Noted: Notepad, Audio Recorder
The ultimate note–taking companion app?
Free (IAP subscription) From Digital Workroom Ltd, notedapp.io Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 10 or later
For those times you’re delegated to keep notes in a meeting, or if you want to record a lecture and actually remember what was happening on the whiteboard at the same time, Noted provides a way to annotate an audio recording with typed notes, tags, and photos.
In use, its very simple. Create a new notebook, then a new note, and give it a title — say, the subject of the lecture you’re listening to. Hit the record button (giving the app access to your microphone if you haven’t already) and the timer starts ticking up as it records. Tap one of the icons along the bottom and you can annotate it, adding tags, written passages, photos (but not videos) direct from the camera or from your camera roll, and even drawings you clumsily daub with your finger on the touchscreen.
Everything is a slave to the audio, your notes, photos, and jottings all being timestamped to the exact second on the audio timeline, making it easy to marry up your thoughts with what was being said, even if you’re concentrating on the speaker and just write ‘important’ at the bits you consider essential listening. Later, you can go back, read through and highlight the really interesting bits in multiple colors, and add new notes that aren’t timestamped.
Your text can be formatted, making it easy to embolden the text when switching between
speakers or subjects. There are bullet points and numbered lists, as well as undo and redo buttons in case you make a mistake or writing error.
In fact, Noted has a lot of nice features that have clearly been thought about — there’s iCloud syncing between multiple devices (up to the 250Mb CloudKit limit), 3D Touch audio previews for those with compatible phones, an Apple Watch app that will stop and start recordings, and notebooks are fully searchable, with a tagging system that sees all the tags appear on the search menu so it only takes a couple of taps to go straight to what you need (as long as you’ve added tags in the right places, of course). iPad multitasking is supported too, so you can record or playback in split view. It’s worth noting that the free version of the app restricts you to only five notes no matter how many notebooks you begin. Coughing up for the subscription version removes this restriction, and adds other things that are nice to have — audio noise reduction, PDF export — but perhaps not essential. You can export your audio as a M4A file, and the text as TXT, without having to upgrade.
A subscription to Noted+ costs $0.99 a month, or $10.99 a year, and free trials are available. It’s not a lot, but you’re going to have to be using the app frequently, or take notes you want to keep, to consider it. You can always delete unwanted notes to stay within the limit.
It may have niche appeal, but Noted has had thought and attention poured into it. For those with a need for it the app is an efficient way to create rich text notes that support an audio recording.
the bottom line. Rich and fully searchable, Noted is the best excuse we’ve yet seen for getting your iPhone out in a meeting.