We’ve considered the app space around note-taking to have been a crap shoot a while back. While Evernote has been putting the claw into its stranglehold on users, things like Google Keep and OneNote were just chugging along. Microsoft, for the overall matter, was genuinely interested in promoting OneNote as a pure service — no matter what your hardware situation called for, you have to take notes for something at some point, right?

Well, after kowtowing to some design rules on each of its constituent platforms, Microsoft has decided to put its foot down and universalize its interface. In a year-long research mission with teacher feedback, OneNote is now putting on a singular user interface that’s now coming to macOS and will get to Windows 10, iOS, Android and the web soon.

All navigation is moved to the left of the screen so that you can jump between notebooks or stories. If your device has a keyboard, you can more easily take advantage of shortcuts. But most importantly, if you’re collaborating on a project with OneNote — as you would in an educational setting — and your team is working from different platforms, your views will all be the same and updated in real-time.

It’s arguable that OneNote has come up late against Google Drive for this to happen, but we’re glad wherever confusion can be reduced.