I love the notes app. I’m on there daily, whether it’s to write out my assignments of the day, jot down a quote to remember later, or add to my running Christmas list. I’ve always wished I could organize it a little easier, though, and did some research this week on an alternative option. What I landed on was “Milanote,” my new favorite website.
There are so many things I already love about it, and most of them have to do with the visuals. There’s a home page that looks like a little pegboard, and here you can add “boards” with customizable, widget-like covers. You can also easily design titles, little notes, to-do lists, quotes, images, arrows, and the list goes on! My homepage has a central to-do-list, a quote, some images, and 7 colorful boards so far.
The boards themselves are where the design really shines. It has so many options of ways to customize the space: more notes and list options, tables, and options to embed video, audio, or maps. The “Pinterest” of it all comes in when I realized I could add images and colorful elements to create multimedia moodboards. I’ve now gone through my notes app and created dynamic representations of my lists; I have a food-themed meal tracker table, a moodboard of what I want my wall decor to look like, and a categorized wishlist. The most intriguing part of these boards is the template options: they have an extensive list of any possible use you could have for this, and there are customizable and interesting templates to insert for each. For example, the list ranges from “Fashion Design Brief” to “Software Development Technical Architecture” to “Character Relationship Map” for writing. I’m obsessed.
Everything is so user-friendly, and the mechanics just make sense to my brain. The options are all simple but adorable. Plus, the things that really make Milanote stand out are that it’s totally free (a holy grail for college students) and hasn’t been taken over by AI (like sites such as Notion). I’ve literally only been using it for a couple of days, but I’m already so invested in this website and truly recommend it. All you students, visualizers, moodboard-lovers, or listmakers, check Milanote out!