Now MusicAlarm vs Notebook
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Now MusicAlarm
Wake up to your favorite music or voice recordings with this versatile alarm app. It offers holiday alarms, hourly notifications, and custom scheduling for specific workdays, ensuring you never miss an important event or appointment.
- Use iPod playlist songs as ringtone
- Voice recording alarm
- Holiday alarm
- Hourly notifications
- Set alarm for every other day/Saturday
- Music timer before sleeping
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MusicAlarm helps you wake up with the music you love and skip alarms on the days you want to rest. Key features - Play alarm music from songs, albums, artists, and playlists in your music library - Skip alarms on public holidays or your own custom holidays - Create notification sounds from your own TTS text - Generate hourly voice sets and custom chime times - Choose different chime sounds by time - Fall asleep with the music timer and stop playback automatically - Configure alarm volume, fade in, snooze, and wake check options You can make sounds such as “Time for lunch” or “It is one o’clock” and use them for alarms or regular chimes. Chimes can run on the hour or at your own custom times. Notification, sound, and media-library permissions are required. For reliable music alarms, follow the in-app setup and battery-saving guidance. Apple Watch companion View iPhone alarms, repeat schedules, holiday rules, skipped dates, and the next alarm on Apple Watch. With a confirmed iPhone connection, turn individual alarms on or off and stop or snooze alarms detected as ringing by the iPhone app. Alarm scheduling and music playback run on iPhone; Apple Watch does not play music or run standalone alarms.
Notebook
Capture your thoughts, ideas, and tasks with a versatile digital notebook. Create rich notes with text, files, audio, and video. Organize content visually, collaborate in real-time, and access everything across your devices.
- Rich note creation with text, files, audio, and video
- Checklist creation for task management
- Bookmark collection and offline reading
- Kanban-style note organization
- Real-time collaboration and sharing
- AI-powered journaling suggestions
- Cross-device and cloud synchronization
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Zoho Notebook is a free, ad-free note-taking app for students, teams and researchers: capture, find and reuse what you write down — typed notes, Apple Pencil handwriting, voice recordings with AI transcription, checklists, files and document scans in one note. Syncs across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and other devices. WHAT PEOPLE USE NOTEBOOK FOR 1. MEETING AND LECTURE NOTES Record with audio or video cards; Notebook AI turns it into searchable text with timestamps, so you jump straight to the decision instead of replaying it. Structured minutes with title, participants, decisions and action points sit in the note beside your highlights. Record screen and self at once; longer videos get chapters. 2. STUDY AND RESEARCH Record lectures and search the transcript weeks later. Scan textbooks and business cards, handwrite and sketch with Apple Pencil, use OCR to find text inside photos and handwritten notes, so nothing you captured becomes unfindable. A long note becomes an AI mind map before an exam. 3. TASKS, TO-DOS AND JOURNALING A dedicated To-Do tab sits alongside your notes: break work into subtasks, assign tasks to the right people, set due dates and priorities, and get reminders at the right time. Checklist cards keep shorter lists beside the note they belong to. Journaling prompts come from your own activity, easier to keep than a blank page. 4. FILES, SCANS, AND SAVED READING Add PDFs, Word docs and spreadsheets with file cards. Articles, videos, recipes and how-tos become Smart Cards, formatted automatically, readable offline and ad-free. Group it all into nested collections. QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK Is it free? Yes, with 500MB of free storage and no ads. Notebook Pro adds more storage, longer notes, larger attachments, Email-In to save emails as notes, premium covers, and custom recurring reminders. Can I move my notes from Evernote, Google Keep, or OneNote? Yes, with dedicated migration tools; it arrives organized. Is my data private? Notes are encrypted in transit and at rest. We never sell your data and never show ads. Lock notes or notebooks with a password, Touch ID or Face ID; previews stay hidden until unlocked. Does it work offline? Yes. Create, edit and read offline, then pick up on another device once it syncs to the cloud. What can Notebook AI do? Transcribe audio and video, build mind maps, summarize and simplify, fix grammar, set tone (casual, professional, friendly, direct, or confident), translate into any language, draft notes, checklists, tables, code or a template from a prompt, and suggest tags. Notebook AI is a separate add-on. Does it use on-device AI and Siri? Yes. An on-device Knowledge Graph links ideas across notebooks and answers questions from your own notes. Siri creates and updates notes by voice with the app closed, and On-Screen Awareness summarizes what's on screen without switching apps. Can I share with non-users? Yes. @mention people to collaborate in real time, or publish a public note or video by link. MORE INSIDE - Search by title, content, tag, collaborator, or notebook; filter by any card type, contact, or link; search within one note; sort by date or relevance, with auto-suggestions and recent searches, offline and across languages - iPhone: text-search audio notes, share via iMessage, dictate with Siri, recent notes from the Notification Bar, SharePlay in calls - iPad: drag and drop, split view, slide over, multiple windows, Stage Manager - Apple Watch: record audio, scribble notes, check off lists, add photo notes, record in one tap from a watch face complication - VoiceOver and a dark interface - Roll back to any of a note's last 10 versions Subscriptions auto-renew unless cancelled and are charged to your Apple Account. Prices vary by location. Manage in your account settings. Privacy - https://www.zoho.com/privacy.html Terms - https://www.zoho.com/terms.html
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: Notebook at none against Now MusicAlarm's shown. On price, review sentiment, update cadence and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Now MusicAlarm sells 6 one-off in-app purchases and Notebook sells 7 in-app purchases, starting at $2.49 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Now MusicAlarm ships an update every 4 days, Notebook every 6 days. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Now MusicAlarm | Notebook |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 4.7 (24K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 77.8% of reviews — better | 72.8% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 24K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 days — better | Every 6 days |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 16.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 221 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | nowApp Inc. | Zoho Corporation |
Customer experience
Now MusicAlarm
Notebook
User reviews
Now MusicAlarm
From App Store reviewsWhat we love
- 💡 Ability to record custom alarm sounds
- 🎶 Use personal music as alarm
- 👍 Free to use
- ✅ Reliable alarm function
- ⏰ "Every other day" alarm feature
Room to improve
- 🐛 Blank screen when setting time
- 🐛 Alarm requires sliding notification bar
- ❓ Confusing "multitasking" instructions
- 🎧 Alarm doesn't ring through speakers with headphones
- 🔋 High battery consumption
Notebook
From 24K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Highly organized and customizable
- 👍 Visually appealing and intuitive
- 🔒 Secure with password protection
- 🤳 Seamless cross-device sync
- 📝 Versatile note-taking features
Room to improve
- 🐛 Occasional sync and stability issues
- 🔀 Inconsistent note order after editing
- 🔍 Limited search functionality
- 📤 Lack of export/backup options
- 🔗 Difficulty inserting links in notes
Bugs and requests
Now MusicAlarm
Reported bugs
6 issues- Blank screen when trying to set time
- Alarm requires sliding notification bar to start
- App crashes when accessing multitasking settings
- Holiday dates are off by a day
- Alarm does not notify with sound on iPad 2
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- Hourly voice does not work unless app is on screen (iPad 2)
Requested features
7 requests- Improve UI graphics
- Provide better English guides for features like "multitasking"
- Allow alarms to ring through speakers even with headphones plugged in
- Option to use iTunes for alarm sound
- Ability to exclude specific holidays from alarms
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- iPad version of the app
- Ability to purchase additional alarm features
Notebook
Reported bugs
4 issues- Notes disappearing or getting corrupted
- Freezing and crashing issues
- Inconsistent behavior when editing notes
- Syncing problems across devices
Requested features
5 requests- Improved sorting and reordering options for notes
- Enhanced search capabilities
- Ability to export notes in various formats
- More customization options for notebook covers
- Integration with other productivity apps
In-app purchases
Now MusicAlarm
- [Remove advertising]$0.99
- [Increase alarm list]$0.99
- [Music playlist with 10 songs]$0.99
Show 3 moreShow fewer
- [Unlimited voice file record]$0.99
- Upgrade$0.99
- [50% Discounted full features package]$1.99
Notebook
- Notebook Pro$2.491 Month
- Notebook Pro Plus$3.991 Month
- Notebook AI$4.991 Month
Show 4 moreShow fewer
- Notebook Personal$14.991 Year
- Notebook Pro2 variants$24.991 Year
- Notebook Pro Plus$39.991 Year
- Notebook AI$49.991 Year
Questions
Is Now MusicAlarm free?
Is Notebook free?
Do Now MusicAlarm or Notebook have ads?
Which is updated more often, Now MusicAlarm or Notebook?
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