Craft App Review: Apple Award-Winning Note-Taking Tool

Craft is a powerful note-taking and writing app known for its design and features. Apple named it Mac App of the Year in 2021, highlighting how "Craft creatively enabled efficiency and artistry through a notebook with seemingly limitless capabilities." The app provides a seamless experience across devices, consolidating notes, documents, tasks, and collaboration in a single workspace. Below, we'll explore Craft's features – from cross-platform sync to robust organizational tools – and explain why getting Craft via Setapp is smart for Mac users. With Setapp, you not only get Craft as part of a curated suite of top Mac apps, but also enjoy automatic updates, a single subscription for multiple productivity tools, and the convenience of trying out other premium apps alongside Craft.

Seamless Cross-Device Experience

One of Craft's standout advantages is its seamless experience across devices. Whether you're using a Mac, iPad, iPhone, Web app, or Windows client, your notes stay perfectly in sync. You can start writing a document on your Mac, quickly add an idea on your phone, then finish editing on an iPad – no hassle or loss of data. Fast and reliable synchronization keeps your content up-to-date across all devices. Even offline, you can continue writing, and everything syncs once reconnected. Altogether, this cross-platform flexibility makes Craft ideal for users in the Apple ecosystem and beyond.

Integrated Notes, Tasks, and Daily Planning

Craft isn't just for note-taking – it also helps you plan and organize your day without needing separate apps. You can embed to-do tasks directly inside your notes, keeping your actionable items right next to your ideas and reference material. For example, in a project document, you might write a brief, add a checklist of tasks, assign items to colleagues, and jot down related notes all in one place. This tight integration of notes and tasks means no more bouncing between your notes app and your task manager – Craft keeps everything in context.

For daily planning and journaling, Craft offers a Daily Notes feature that acts like a planner or diary. Each day gets its own note (automatically organized in a calendar), so you can capture your schedule, to-dos, and reflections in a single daily document. Craft even syncs with your Apple Calendar to pull in events alongside your notes. This means you can view your meetings and deadlines directly inside Craft and set reminders on tasks, all without needing to switch apps. Users love this "dashboard and diary in one" approach – as one user noted, "Craft is the first thing I open to plan my day and the last thing I use to jot down my final thoughts." By keeping to-dos, calendar events, and notes together, Craft helps you stay on top of your schedule and ideas in a unified workflow.

Flexible Organization with Blocks, Spaces, and More

Craft provides flexible organization options for your notes and documents, adapting to your personal style of thinking. At the core of Craft is its block-based editor: every paragraph, checklist item, image, or embed is its own "block" that you can easily rearrange or nest into sub-pages. This "write first, structure later" approach lets you capture ideas freely without worrying about hierarchy upfront. Each block can be dragged around or grouped as your thoughts evolve, making it easy to restructure a document or break out details into nested pages when needed.

On a larger scale, Craft offers multiple layers of organization: Spaces, Folders, Collections, and Tags. You can create separate Spaces for different aspects of your life (say, Work, Personal, School, etc.), each with its own set of documents and a custom icon. Inside a space, you can use traditional folders to organize documents into a hierarchy, and add tags for cross-cutting categories. Craft essentially allows you to choose any approach that suits your needs: organize with spaces, folders, and tags, or build rich databases with collections. Collections are an advanced feature that allows you to create spreadsheet-like tables inside Craft – perfect for structured data like a reading list, project tracker, or CRM, all within your notes.

No matter your organizational style – minimal folders or elaborate second-brain systems – Craft adapts. Everything is searchable and linkable: create wiki-style links between pages or specific blocks, so nothing falls through the cracks. To quickly capture information, Craft offers a Web Clipper extension and the option to email content directly into your workspace. When you find an article or receive an important email, forward it to Craft in seconds – no copy-paste required. Craft becomes a central home for all your notes, tasks, and references: organized, yet flexible.

Rich Media and Visual Customization

While Craft excels at text, it also handles media. Drag in images, attach PDFs, or embed YouTube videos, tweets, and Figma designs – all previewed in your note. There's support for code snippets, and you can create visual cards for bookmarks or nested sub-pages. This multimedia support makes Craft suitable for project docs, wikis, or scrapbooks.

What really sets Craft apart is how beautifully you can style your content. Craft provides over 100 ready-made themes and styles to instantly change the look and feel of your documents. Whether you want a minimal clean page, a bold and colorful spread, or something calming for your personal journal, it's basically one click to apply a style that suits your mood. You can even set a default theme so every new note starts with your favorite aesthetic. The customization doesn't stop at themes – you have control over typography, card styles, and more, making it "unmistakably yours." As one user enthuses, "I can make my notes not only functional but visually pleasing – which really motivates me to stay organized." Craft's attention to UI details is one reason it won an Apple award; it demonstrates that productivity tools can be both powerful and visually appealing.

For free-form thinking, Craft includes an infinite Whiteboard. Whiteboards offer a canvas beyond the standard page – add and connect text, images, links, and sticky notes freely. This setup is ideal for brainstorming, mind mapping, or project planning when a linear document won't suffice. Use a whiteboard to sketch a roadmap, create a mood board, or visually arrange ideas. When finished, you can share the entire board as easily as a document. Having both structured documents and free-form whiteboards in one app is invaluable for visual thinkers.

Collaboration and Sharing Options

In today's connected world, a notes app needs to do more than keep things private – it should let you share and collaborate when you want to. Craft makes this seamless. You can invite others to collaborate on a Craft document for real-time editing and brainstorming, which is great for teams or class projects. Craft supports inline comments and reactions, allowing teammates to discuss content directly within the document.

When it comes to sharing your work more broadly, Craft really shines by making sharing feel like a natural extension of the writing process. You can publish a Craft document to the web with one click, preserving your note's formatting and turning it into a beautiful web page. This is perfect for publishing blog posts, newsletters, or knowledge base articles directly from Craft. If you prefer more controlled sharing, you can create shareable links (either live-updating or snapshot) to send your notes to anyone – even if they don't use Craft. You decide whether the link is read-only, allows comments, or grants edit access. In all cases, your document will appear clean, readable, and exactly as you styled it, which is a significant advantage over simply copying text into an email.

Craft offers extensive export options. Export notes as PDF, Markdown, plain text, Word, or TextBundle. This makes it easy to use Craft with other tools or keep backups in your preferred format. Whether collaborating or sharing, your notes are never locked in one app.

AI-Powered Assistance (On Your Terms)

Modern productivity apps are increasingly integrating AI, and Craft is no exception. Craft includes a built-in AI Assistant that can help speed up your writing and organizing tasks. With a simple prompt, you can have Craft's AI summarize long documents, check your grammar, or even translate text into other languages. If you're stuck with writer's block, the AI can generate content ideas or rewrite a paragraph in a different tone for you. It can also answer questions based on your existing notes – almost like having a personal research assistant that knows your knowledge base.

What's great is that Craft gives you control over the AI and your privacy. You can choose between using cloud-based AI services or opt for private, on-device models (like Llama 2) that keep everything offline. If you're handling sensitive information, you may prefer to use the local AI model, ensuring your data never leaves your device. Craft's approach ensures "your content stays yours" – you get the convenience of AI features without sacrificing privacy. With a generous allowance of AI actions (Craft's Plus plan and Setapp version currently offer a few hundred AI requests per month), most users will find plenty of AI help available to boost their productivity.

Pricing: Craft Free vs Plus (and Why Setapp Is a Great Deal)

Craft is available for free download, which is great for trying out the basics. The free plan offers full editing capabilities and is ideal for occasional users. However, power users will likely want to upgrade to Craft Plus, the premium subscription, to unlock the app's full potential. Craft Plus (for individuals) costs approximately $8 per month (or around $5 per month if paid annually). The Plus plan increases your storage limit (up to 50 GB or more) and includes advanced features such as AI integration, high upload limits, and sharing options like custom domains and advanced link analytics. There are also higher tiers (Craft Business/Team plans) available for organizations, but for most individuals, the Plus plan is the key to accessing all features.

Now, before you pull out your credit card for Craft, here's a pro tip: you can get Craft as part of a Setapp subscription. Setapp is a popular Mac app subscription service that provides access to over 260 Mac and iOS apps for a single monthly fee. Craft is included in Setapp's catalog, which means if you subscribe to Setapp (around $9.99/month, with a free 7-day trial), you automatically get Craft's full Plus-tier features as part of that subscription. In other words, the Setapp version of Craft unlocks everything – you don't need a separate Craft Plus plan. This is a fantastic deal if you're someone who uses multiple productivity apps. For roughly the cost of Craft alone, Setapp also gives you a whole suite of other top-rated apps (from task managers to photo editors and beyond) under one membership.

By getting Craft via Setapp, you not only support the developers through Setapp's model, but you also might save money and discover other useful tools in the process. (And if you use our referral link to Setapp, it helps support our site at no extra cost to you 😉.) Of course, if Craft is the only app you need, you can still use the free version or pay for Plus directly – but many users find the Setapp bundle to be the best value.

Final Thoughts

Craft has proven itself to be more than just another notes app – it's a comprehensive platform for writing, planning, and organizing all in one place. Its blend of elegant design and powerful functionality has earned it a devoted following and recognition from Apple. As one reviewer put it, "Craft is way more functional than Apple or Google Notes while being much easier to use than Notion." That balance of power and simplicity is where Craft truly shines. Whether you need a simple place to jot down ideas or a robust system to manage projects and knowledge, Craft can scale to your needs.

If you're a Mac or iOS user looking for an app that can handle your notes, documents, tasks, and collaboration with ease, Craft is absolutely worth a try. Its free version lets you dip your toes in, and the Plus features unlock a world of possibilities for power users. And remember, you can always grab Craft through Setapp to get the most bang for your buck while enjoying a collection of other great apps alongside it. With its award-winning experience and steady stream of new features, Craft stands out as one of the best note-taking apps on the market in 2025 – a delightful tool that can boost your productivity and creativity every day.