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The Top 8 Best AI Note Taking Apps of 2026

Compare the best AI note taking apps of 2026 - lecture summaries, searchable notes, flashcards, and AI review.

By ScholarlyGeneral
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You walk out of a lecture with three pages of notes and no idea which parts actually matter for the exam. Notes pile up faster than you can review them, and the important points get buried under everything you copied down "just in case." AI-powered note-taking apps fix this by organizing, summarizing, and surfacing what's worth studying - so your notes become usable instead of just long.

If you want notes to become usable study material instead of static text, Scholarly's AI notes keep writing, review, and flashcard generation in one workflow.

In this post, we'll highlight the 8 best AI note taking apps available in 2026 based on features, accuracy, ease of use and more. Let's dive in!

1. Scholarly.so

Scholarly combines note taking with AI study tools for students.

Key features:

  • Smart Autocomplete for notes

  • Flashcard Generation from notes

  • Auto-generated highlights and summary notes

  • Note organization and sharing

2. Microsoft OneNote

OneNote by Microsoft has long been a popular note-taking app, and now includes AI capabilities like handwriting conversion, text reads-aloud, and translation. You can also search within images and audio/video recordings.

Key features:

  • Handwriting conversion to text

  • Audio/video transcription

  • Text reads aloud

  • Translation

  • Search within media

3. Evernote

Evernote is a longtime leader in the note-taking space. The app was recently enhanced with AI features including searching text within images, extracting key datapoints from business cards, and organizing notes into relevant stacks.

Key features:

  • Search text in images

  • Business card scanning

  • Note organization with stacks

  • Note summaries and highlights

4. Notejoy

Notejoy is a fast notes app for individuals and teams. It is a shared notebook more than an AI tool: its site describes quick capture, real-time collaboration, and search across everything you have saved, with apps for Mac, PC, iOS, Android, and the web. It suits group projects where several people keep notes in one place.

Key features:

  • Fast note capture

  • Real-time collaboration

  • Quick find and search

  • Web clipper

  • Integrations with Google Drive, Microsoft Office, and Slack

5. MyScript Notes (formerly Nebo)

MyScript Notes, which used to be called Nebo, is a handwriting recognition app. It converts handwritten notes into typed text, turns hand-drawn lines and shapes into clean forms, and handles math and diagrams. Its AI tools can summarize a note, explain a term, or turn a note into a quiz. The app is great for math and science note-taking.

Key features:

  • Handwriting to text conversion

  • Shape and diagram conversion

  • Math in notes

  • AI summaries, explanations, and quizzes

  • Notebooks, documents, boards, and PDF annotation

6. Recall

Recall is an AI knowledge base and summarizer. It summarizes YouTube videos, podcasts, PDFs, and articles, saves them to your own library, and lets you chat with what you have saved.

Key features:

  • Summaries of YouTube videos, podcasts, PDFs, and articles

  • A personal knowledge base of what you save

  • Chat with your saved content

7. Notion AI

Notion AI lives inside Notion's pages and databases. It can summarize a long page of notes, pull out action items from meeting notes, rewrite or tidy up rough text, and answer questions about the content in your workspace.

Key features:

  • Page and meeting-note summaries

  • Action-item extraction

  • Writing and rewriting assistance

  • Q&A across your workspace

  • Works inside your existing Notion pages and databases

8. Otter.ai

Otter.ai is an AI transcription service. It can record meetings, lectures, interviews and more then generate annotated transcripts complete with speaker identifications, inline images, and key phrase highlighting. Playback is available too. Otter's AI also creates summary notes highlighting key points.

Key features:

  • Real-time transcription

  • Speaker identification

  • Auto-generated highlights and summary notes

  • Note organization and sharing

AI note-taking apps reduce the grunt work of capturing quality notes. With smart assistance, your notes will be more organized, accessible, and useful for learning.