The Best Elephant Alternatives: Discover Your Perfect Notetaking App
Elephant is a beloved notetaking application, praised for its classic interface, commitment to user privacy with no accounts or clouds, and its longevity-focused design. It stores notes in plain files and folders, ensuring no databases or migrations, and offers cross-platform support for Mac, Windows, and Linux. However, even with its appealing minimalist approach and open-source nature, users sometimes seek alternatives that offer different feature sets, cloud integrations, or specific platform support. If you're looking for an alternative to Elephant that better suits your evolving notetaking needs, you've come to the right place.
Top Elephant Alternatives
While Elephant excels in its simplicity and privacy, a wide array of notetaking apps offer unique advantages. Whether you need robust cloud sync, advanced formatting, or specific integrations, there's an Elephant alternative for you.
Google Keep
Google Keep is a fantastic free alternative to Elephant, especially for users deeply integrated into the Google ecosystem. It's available on a wide range of platforms including Mac, Windows, Linux, Web, Android, and iOS. Key features include color-coding notes, inserting images, creating lists, geo-fencing, shareable notes, and search by color, making it a versatile tool for quick notes and reminders. While Elephant prioritizes local storage, Google Keep offers seamless cloud sync across many devices.
Evernote
Evernote is a powerful freemium cross-platform app designed for comprehensive note-taking, organizing, and archiving, making it a robust Elephant alternative for those needing more features. Available on Mac, Windows, Web, Android, and iPhone, it allows users to create notes that can include text, images, and audio. Its features like cloud sync, text formatting, hyperlinks, screenshot OCR, and web clipper extend far beyond Elephant's minimalist approach, offering a more feature-rich experience.
Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft OneNote offers a digital notebook experience, providing a centralized place for notes and information, and serves as a strong freemium alternative to Elephant for users seeking more organizational flexibility. It's available on Mac, Windows, Android, and iPhone. OneNote's hierarchical structure, visual organization, handwritten notes support, web clipper, and cloud sync make it incredibly versatile. Unlike Elephant's plain file approach, OneNote allows for embedded media, drawing, and robust formatting, catering to diverse notetaking styles.
Simplenote
Simplenote, made by the creators of WordPress, is an excellent free and open-source Elephant alternative for users who appreciate simplicity but desire cloud synchronization. Available on Mac, Windows, Linux, Web, Android, and iPhone, Simplenote focuses on an easy way to keep notes, lists, and ideas, ensuring they stay updated across all your devices. Features like cloud sync, Markdown support, search by tags, and a clean, minimalistic design align closely with Elephant's no-bloat philosophy but add the convenience of cross-device syncing.
Joplin
Joplin is a fantastic free and open-source note-taking and to-do application with robust synchronization capabilities, making it a compelling Elephant alternative for privacy-conscious users. Available on Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, and iPhone, Joplin stands out with its End-to-End Encryption, Markdown support, and ability to sync with various cloud services like Dropbox and Nextcloud. While Elephant keeps notes local, Joplin offers encrypted cloud sync and a web clipper, expanding its utility while maintaining a strong focus on privacy and user control.
Zim
Zim brings the concept of a wiki to your desktop, offering a unique free and open-source Elephant alternative for organizing information hierarchically. Available on Mac, Windows, Linux, and BSD, Zim allows users to store information, link pages, and edit with WYSIWYG markup or lightweight syntax. Like Elephant, it focuses on plain text files and offers offline access, but Zim's wiki-like interface and features like export to HTML and LaTeX, file versioning, and Git integration provide a more structured approach to knowledge management.
Standard Notes
Standard Notes is a simple, private, and open-source notes app that serves as an excellent Elephant alternative, particularly for those prioritizing security. Available as a freemium offering on Mac, Windows, Linux, Web, Android, and iPhone, it allows users to write and sync notes across all devices with End-to-End Encryption (E2E). While Elephant emphasizes local privacy, Standard Notes extends this with secure cloud sync, Markdown support, and extensibility via plugins, providing a robust, encrypted environment for your notes.
CherryTree
CherryTree is a hierarchical note-taking application, providing a free and open-source Elephant alternative for users who prefer a tree-like organizational structure. Available on Windows, Linux, and PortableApps.com, CherryTree features rich text and syntax highlighting, storing data in a single XML or SQLite file. While Elephant uses plain files, CherryTree's hierarchical structure, infinite depth, and features like encryption, Markdown support, and export to HTML and PDF offer a more advanced organizational system for complex notes and knowledge bases.
Turtl
Turtl is a freemium and open-source notetaking app that excels in organizing various types of information, including bookmarks, passwords, and files, making it a secure Elephant alternative. Available on Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, Chrome, and Firefox, Turtl features End-to-End Encryption, Markdown support, and secure cloud sync. While Elephant is strictly local, Turtl provides encrypted cloud syncing across devices, file sharing, and real-time collaboration, appealing to users who need secure, synchronized access to diverse data types.
NoteLedge
NoteLedge Cloud is a versatile multimedia note-taking app, offering a commercial Elephant alternative for those who integrate visual and audio content into their notes. Available on Mac, Windows, Android, and iPhone, NoteLedge allows users to take notes, sketch ideas, record audio and video, and organize multimedia. Unlike Elephant's text-focused approach, NoteLedge's features like audio recording, drag-and-drop, handwritten notes, live screen recording, and support for Apple Pencil cater to creative and visual notetakers who need a rich, interactive canvas.
Choosing the best Elephant alternative depends entirely on your specific needs. Whether you prioritize advanced features, seamless cloud synchronization, enhanced security, or a particular organizational structure, the diverse range of options available ensures you can find the perfect notetaking app to complement your workflow.