A free online notebook for students (no account, works offline)

Paper notebooks get lost, run out of pages and cannot be searched the night before an exam. Most digital notebooks fix that, but ask for an account, a school email or a subscription first.

A free online notebook for students can be simpler: open a browser tab and start typing. NoteDraft is a notepad that keeps every note in your own browser, so there is nothing to sign up for, and once you have visited it once it works offline too — handy in a lecture hall with patchy Wi-Fi.

Set up your online notebook

1. One note per lecture or topic Start a new note for each lecture, seminar or revision topic. The first line becomes the note's title, so make it something you will recognise later, such as Biology L4 — Cell respiration.
2. Use headings for structure Break a note into sections with headings (H1–H3 from the toolbar or the / menu). A long note with clear headings is far easier to revise from than one continuous wall of text.
3. Pin the modules you are taking now Pin a note to keep it at the top of the list. Pin this term's module overviews or reading lists and let older notes drop below.
4. Search instead of scrolling Every note sits in a searchable list on the left (on a phone, tap the list button at the top left). Type a word like "mitochondria" and find the lecture it came up in.

Online note-taking methods that work in a notepad

You do not need special software to use a proven note-taking method. Headings and lists are enough.

The outline method

Write main topics as top-level bullets and indent the supporting points beneath them. In NoteDraft, press Tab to indent a list item and Shift+Tab to bring it back out. It suits lectures that follow a clear structure.

The Cornell method

Cornell notes split a page into three parts: your main notes, a column of cue questions or keywords, and a short summary at the bottom. In a notepad, use three headings instead of columns:

• Notes — what you write during the lecture
• Cues — questions and keywords you add afterwards, to test yourself with
• Summary — two or three sentences in your own words

When revising, read only the cues and try to answer them before checking the notes.

Checklists for assignments and revision

Type [] at the start of a line and press Enter to start a checklist. List every assignment with its hand-in date written into the line, or every topic on a revision plan, and tick items as you finish them. Ticked items are struck through, so you can see progress at a glance. There is more on this in how to make a to-do list online.

Diagrams and handwritten maths

Typed notes struggle with a labelled diagram or a worked equation. For those, open the sketch pad and draw with a mouse, a finger or a stylus. Paste a screenshot of a lecture slide and write over it, then export a PNG and add it to your note as a picture (up to 2MB each). See writing notes by hand online for tips.

Hand work in, and keep a copy

The Download button at the top saves a note as Markdown, plain text or a web page, or as a PDF through your browser's print dialog. That covers most hand-in portals and gives you a copy outside the browser.

Every so often, use Back up all notes to save a single file containing every note and drawing. Keep it somewhere safe, such as your university cloud drive. How to save notes online without an account covers why this matters.

The honest limits

No sync between laptop and phone

Notes live in the browser you wrote them in. To move a note to another device, open its share link there, or restore a backup file on the other device.

Shared and school computers

On a library or lab computer, your notes stay in that browser after you leave. Before you go, share the note to yourself as a link or download a backup, then move the notes to the Trash and empty it so the next person cannot read them.

No group editing

Two people cannot type in one note at once. For a group project document, a hosted, account-based app is the better tool.