Alternatives to Napkin
An iPhone app for collecting quotes and ideas and resurfacing them for reflection. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Napkin
An iPhone app for collecting quotes and ideas and resurfacing them for reflection.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Napkin.
Glasp
A browser extension and mobile app for highlighting text on web pages and PDFs and collecting notes.
Glasp collects highlights from web pages and PDFs through browser extensions and iOS and Android apps, built around a social hosted service rather than private resurfacing.
Drafts
An Apple-platform app for capturing text quickly and sending it elsewhere with actions.
Drafts opens straight to a new page for quick text capture on Mac and iPhone, with dictation and actions, but does not resurface saved ideas.
Apple Notes
Apple's built-in notes app with sync, sketches, and text recognition.
Apple Notes is free and preinstalled on Apple devices with sync and OCR search of scanned images, but offers no resurfacing or AI suggestions.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Day One
A journaling app for writing daily entries with photos, video, audio and drawings, synced across devices.
RemNote
Note-taking app that pairs outlining with built-in spaced-repetition flashcards.
Diigo
A web annotation and bookmarking service with a browser extension for highlighting, tagging and saving pages.
Karakeep
Save bookmarks, notes and documents in a self-hosted library.
Highlights
A PDF reader for Mac, iPad and iPhone that turns annotations into exportable notes.
