Cross Platform Note Taking App, Checked On All Six

Only five of the apps people recommend as a cross platform note taking app have a native build on all five operating systems, meaning the vendor's own download page lists Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android on the same day. Obsidian, Joplin, Standard Notes, Simplenote and UpNote. Two of those, Standard Notes and Simplenote, also run in a browser and sync for free with no device cap stated. That's the short answer if your devices don't share a maker.

The condition that changes it is what you put in the note. Both of the free-everywhere apps are plain text on the free tier. If you attach PDFs and photos, Joplin syncs them free through a Dropbox or OneDrive account you already have. If you want Obsidian, budget $4 a month for its Sync or read the section on why the free workarounds depend on which two operating systems you own.

Every cell below comes from a download, pricing or help page loaded on 15 September 2026. I haven't run a two-device sync test on any of them, and the roundups that say they have are the ones I'd read most carefully.

Cross Platform Means Six Surfaces

The results page counts platforms loosely. Zapier's list, updated last December, puts Apple Notes in a note-app roundup and then says "No Android or Windows support" in the same entry. A 2024 Medium piece at position four names Bear as a multi-platform pick, and Bear's own FAQ, quoted in the Bear note app breakdown, says the company has no plans for Android or Windows. Atlas has a proper matrix and uses it to rank its own $20-a-month product sixth.

So I'd define the term before shopping. A cross platform note taking app has six surfaces to reach. Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and a browser for the machine you don't own, the work laptop or the library PC. Most people need three or four. The point of counting all six is that the app you pick today has to survive your next phone, and the next phone is the one that breaks ecosystems.

Linux is the surface that splits the pack. Web is the surface that rescues the losers.

The Matrix, From The Download Pages

Two things in that table surprised me. The first is that Google Keep, which Zapier recommends "for Google power users," has no desktop app on any operating system. Google's own help page sends a computer user to keep.google.com. That's fine for a shopping list and thin for anything longer.

The second is Notion's honesty about Linux. Its help page says the words "We don't have a Linux app at the moment" and tells you which browsers to use instead. Compare Evernote, whose plan page lists "Apps for iOS, Android, Web, Windows, and Mac" and leaves you to infer the rest.

The browser column matters more than it looks. Notion's offline mode, which every plan gets, "isn't available on web browsers," so a Linux user on Notion has no offline notes at all. And pages downloaded for offline use "will only be available at the device level," which means marking a page offline on your phone does nothing for your laptop. That's a cross-platform limit hiding inside a feature list.

What Free Sync Actually Covers

Every app in the matrix syncs. The question is what the free tier syncs, and the vendors measure it in five different units.

The Evernote row is the one I'd read twice. The free plan syncs one device. A cross-platform app that syncs one device isn't cross-platform until you pay, and the Starter tier that lifts it to three devices didn't show a price in the page text I loaded, so I won't quote one. The Atlas roundup quotes an Evernote "Personal" plan at $14.99, and that plan name isn't on Evernote's compare page today. Starter and Advanced are.

The Standard Notes row has a catch of its own. Free gets plain text. Markdown, rich text, checklists and folders are on the $90-a-year Productivity plan. So the free tier is the most portable thing on this list and also the plainest.

Obsidian's Free Sync Depends On Your Pair Of Operating Systems

Obsidian is on both of the big lists on the results page, and it's the one where "cross platform" has small print. The app runs everywhere. The vault is a folder. Moving that folder between devices is your problem, and Obsidian's own sync help page is unusually specific about where each free option stops.

iCloud Drive is recommended for macOS, iOS and iPadOS, and the same page warns that "iCloud Drive on Windows may lead to file duplication or corruption." OneDrive is recommended for Windows and macOS, has "limited functionality on Android," and "isn't officially supported for syncing Obsidian vaults on iOS." Google Drive is the mirror image, recommended for Windows, macOS and Android, not supported on iOS. Syncthing covers the three desktops, with a community fork for Android. Working Copy, the Git route, is iOS.

Read that as a grid and the pattern is clear. A Mac plus an iPhone syncs free through iCloud. A Windows PC plus an Android phone syncs free through Google Drive. A Windows PC plus an iPhone has no recommended free route on Obsidian's own page, and that pair is common. The page also says to "avoid syncing the same vault across multiple services," so you can't patch it by running two.

That's why the $4 a month exists. Obsidian Sync runs on all five operating systems, and for the Windows-and-iPhone household it's the only route the vendor will stand behind. The storage and file-size limits on the Sync tiers are already laid out in the Obsidian vs Notion pricing comparison, so I won't repeat that table. The short version is that the cheap tier is enough for text and thin for attachments.

Joplin solves the same problem differently. Its sync targets include Dropbox and OneDrive, and the vendor doesn't publish a per-OS warning list the way Obsidian does. I'd still test the pair you own during the first week, because Joplin's documentation describes the targets and not the failure modes on each phone.

One Setup Per Device Pair

This is the table the roundups don't have. Pick your row, and the setup is the vendor's free route unless the row says otherwise.

The first column is where I'd start almost everyone, because a plain-text note is the only kind that survives a change of app, and the good app to take notes piece covers the exit routes if you want that argument in full. My own bias is worth declaring. I keep project notes as text files next to the code in one repository, so an app that treats a folder as the database looks normal to me and a proprietary sync looks like a risk. If your notes are photos of whiteboards, weigh that the other way.

The third column is mostly OneNote because it's the only free app in the matrix on five surfaces that treats the pen as a first-class input. What that ink does on each platform, and which handwriting converts to text, is the handwritten note taking app piece's job, so I've left it out here.

The Roundups Are A Year Behind The Vendors

Three checks, since the lists are what most readers will see first.

Atlas quotes Notion Plus at "$12/month or $120/year." Notion's pricing page today says "$10 per member / month," with up to 20 percent off for yearly billing. Atlas also says it tested on "Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux or the web," which is five surfaces with a hedge on the sixth, and the article doesn't say which apps got Linux and which got a browser tab.

Zapier says OneNote is "Free for up to 5GB of notes." Microsoft's storage FAQ says the 5 GB is your whole Microsoft account, "shared across your files and photos in OneDrive, attachments in Outlook.com, and your Microsoft 365 apps." Same number, different meaning, because a year of email attachments eats the space your notebooks would have used.

XDA's open-source list prints one limit for one app and calls the rest cross-platform without naming a platform. Standard Notes and Joplin are on that list and they deserve to be, but "all platforms" is a claim you should make the download page prove.

None of this makes the lists useless. It makes the price column a hint about the tier and the platform line a hint about the intent.

Questions People Ask

What's a good cross-platform app for handwritten notes? OneNote, on the free tier. It's on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and the web, and of the free apps on five surfaces it's the one built around a pen rather than a keyboard. Linux gets the browser version. The handwriting piece linked above compares the conversion to text per app.

What app is replacing OneNote? Nothing is. Microsoft's own versions page says OneNote for Windows 10 reached end of support in October 2025, and the desktop OneNote, the one that was once called OneNote 2016, continues and is "the only version of OneNote that supports local notebook storage on your PC's hard drive." The search engine's answer is Notion, which is the workspace answer rather than a replacement for ink.

Is Evernote cross-platform? By the app count, yes, five surfaces. By the free tier, no, because sync is one device until you pay. It's the clearest case in the matrix of an app being cross-platform in the store and single-platform in your pocket.

What note app can be shared with others? Simplenote publishes a note to a public link and shares lists for free. Notion's free plan allows ten guests. Apple Notes shares through iCloud, and the person on Windows opens it at icloud.com/notes, though Apple's page says the web version only works with notes stored in iCloud and not with notes in a Gmail or Yahoo account.

Which app on iPhone lets me share notes with others? Apple Notes, using the sharing built into the app. If the other person is on Android, they get a browser tab and not an app, so for a shared list across an iPhone and an Android phone I'd pick Simplenote instead.

Why is the Notes app shutting down? It isn't, on any platform I checked. The likeliest source of that question is the Windows 10 OneNote end of support above, which retired one Windows version and left every other version running.

What I'd Do

Count your surfaces first, including the one you'll own next year. If any of them is Linux, or your phone and laptop have different makers, cross Apple Notes and Google Keep off before feel comes into it, and treat Evernote as a paid app.

Then decide whether the notes are text. If they are, put Standard Notes or Simplenote on every device this week, for nothing, and see whether you miss formatting. If you do, that's when Joplin or Obsidian earns a look, and the Obsidian sync grid above tells you whether your pair of operating systems gets a free route or a $4 one.

And whichever you pick, open the download page yourself on the day. One price on the ranking lists was $2 off the vendor's, one plan name had disappeared, and one "multi-platform" pick runs on exactly one maker's hardware.