I’ve been trying to find a decent way to capture ideas during my weekly brainstorming sessions with the content team. For months, the workflow was messy—sticky notes, voice memos, half-finished Google Docs. Then I remembered a free AI note‑taking app I’d tested a while back: tidenote. Since we were looking for the best free AI note taking app 2026 could offer, I decided to give it a proper trial during one real, chaotic brainstorm.
Here’s how it went—and where it didn’t quite deliver.
How I used tidenote to capture a Brainstorm session
We were riffing on content ideas for an upcoming product launch. I opened tidenote on my phone, hit record, and let the AI transcribe. The interface is clean enough that you don’t waste time hunting for buttons. Within seconds, it started picking up the conversation—multiple speakers, overlapping sentences, the occasional laugh.
The AI turned our 45‑minute ramble into a text transcript. But the real test was the summary: tidenote condensed the key points into bullet groups. It caught the three main themes we discussed, which saved me from relistening to the whole thing. For a quick recap, that’s useful.
One hiccup: it kept tagging a colleague’s name as “Anchor Text” instead of “Andrew”—probably because I’d pasted an Anchor Text link into the session notes earlier. That’s a small friction, but something to watch if you’re handling technical terms.
Does it replace a proper brainstorming tool?
Not entirely. During a brainstorm, you often want to see connections between ideas, sketch rough diagrams, or rearrange thoughts on a virtual whiteboard. tidenote doesn’t do that. It’s great at recording and summarising, but if you need visual mind‑mapping, you’ll still want a dedicated tool like beanly or a physical board.
For pure note capture, though, it’s solid. I liked that I could search the transcript later using keywords—something that feels obvious but is often clunky in other apps. And the fact that it’s free (for now) puts it in the running for “best free AI note taking app” on a budget in 2026.
A tradeoff worth noting
The AI summary missed one subtle disagreement in the room. Two people had opposing views on the launch timeline, and the summary simply listed one idea without noting the tension. For meeting minutes, that’s acceptable. For deep brainstorm analysis, it’s a limitation. I wouldn’t trust it as the sole record of creative decisions.
Organising notes after the session
Once the raw notes were generated, I exported them into my Journal folder (tidenote lets you tag and organise). I also used the “Notes” section to drop in a few quick follow‑up thoughts. That part was more manual than I’d like—there’s no auto‑tagging or suggestion system yet. Still, it beat retyping everything.
I also tried the Chinese interface briefly (it’s called 小片刻 in that region). The translation felt natural, and the AI handled mixed‑language input surprisingly well. If you or your team switch between languages during a brainstorm, it’s worth a look.
The real question: should you use tidenote for brainstorming?
If your definition of a brainstorm is “talk a lot and then write down what happened,” tidenote works fine. If you need something more interactive or visual, keep it as a backup recorder. I’ll keep using it for quick capture, but I’m not ready to retire my whiteboard markers yet. That’s the honest take.
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