Top 14 'Second-Brain-Building' Productivity Apps to explore for turning scattered notes into a knowledge asset - Goh Ling Yong
In today's world of endless information, are your brilliant ideas scattered across sticky notes, random text files, and a dozen different app accounts? You read an insightful article, listen to a game-changing podcast, and have a breakthrough thought in the shower—but when you need that information, it’s nowhere to be found. This digital chaos is a silent killer of creativity and progress.
What if you could transform this clutter into a cohesive, searchable, and invaluable personal knowledge asset? This is the promise of building a "Second Brain"—a centralized digital system for capturing, organizing, and connecting everything you learn. It’s not just about storing notes; it’s about creating a dynamic extension of your own mind that helps you think better, remember more, and generate novel ideas on demand.
The concept, popularized by experts like Tiago Forte, is revolutionary. But the first, and often most daunting, step is choosing the right tool. The app you choose will become the home for your thoughts, projects, and inspirations. That's why we’ve curated this definitive list of the top 14 "second-brain-building" apps to help you find the perfect fit for your unique style of thinking.
1. Obsidian: The Gardener's Digital Paradise
Obsidian isn't just a note-taking app; it's a knowledge-building environment. It operates on a "local-first" principle, meaning all your notes are stored as plain Markdown files on your computer. This gives you complete ownership and privacy over your data. Its core strength lies in its ability to create a dense network of linked thoughts, visualized through a stunning Graph View that shows you how your ideas connect.
This app is for the thinkers, writers, and researchers who prefer to cultivate their knowledge like a garden, planting seeds (notes) and watching them grow into interconnected insights. The real power of Obsidian comes from its passionate community and a vast library of plugins that let you customize it to do almost anything—from creating timelines and Kanban boards to integrating with Zotero for academic research.
Pro Tip: Start with the Daily Notes plugin. Use it as your daily scratchpad to capture fleeting thoughts, meeting notes, and tasks. Then, use
[[double-bracket links]]to link keywords to existing or new notes. This simple habit is the fastest way to start weaving your knowledge web.
2. Notion: The All-in-One Workspace
If Obsidian is a garden, Notion is a workshop full of powerful, modular tools. Notion has taken the productivity world by storm by combining notes, tasks, wikis, and databases into a single, highly adaptable workspace. Its superpower is the database feature, which lets you create structured information systems for anything from a project tracker to a personal CRM or a content calendar.
Notion is perfect for individuals and teams who crave structure and organization. If you love spreadsheets, Kanban boards, and calendars, you'll feel right at home. Its collaborative features are top-notch, making it an excellent choice for managing shared projects. The vast ecosystem of community-made templates means you can get a sophisticated setup running in minutes.
Example Use Case: Build your Second Brain using the PARA method (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives). Create a master database for each category. For example, your "Projects" database can have properties for status (e.g., In Progress, Done), deadlines, and a "Relation" property to link to relevant notes in your "Resources" database.
3. Roam Research: The Original Networked Thought Tool
Roam Research pioneered the mainstream adoption of bi-directional linking and is beloved by a dedicated community of "Roamans." Its philosophy is centered around reducing the friction of connecting ideas. It's an outliner at its core, which encourages you to break down complex topics into simple, nested bullet points. Every bullet point is a block that can be referenced and embedded anywhere else in your database.
Roam is designed for non-linear thinkers, researchers, and anyone who wants their notes to feel more like a conversation than a static filing cabinet. The daily notes page is the default entry point, encouraging you to capture thoughts as they happen and connect them later. This "bottom-up" approach fosters serendipity, helping you discover surprising connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.
Getting Started: Don't worry about folders or structure initially. Just open the Daily Note each day and start writing. Any time you mention a key concept, person, or project, wrap it in
[[double brackets]]. Let the network build itself organically.
4. Evernote: The Veteran Digital Filing Cabinet
Evernote is one of the original players in the digital note-taking space, and for many, it's still the most reliable digital filing cabinet. Its greatest strength has always been its powerful web clipper and robust search capabilities, including the ability to search for text inside images and PDFs. It's less about networked thought and more about being a dependable archive for everything you want to save.
Evernote is ideal for users who need a straightforward system for capturing and retrieving information, such as receipts, articles, recipes, and documents. While newer apps have surpassed it in features like backlinking, its simplicity and rock-solid sync across all platforms make it a workhorse for archiving the important parts of your digital life.
Pro Tip: Embrace a tagging system over a complex notebook structure. Instead of having dozens of specific notebooks, use broader ones (e.g., "Work," "Personal") and apply multiple descriptive tags (e.g., #receipt, #2024, #marketing, #project-alpha) to each note for a more flexible and searchable system.
5. Logseq: The Open-Source Outliner
Logseq is a fantastic open-source, privacy-first alternative to Roam Research. Like Obsidian, it stores your notes as local Markdown files, giving you full control. It combines the outliner-based, daily-note-centric workflow of Roam with the local-first ethos and plugin architecture of Obsidian, making it a powerful hybrid for knowledge management.
It's a great choice for those who love the outliner and backlinking model but prioritize open-source software and data ownership. Logseq also has excellent built-in features for task management (using #TODO) and PDF annotation, allowing you to highlight text in a PDF and link those annotations directly into your notes.
Example Use Case: When reading a research paper in Logseq's PDF viewer, highlight a key finding. Logseq will automatically pull that quote into your notes with a link back to the exact location on the page. You can then add your own commentary and link it to other relevant concepts in your graph.
6. Capacities: The Object-Based Thinking Tool
Capacities offers a unique, structured approach to building a second brain. Instead of just "notes," you create different "object types" like People, Meetings, Books, or Ideas. Each object type has its own template and properties, turning your notes into a structured database of interconnected knowledge, much like a personal Wikipedia.
This app is for the structured thinker who wants more than a blank page. If you find pure text-based systems like Obsidian a bit too unstructured, Capacities provides a beautiful and powerful middle ground. It automatically creates stunning pages for your objects, complete with timelines, image galleries, and backlinks, making your knowledge base a joy to navigate.
Pro Tip: Before you dive in, spend 15 minutes thinking about the core "types" of information you handle. Do you work with clients? Make a "Client" type. Read a lot of books? Make a "Book" type. Defining these up front will make capturing and connecting information incredibly fast.
7. Tana: The "Everything OS" for Power Users
Tana is one of the most talked-about new tools, and for good reason. It takes the outliner concept of Roam and supercharges it with "super-tags." A tag in Tana isn't just a label; it's a template that defines a data structure. For example, tagging a node with #book can automatically add fields for "Author," "Status," and "Rating." It's like having the power of Notion's databases in a lightning-fast outliner.
Tana is built for power users, system builders, and anyone who wants to create highly customized workflows for their knowledge. Its "live search" feature allows you to create dynamic queries that update in real-time, essentially turning your notes into a programmable database. It's complex but unbelievably powerful once you grasp the core concepts.
Getting Started: Use the
#symbol to tag anything. For example, write "Read Sapiens #book" on your daily note. Then, click the tag and select "Configure" to add fields likeAuthor:: Yuval Noah Harari. Now, every time you use#book, those fields will be available.
8. Mem.ai: The Self-Organizing Workspace
Mem's core philosophy is to remove the burden of organization. It uses AI to automatically connect your notes based on their content, creating a "mem" for each one and surfacing related information without you needing to manually link anything. Its goal is to create a workspace that feels like your own brain—messy on the surface but capable of making brilliant connections.
This tool is perfect for busy professionals and "stream of consciousness" note-takers who want to capture ideas quickly without worrying about where to file them. Mem's "Similar Mems" feature is a fantastic way to rediscover old ideas and foster serendipity. The integrated AI chat also lets you query your own knowledge base in natural language.
Pro Tip: Use the Mem Spotlight feature (a global keyboard shortcut) to capture any thought from anywhere on your computer without breaking your flow. Just type and save; let Mem handle the rest.
9. Craft: The Beautiful Document Creator
If aesthetics and presentation are important to you, Craft is a strong contender. It offers a visually stunning, block-based editor that makes it easy to create beautiful documents, wikis, and notes. While it supports backlinking, its real strength lies in creating well-structured, shareable content. Think of it as a more design-focused, native-app alternative to Notion.
Craft is excellent for consultants, freelancers, students, and anyone who needs to present their notes and ideas to others. Its ability to create a shared link to a beautifully formatted page is second to none. The experience on Apple devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad) is particularly polished and fluid.
Example Use Case: Create a project proposal in Craft. Use cards, rich link previews, and custom page styles to make it look professional. Then, share a public link with your client. They can view the document in their browser without needing a Craft account.
10. Reflect: The Networked Brain with a Calendar
Reflect is a premium, beautifully designed tool that blends networked thought with your daily schedule. It integrates directly with your calendar, allowing you to link your notes to specific meetings and events. It also has powerful AI features baked in, capable of summarizing notes, transcribing audio, and acting as a thinking partner.
This app is for busy executives, consultants, and professionals who live by their calendar and want a seamless way to connect their work to their thoughts. The focus is on speed, privacy (with end-to-end encryption), and a polished user experience. It's a premium tool with a premium price tag, but for the right user, it's worth every penny.
Pro Tip: After a meeting, open the corresponding calendar event in Reflect. All your attendees will be listed. You can click on any attendee's name to see all previous notes and meetings you've had with them, providing instant context.
11. Apple Notes: The Surprisingly Powerful Default
Don't sleep on the app that's already on your devices. Apple Notes has evolved from a simple notepad into a surprisingly capable tool for building a second brain. With features like tags, Smart Folders, backlinking, and shared notes, it covers the basics extremely well. Its deep integration with the Apple ecosystem makes capturing information seamless.
Apple Notes is perfect for anyone heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem who wants a simple, fast, and free solution. The "Quick Note" feature on iPad and Mac is a fantastic way to capture a thought without even opening the app. For many people, this is more than enough to build a functional and effective knowledge system.
Pro Tip: Use tags liberally (e.g.,
#idea,#project-x,#meeting). Then, create "Smart Folders" that automatically group all notes with a specific tag or combination of tags. This creates a dynamic organizational structure without the rigidity of traditional folders.
12. Microsoft OneNote: The Digital Whiteboard
OneNote's greatest strength is its freeform canvas. Unlike most other apps that are structured like a text document, a OneNote page is a virtually infinite whiteboard where you can type, draw, and paste images anywhere. This makes it an incredible tool for visual thinkers, students, and anyone who loves to brainstorm.
OneNote is ideal for users embedded in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It's perfect for taking class notes, annotating slides, and mapping out ideas visually. The organizational structure of Notebooks, Sections, and Pages is intuitive and familiar to anyone who has used a physical binder.
Example Use Case: During a team brainstorming session, share a OneNote page. Everyone can add text boxes, draw diagrams, and paste in inspiration images simultaneously. It's a collaborative digital whiteboard that's saved and searchable forever.
13. Heptabase: The Visual Knowledge Base
Heptabase is a unique tool designed specifically for learning and researching complex topics. It combines a powerful mind-mapping/whiteboard interface with a robust note-taking system. The core workflow involves breaking down articles and books into atomic "cards" and then visually arranging these cards on a whiteboard to understand the bigger picture and discover new connections.
This app is a game-changer for academic researchers, strategists, and visual learners who need to synthesize large amounts of information. It helps you move beyond linear note-taking to truly see the structure of an argument or a field of study. As someone who values visual thinking, I, Goh Ling Yong, find this approach incredibly compelling for deep work.
Pro Tip: When reading a dense article, create individual "cards" for each key claim, piece of evidence, or question. Later, drag all these cards onto a whiteboard and start clustering them, drawing arrows to show relationships. This visual process can reveal insights you'd miss in a linear document.
14. Readwise Reader: The Ultimate Input Funnel
While not a primary note-taking app, Readwise (and its read-it-later app, Reader) is an essential component of a modern second brain. Its job is to be the ultimate inbox for your knowledge. It lets you save and highlight everything you read—articles, newsletters, Twitter threads, PDFs, and even YouTube transcripts—in one unified place.
Then, the magic happens. Readwise syncs these highlights and your notes into your primary second brain app (it integrates beautifully with Obsidian, Notion, Roam, and more). It automates the "capture" phase of knowledge management, ensuring that nothing you find valuable is ever lost. It's a tool that everyone serious about building a second brain should consider.
Getting Started: Connect Readwise to your main note-taking app immediately. Then, install the browser extension and start saving and highlighting articles. The next day, you'll see those highlights automatically appear in your daily notes, ready to be linked and integrated with your existing knowledge.
Your Brain, Your System
Choosing the right app is a crucial step, but remember: the tool is only half the battle. The true power of a second brain comes from the habits and systems you build around it. The best app is the one that fits your thinking style and that you'll consistently use.
Don't fall into the trap of analysis paralysis. Pick one or two apps from this list that resonate with you and give them a genuine two-week trial. Focus on the habit of capturing and connecting, not on mastering every single feature. Here at Goh Ling Yong's blog, we believe that the journey of building a second brain is one of the most powerful investments you can make in your personal and professional growth.
So, which app are you leaning towards? Do you have a favorite that we missed? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below—let's learn from each other!
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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