best note-taking app for STEM students?

Notion is what I've been using for two years of engineering and it handles STEM content reasonably well. The equation block supports LaTeX inline and in display mode, code blocks have syntax highlighting for most major languages, and you can embed diagrams from other tools or paste images directly. The organizational flexibility is the real strength: I have a database for each course with entries for each lecture, linked to problem sets and lab reports. The relational database features let you cross-reference concepts across courses, which is surprisingly useful when subjects overlap.

The downside is that Notion isn't great for handwritten diagrams or quick freehand sketches. If you do a lot of hand-drawn physics diagrams in lecture, you'll want a tablet app alongside it. I use Notion for structured notes and a simple drawing app on my iPad for anything visual, then paste the images into the relevant Notion page afterward.

Also, Notion can be slow with very large pages. If you're the type to put an entire semester's notes in one document, split them up by week or topic. Otherwise the loading times will frustrate you.

For physics specifically, I'd look at Obsidian with the Excalidraw plugin. Obsidian handles LaTeX natively through MathJax, has excellent code block support with syntax highlighting, and the Excalidraw integration lets you draw diagrams directly in your notes without switching apps. Everything is stored as plain Markdown files locally, so it's fast, private, and you own your data completely.

The learning curve is steeper than Notion, especially the plugin setup, but for a physics major who's comfortable with LaTeX the investment pays off quickly. The bidirectional linking and graph view features are also incredible for connecting concepts across courses and seeing how ideas relate to each other.

I've tried pretty much every note-taking app as a CS student who also takes math-heavy electives, so here's my rundown for STEM use cases specifically.

Obsidian is my top recommendation and I agree with @andrea_f on this. Here's why it works so well for STEM. First, native LaTeX rendering is fast and reliable. You can write inline equations with single dollar signs and display equations with double dollar signs, exactly like you would in a LaTeX document. Second, the plugin ecosystem is enormous. Excalidraw for diagrams, Dataview for querying your notes like a database, Templater for creating standardized note formats for labs and problem sets. Third, everything is local Markdown files. This means you can open your notes in any text editor, version control them with Git if you want, and never worry about a company shutting down and taking your notes with it.

Notion, which @luca_p recommended, is solid for organization but I find it too slow for real-time note-taking during a fast-paced lecture. The latency between typing and rendering is noticeable, especially with equations. It's better as a knowledge base you build after class than a live note-taking tool during class.

For anyone who uses a tablet, Goodnotes or Notability are excellent for handwritten STEM notes. The ability to write equations and draw diagrams by hand and then search them later using handwriting recognition is genuinely useful for physics and engineering. I know several physics students who handwrite everything in Goodnotes during lecture and then create typed summaries in Obsidian afterward for review. That two-tool workflow sounds redundant but it actually doubles as a study technique because the act of summarizing forces you to process the material actively rather than just transcribing.

Jupyter Notebooks deserve a mention too. If your physics course involves any computational work (and increasingly they do), Jupyter lets you mix explanatory text in Markdown, LaTeX equations, executable code, and output plots all in one document. It's not a general note-taking app, but for computational physics labs it's unbeatable.

My blunt recommendation: start with Obsidian, install the LaTeX and Excalidraw plugins on day one, and give it two weeks before you judge it. The initial setup takes about an hour but once it's configured it's the most capable tool I've found for STEM note-taking.

Not a STEM student myself but I've heard consistently great things about Obsidian from my engineering and physics friends. One thing I'd add regardless of which app you pick: create a consistent template for each type of note (lecture, lab, problem set, reading) from the very start of the semester. Having a structure you fill in rather than a blank page every time saves so much time over the course of a term and makes review way easier because everything is organized the same way. @chris_patel's suggestion about the Templater plugin in Obsidian is perfect for automating this.

Another Obsidian user here confirming everything @chris_patel said. The Git integration alone makes it worth it for anyone who's comfortable with version control. I have my entire vault backed up to a private repository and can access my notes from any device by cloning the repo. Plus you get full revision history for free. Can't go back to anything else after experiencing that level of control over my own data.