CoreNotes
For high-school and college students

A Cornell notes app that runs all five Rs — not just the two columns.

Every other app gives you the layout and stops there: reducing, reciting, reflecting and reviewing are left to your willpower. CoreNotes moves each note through all five stages and schedules the reviews for you. It opens in a browser tab — nothing to install, and it keeps working when the wifi does not.

Start a Cornell note

Or read the five Rs first

No adverts, no tracking, no analytics — on the app or on this site. Your notes are written to your own browser first and synced to your account so they reach your other devices. We can read what is stored there and we don’t; the privacy page says exactly what we hold rather than dressing it up. Export everything as Markdown or a JSON backup whenever you want, and delete the account in one click.

The five Rs — a sequence, not a template

Every note in CoreNotes carries a stage: recorded, reduced, recited, reflected, reviewed. You can see at a glance which of your notes are still sitting at stage one — which is exactly the step most students skip.

  1. Record
    Write main ideas in the Notes column during the lecture. Telegraphic sentences, symbols, abbreviations.
  2. Reduce
    Within 24 hours, condense your notes into cue questions in the left column.
  3. Recite
    Cover the notes column and recite answers from memory using only the cues. One button covers it; one uncovers it.
  4. Reflect
    Write a 3–4 sentence synthesis in the Summary box. How does this connect to what you already know?
  5. Review
    Cues come back on a schedule instead of all at once the night before. The Review tab shows only what is due today.

Everything the method needs

Cornell editor
Asymmetric cue/notes columns separated by a red rule. Recite mode masks the notes column for active recall. Auto-saves as you type.
Spaced review
Cues come back on an expanding schedule: 1, 3, 7, 14, 30 then 60 days. Mark one Got it and it moves up an interval; mark it Missed and it drops back to day one.
Pomodoro timer
A 25-minute focus timer that stays running on every view, with a 5-minute break and a distraction tally you tap each time your attention wanders.
168-hour planner
Pauk's fixed-commitment calendar as a full seven-day, twenty-four-hour grid. Block out classes, shifts and sleep first, then see what study time is actually left.
Vocabulary bank
Highlight any word while editing to add it to your vocab bank. Three-part word cards: the definition, the sentence you met it in, and one sentence of your own.
Multi-note compare
Put two, three, four or six Cornell sheets side by side. Compare lecture notes against reading notes, or sweep a whole topic before an exam.

What the alternatives ask for first

These are all good tools, built for different jobs. The difference is what each one wants from you before you can take a single Cornell note.

ToolWhat it requires
Obsidian Install the desktop or mobile app and create a vault folder on disk. The Cornell layout is not built in — you assemble it from a template or a community plugin, and maintain it yourself.
Anki Install the app, then build a deck of cards separately from your lecture notes. Its scheduling is superb, but the cards and the notes are two different bodies of work.
Notion Create an account and sign in. Your pages live on Notion's servers rather than your machine, and the Cornell layout is a template you build.
CoreNotes Sign in and start. Nothing to install and no template to build: the Cornell layout and the five Rs are the app, and it keeps working offline.

Straight answers

Does it work offline?

Yes. A service worker caches the app and each of its screens on your first visit, so it opens on a train, in a basement lecture theatre, or on school Wi-Fi that has given up. Add it to your home screen and it launches in its own window like an installed app.

Could I lose my work?

Your notes are in two places: this browser, and your account. Clearing your browsing data no longer loses them — signing in again brings them back. The gap worth knowing about is work written offline that has not synced yet, so open the app on a connection before wiping a machine. And a JSON backup is still the copy nobody else holds; it is one click.

Can I get my notes out again?

Any note exports as a plain .md Markdown file, and Export Markdown writes out every notebook in one go. Separately, a full JSON backup captures everything — notes, notebooks, vocabulary, schedule, review history — and imports straight back into the app. Nothing is trapped in a proprietary format.

What's the catch?

There isn’t one. No adverts, no subscription, no upsell, no telemetry and no analytics. The one thing we ask for is an account, so your notes can follow you between devices — and you can delete it, and everything in it, whenever you like.

Take your next lecture in Cornell

Works in any modern browser. Nothing to install, no cost, and your notes on every device you use.

Start a Cornell note