Apple Notes is free, fast and already on every iPhone, iPad and Mac. It is simple, and simple is good. The problem is not getting ideas into Notes. It is that they never come back out.
Where Apple Notes is great
- It is free and built in, with nothing to sign up for.
- Typing a quick note, a list or a checklist is instant.
- It syncs through iCloud and handles scans, drawings and attachments well.
Where it starts to hurt
After a few months you have hundreds of notes, half of them named after their first line, and your best ideas are buried between a shopping list and a Wi-Fi password. Spoken notes through Siri get cut off when you pause. Nothing in Notes asks what an idea should become.
Just as simple, but your ideas go somewhere
Drift stays as easy as Notes, but it is made for creative people with a lot of thoughts. It does the sorting you never get round to:
- Talk instead of type. Drift keeps listening through pauses, writes it down, cleans it up and gives it a title.
- One inbox you go through one card at a time, with a suggested area for each idea.
- Tasks pulled out of what you said, with dates, reminders and a Today view.
- Projects that grow from an idea, with writing, boards and tables, and a teleprompter for scripts.
Which one to use
Keep Apple Notes for reference: recipes, codes, scanned documents. Use Drift for the ideas you want to do something with.
Drift at a glance
- iPhone, iPad and Mac, with capture on Apple Watch. Android, Windows and the web are planned for later.
- The app comes in 10 languages, and you choose the language you speak in separately: read Drift in Dutch and talk in English, or the other way round.
- Capturing works offline, on a plane or without signal, and syncs when you are back online.
- Search across everything you have caught, and add images to your projects and boards.
- Tasks sync with Apple Reminders both ways: tick a reminder and the task is done, add one to a Drift list and it becomes a task. Timed tasks go to Apple Calendar, and your calendar events show in Drift.
- Export your writing as Markdown, and tables as PDF or CSV.
- Share an area with someone, view-only or with editing, as part of Pro.
- Your account and ideas are stored in the EU, in Ireland.
- Pro starts with a 14-day free trial.
Full transparency
Apple Notes is free, and Drift is not entirely. Drift is built and maintained by one person: Sjoerd, a filmmaker in Haarlem. The parts that make Drift feel easy, turning your voice into clean text, giving every idea a title and suggesting where it belongs, run on paid servers, so every capture costs real money. That is why Drift cannot be free forever.
There is a free plan so you can try it properly, but it is limited on purpose: 10 captures a week and up to 6 areas. Pro is €4.99 a month, or €47.90 a year, which works out at €3.99 a month. Pro starts with a 14-day free trial, so you can try everything before you pay. Low enough to be easy, and enough to keep Drift going and getting better.
And one promise that costs nothing: your ideas and writing are never used to train models.
Drift is on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac, with capture on Apple Watch. Start with the free plan and see if it fits the way you think.