The best second brain apps for Android in 2026

The short answer: Notion for structured projects, Obsidian for linked notes you own as files, Google Keep for quick free notes, Readwise Reader for reading and highlighting, and Todoist for tasks. Noodle, the app we make, is on the list too, as the pick for saving videos, posts, photos and voice notes on an Android phone and finding them by what they say. Take our view of it with that in mind; we've tried to be as hard on it as on the rest.

A "second brain" here means a place where the things you want to remember go, so you can find them later. It's the idea behind Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain. Some apps below are for writing notes, some for saving what you find, one for reading and one for tasks.

How we picked

We judged every app on the same five points, chosen for what people do with a second brain on a phone:

1. Getting things in from an Android phone (sharing from other apps, quick notes, photos).
2. Finding things again later.
3. Whether it works offline on Android, and where your stuff is kept.
4. Whether it also works on a computer or an iPhone.
5. What it costs.

We looked at 10 apps. Facts come from each app's own pricing pages and help centers, checked in October 2026 and linked in each section. We use Noodle every day; for the others we relied on their documentation rather than claims about how they feel to use, and we left out opinions we couldn't point to. Prices change often, so check each app's site before you pay.

The picks at a glance

As of October 2026.

And the third and fourth points side by side:

Notion: best for projects and databases

Notion is a workspace of pages and databases. You can build a reading list with ratings, a project tracker, a recipe database or a wiki for your team, and share any page with someone else.

• Best at: structure. A book list where each book has an author, a rating and a status, shown as a table one day and a board the next.
• Falls short: building the system can take longer than using it. On the free plan, offline means choosing pages to download; paid plans also keep your recents and favorites. Notion AI is a limited trial on Free and Plus and fully included from Business.
• Price: free for individuals, with paid plans. See Notion's pricing.
• Skip it if: you mostly want to catch things quickly on your phone and never arrange them.

Our longer take: Noodle vs Notion.

Obsidian: best for linked notes you own

Obsidian keeps your notes as plain text files in a folder on your device. You link notes to each other, see the links as a graph, and add features through community plugins. It needs no account and works fully offline.

• Best at: owning your notes for good. A note on a book links to notes on its ideas, and all of it is ordinary files you can open with anything.
• Falls short: it takes setup. Keeping your phone and computer in step means paying for Obsidian Sync or setting up your own sync. Some community plugins are desktop-only. Saving a YouTube video gives you a link, not what's said in it.
• Price: free. Sync is $4 a month billed yearly ($5 monthly) and Publish is $8 a month billed yearly; a commercial license is optional. See Obsidian's pricing.
• Skip it if: you don't want to set anything up.

More: Noodle vs Obsidian.

Evernote: best for an all-round notebook

Evernote is where many people's second brain started. It clips web pages, scans documents, searches the words in images and PDFs, and keeps notebooks, tags and tasks together. Newer versions add an AI assistant, search by meaning and meeting notes, all running on Evernote's servers.

• Best at: the paper pile. Scan a letter on your phone and find it later by a word on the page.
• Falls short: the free plan is small (50 notes, one notebook, one device), so real use means a subscription. Offline notes have been on every plan, free included, since 2024 (Evernote's post).
• Price: a free plan, then Starter and Advanced, with a 7-day trial. See Evernote's plans.
• Skip it if: you don't want to pay for a notes app.

More: Noodle vs Evernote.

Google Keep: best for quick, free notes

Keep is the sticky note of the group: quick notes, checklists, photos, drawings, voice recordings with the words written out, and reminders, in a colorful grid. Grab image text pulls the words out of a photo, and you can share a note with family and edit it together. Google has been adding Gemini features to Keep, which run in Google's cloud and some of which need a paid Google plan.

• Best at: speed. It's free, probably already on your phone, and a shared shopping list just works.
• Falls short: labels are the only way to organize, and a saved link stays a link, so you can't search what's inside a video or an article.
• Price: free; notes count toward your Google account storage.
• Skip it if: you want to find things by what they're about rather than by the words you typed.

More: Noodle vs Google Keep.

mymind: best for visual saving

mymind is a calm, ad-free place to save articles, images, products, quotes and notes. Its AI tags each save and gathers related ones into Smart Spaces, so there are no folders to keep up. In September 2025 its Android app gained headings, highlights and to-dos in notes (AlternativeTo).

• Best at: inspiration. A wall of saved chairs, recipes and color ideas that you browse by eye, on iPhone, Android, Mac and the browser, all in step.
• Falls short: past 100 saves it's a subscription. There's no collaboration, on purpose. Your saves are analyzed online by third-party models through Amazon Bedrock, per its AI usage policy, which says they aren't used for training. Its iPhone app works offline since version 4.0; we couldn't find offline use documented for Android.
• Price: free up to 100 cards, then from $4.99 a month. See mymind's pricing.
• Skip it if: you want to write long notes, or need it offline on Android.

More: Noodle vs mymind.

Readwise Reader: best for reading and highlighting

Reader is a read-later app for people who read a lot: articles, PDFs, ebooks, newsletters, RSS feeds, YouTube videos and X threads in one queue. You highlight and add notes as you read, it reads aloud, and its assistant, Ghostreader, explains passages and answers questions. Highlights flow on to Notion, Obsidian and others.

• Best at: keeping the good sentences. Highlight a line in a newsletter on your phone, and it's in your Obsidian notes that evening.
• Falls short: it's paid after a 30-day trial, and it's for things you read, not your own photos or voice notes. Its AI runs on OpenAI (Readwise says it opted out of training and OpenAI doesn't keep the text), and there's no end-to-end encryption.
• Price: part of the full Readwise plan, $9.99 a month billed yearly; the cheaper Lite plan doesn't include Reader. See Readwise's pricing.
• Skip it if: you save more videos and photos than articles.

More: Noodle vs Readwise Reader.

Capacities: best for notes as linked objects

Capacities organizes notes as objects: a book, a person, a meeting, an idea, each with its own type and fields, linked to each other. It sits between Notion's structure and Obsidian's linking, with a daily note to catch things in.

• Best at: connecting ideas without folders. Your note on a podcast links to the guest, the book they mentioned and the project it gave you an idea for.
• Falls short: the object idea takes some getting used to. The AI assistant needs a paid plan, with a small monthly allowance, and heavier use needs a further add-on. Your notes are kept on Capacities' servers.
• Price: a free plan with unlimited notes, offline use and sync on every platform; Pro and Believer are paid, and Pro has a free trial. See Capacities' pricing.
• Skip it if: you want to save things without deciding what type they are.

Microsoft OneNote: best for free-form notebooks

OneNote is a free digital notebook of notebooks, sections and pages, where you can type, draw and paste anywhere on the page. If your school or work runs on Microsoft 365, it's probably already there.

• Best at: fitting in with Word, Outlook and Teams, and handwriting with a pen on a tablet.
• Falls short: Copilot in OneNote needs a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. On Android, its chat pane and summaries were rolling out in August and September 2026 (Microsoft 365 message MC1309746). Like most notebooks here, it keeps a saved video as a link.
• Price: free with a Microsoft account; storage comes from your OneDrive.
• Skip it if: you never use Microsoft 365 and don't write by hand.

Noodle Assistant: best for saving on your phone and finding by meaning

Noodle is our app. It's for saving rather than writing. Share a YouTube video, an Instagram post, a web article, photos, a PDF or a voice note into it, and it reads what's inside: what the video says, the words in a photo, the caption on a post. It translates other languages to English, suggests a category and tags, and lets you find things later from a description. It also has Ask Noodle for questions about your saves, a short daily list called Plan, and reminders from dates it spots in your saves.

• Best at: finding a thing you saved months ago from a vague memory. Type "that bread tip for a cold kitchen" and it finds the video, even if nobody in it said "cold kitchen", and plays from that moment. Everything stays on your phone and works offline. See privacy.
• Falls short: plenty. Android only, with no iPhone, web or computer app. No sync, and backup is a file you export by hand. No sharing, no rich text, no linking notes to each other, no folders inside folders, no templates and no import from other apps. It launched in 2026, from a small team, and isn't on the Play Store yet. Reading YouTube and Instagram relies on their public pages, which can break when they change. The smart features are a one-time download of several hundred MB that works best on newer phones, and Ask's answers are simpler than big online assistants and can be wrong.
• Price: free. A paid Cloud plan (saves on every device, automatic backup) is planned but not available.
• Skip it if: you need your notes on a computer or an iPhone, or you mainly write.

Todoist: best for tasks

Todoist isn't a second brain, but your second brain needs somewhere for tasks, and Todoist is one of the best-known homes for them. Type "water the plants every Sunday" and it sets the repeat. Projects, sections, subtasks, priorities, labels, filters, sharing and links to other tools are all there. Its Ramble feature turns a spoken list into tasks, in 38 languages.

• Best at: anything with a date, a time or a repeat, and sharing tasks with other people. On Android it has widgets, a Quick Settings tile and a Wear OS app.
• Falls short: it's a task manager, not a place for notes or saves. The free plan allows five personal projects and a week of activity history, and the calendar layout and custom reminders are on Pro.
• Price: a free plan; Pro and Business are paid. See Todoist's pricing.
• Skip it if: a short list for today is all you need.

More: Noodle's Plan vs Todoist.

Apps we left out

• Apple Notes: good, but it has no Android app.
• Samsung Notes: comes with Samsung phones, but not other Android phones.
• Logseq: an outliner of linked notes, close enough to Obsidian that we covered the idea once.
• Pocket: Mozilla shut it down in July 2025.
• Bookmark managers such as Raindrop.io: they save links well, but we kept to apps that hold notes or read what you save.

How to choose

Start with what you'll do in the app most days, not with features you might use.

• Do you write a lot, or work with others? Notion. If you'd rather own plain files, Obsidian. If you think in people, books and projects, give Capacities a week.
• Do you want something quick and free for lists? Google Keep. If your life is in Microsoft 365, OneNote.
• Do you read a lot and want to keep the best sentences? Readwise Reader.
• Do you mostly save things on an Android phone and want them found from a description, kept on the phone, for free? Noodle, if you can live with a young app and no sync. If you also use an iPhone or a laptop and save by eye, mymind.

Many people end up with two apps: one for notes or saves and one for tasks, like Todoist. Pick the pair, give it a month, and switch only if something keeps getting in your way.

For two apps side by side, read the head-to-head comparisons, starting with Noodle vs Notion.

All product names are trademarks of their owners. This post isn't endorsed by or affiliated with any of them.