The best app for book notes depends on one question
Most book notes are written once and never opened again. Before choosing an app, decide what you want your notes to do for you a year from now. The right tool follows from that.
Ask yourself what your notes are for. To find quotes again, use your e-reader's highlights or Readwise. To write and connect ideas into essays, use Obsidian or Notion. To log what you read, use StoryGraph or Goodreads. To actually remember the ideas, you need something that makes you recall them over time: Anki if you will write the cards yourself, Prismo if you want them written for you.
What do you want your notes to do?
Pick the answer that sounds most like you. You can change it as often as you like.
Your e-reader's highlights, or Readwise
If you read on a Kindle, your highlights are already saved in the Kindle notebook. Readwise goes further: it pulls highlights from Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, articles and more into one searchable place, and shows a few back to you every day. Quotes stay in the author's exact words, which is what you want here.
Watch out for: highlighting feels like progress but does little for memory. A library of 3,000 highlights is easy to build and hard to use.
Obsidian or Notion
Obsidian stores notes as plain text files on your device and makes linking ideas between books effortless; it suits people who write essays, newsletters or research. Notion is better if you like databases: a table of books with ratings, tags and a page of notes for each. Both reward people who enjoy tending their notes.
Watch out for: building the perfect system can replace reading. And notes you file away are not notes you remember; nothing brings them back to you.
StoryGraph or Goodreads
If you mainly want a list of what you read, when, and what you thought, a reading tracker is the right tool. StoryGraph has good statistics and mood-based recommendations; Goodreads has the largest community and reviews. A short review after each book doubles as a light set of notes.
Watch out for: a rating and two sentences will remind you that you read a book, not what it said.
Prismo
This is the one I built Prismo for. After each chapter you write three to five lines in your own words, or dictate them. Prismo pulls out the ideas worth keeping, files them under topics, and writes quiz questions from them. Then it asks those questions again a day later, a few days later, a few weeks later, which is what actually stops you forgetting.
Watch out for: it only works if you write the few lines. It is a phone and tablet app, with no desktop version yet.
Anki
For exact facts with one right answer, like vocabulary, formulas, dates or anatomy, Anki is hard to beat. You control every card and the scheduler, and there are thousands of shared decks. It is free everywhere except iPhone.
Watch out for: you write every card yourself, which takes real time per chapter. If that is why you stopped, see Prismo vs Anki.
Why most book notes are never read again
Taking notes feels productive. You are engaged with the book, you have something to show for it, and the act of choosing what to write down is genuinely useful. The trouble starts afterwards: nothing ever brings those notes back to you. They sit in a notebook or an app until you forget they exist, and the book's ideas fade on the usual forgetting curve.
The apps above solve this in different ways. Readwise resurfaces your highlights. Obsidian and Notion make your notes easier to find when you go looking. Anki and Prismo come to you with questions. Which kind of "coming back" you need depends on the question at the top of this page.
The options, side by side
| Great for | Weak at | |
|---|---|---|
| Paper notebook | Thinking while you read; no distractions | Searching later; nothing reminds you |
| Phone notes app | Fast, already installed, works everywhere | Notes pile up unsorted and are rarely reopened |
| Notion | A structured reading library with tags and ratings | Takes setup; no review built in |
| Obsidian | Linking ideas across books; writing; your files stay yours | Takes setup; no review unless you add plugins |
| Readwise | Collecting and resurfacing highlights automatically | Shows you the author's words rather than testing yours |
| Anki | Memorizing exact facts with full control | Every card is written by hand |
| Prismo | Remembering ideas: your notes become questions on a spaced schedule | You write a few lines per chapter; no desktop app yet |
What one book looks like in Prismo
To make this concrete, here is a week with Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, a short book that is easy to read and hard to remember. Each note took a couple of minutes.
Start each morning expecting to meet difficult people: ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest. They act from not knowing better. Can't be harmed by them unless I let it get to me.
Picture people in Vespasian's time: marrying, farming, quarrelling, chasing promotions. All gone, even their names. Whatever feels urgent now will go the same way.
Alexander the Great and his mule driver ended up in the same place after death. Fame doesn't last. Do the task in front of you well instead.
- Expect difficult peoplePhilosophy › Stoicism
- Everything is forgotten in timePhilosophy › Stoicism
- Fame is fleeting: Alexander and his mule driverPhilosophy › Stoicism
In Meditations, who does Marcus Aurelius say ended up in the same place as Alexander the Great?
True or false: Marcus Aurelius says other people can harm you whether you let them or not.
An example in the shape Prismo uses. You see what Prismo found before anything is saved, and can untick or edit any of it.
Three short notes in a week, and the book's ideas come back to you as questions for the next few weeks, at longer intervals each time you get them right. When you later read Seneca or Epictetus, those notes join the same Stoicism collection instead of starting a new pile.
A five-minute routine that works with any app
- Read a whole chapter without stopping to write. Underline or highlight if you like, but keep going.
- Close the book and write three to five lines from memory. What did the chapter say, in your own words? This is the step that matters most; it is active recall.
- Add one line of your own. Where does this connect to your life, your work or another book?
- Check the chapter for anything important you missed. Add it in a different colour or a second line.
- Come back to it. A day later, a few days later and a few weeks later, try to recall the chapter before looking at your notes. Prismo does this part for you; with any other app, put it in your calendar.
If you want a ready-made template for steps 2 to 4, there is one in the guide on how to remember what you read.
