Evernote so I can simply click on the Todoist task and mark it as complete without having to look for it in Todoist. I may do the latter when I’m in Todoist and want to access a related note found in a task quickly rather than wade through my Evernote notebook. The URLs simply speed up the process enough to keep me moving along at a faster clip.
Label and tags are treated a bit differently, however. In Todoist I limit the amount of labels I use so that I can easily remember them and attach them to tasks. I’ve written about labels before and I strongly believe that “less is more” when it comes to labels in Todoist as long as they are clearly defined and refined as needed. In Evernote, I’m not as strict with that rule. After all, tags are effective search terms and I have far more notes to search in Evernote than I have tasks in Todoist. Why? Because notes don’t get completed – tasks do. So while I don’t go crazy with tags in Evernote, I do try to be mindful of them.
2. I Use Reminders In Both Apps Differently
First off, I rarely use reminders in any app, unless it’s for a specific appointment or a date-specific agreement. I actually use an app called Due for things like reminding me to pick up my son from daycare (that way I don’t get stuck in flow and fail to give myself enough time to get him) and things of that nature. But I do occasionally use reminders in Todoist and Evernote for very different use cases.
Todoist’s location-based reminders are great. I know other apps (most notably OmniFocus and Checkmark 2) have this feature, but I like the fact that once a location is entered in Todoist from a mobile device that it can be used regularly from all platforms in the future. Very helpful stuff. I don’t use the time-based reminders in Todoist very often because I’m generally proactive enough to not need such reminders. In the case that I do use them, they are usually for things like reminding me to send Productivityist Coaching Recap and/or Accountability Emails to clients in the Eastern Time Zone before they end their day (for example, “Send Client X Recap Email” today at 1 pm – which is actually 4 pm their time).
I use Evernote reminders to bring items related to my monthly themes back to the forefront at the start of each month. For example, I received an Evernote reminder on the first of this month to start working on my next book. It wasn’t a task so much as it was a note that displayed some content I’d written that was meant to jumpstart the book writing process.
Other things I have started doing is copy the link of a Todoist task into Evernote related to starting of a certain big task or project, as shown below.
Since Todoist doesn’t have start date capabilities (or at least not start dates that seem easy to set up), the Evernote reminder would serve to remind me that I wanted to start working on that task on a specific date. I simply click on the link in the Evernote note (which would also contain pertinent information related to that task) and it takes me to the task.
At that time I’ll assign a due date (usually a repeating date until I finish it) and I’m good to go. It’s not the most automated of solutions, but I know it works every time and it appears to be unbreakable (which is exactly what I need in order to trust it).
3. I Use Both Email Accounts For The Apps Constantly
While both of my email clients allow for me to send tasks directly to Todoist and reference items to Evernote (I use Airmail on my Mac and Dispatch on iOS), the most reliable way to process email for me is to simply use the email addresses associated with Evernote’s default notebook and Todoist’s email addresses per project.
To be clear, I don’t use all of the email addresses Todoist allows. Instead, I use the following ones:
Goodnotes Evernote Integration Tool
- Inbox: This is where most of my tasks that arrive via email go. I simply go into Todoist and put them in the right projects later.
- Team Inbox: These are where I put tasks that arrive via email that either myself or my wife need to work on. (I’ve contemplated adding my assistant to the mix here, but I’ve got another project that’s just for her right now.)
- VA Tasks: Any tasks that arrive via email that I want to assign to my assistant go in here.
Why don’t I use all of the email addresses my various projects in Todoist allows? Because those project above will last while other projects won’t. I also only have to think of three email addresses that tasks need to wind up in – which is helpful when simply trying to process email quickly.
In order to best align Evernote with Todoist, I renamed my default notebook “*Inbox” so that I am triggered to process it regularly. On some occasions, emails end up going to both Todoist and Evernote if they contain both a task and reference item. I’ll also make a habit of BCCing these apps when replying to people so that I can get tasks and/or reference items into the right apps and respond all in one fell swoop.
I’ve been a big fan of Evernote for a long time (having been a user since June 2008) and my fondness for Todoist continues to grow. With the recent addition of being able to link to tasks in Todoist, my productivity when working with both of these apps in tandem is further enhanced. If you’re looking to get more out of the productivity tag team of Todoist and Evernote, then pick any one of the ways I use them and start building that better workflow today.
If you want to wring as much productivity goodness out of Evernote as possible then I highly recommend you pick up Brett Kelly’s Evernote Essentials. Brett is my go-to guy for all things Evernote and he’s levelled up this product in a big way. You can check out all of the tiers of Evernote Essentials (appropriately aligned with how Evernote named its tiers) over at the Evernote Essentials website. There’s no better Evernote resource available so go and check out Evernote Essentials now!
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