Among the services available in OneNote's cloud service is functionality to save Web pages to OneNote, receive pages through email, and use Microsoft's 'Office Lens' technology to convert images captured with a camera into documents via OCR. Microsoft also announced that the service now gives third-party developers access to a new OneNote Service API, which allows apps to publish information directly into OneNote. The free version of OneNote has the same restrictions as the home/school edition of Microsoft Office, according to ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, and it can't be used in a business or for 'revenue-generating activity,' as Microsoft's licensing for Office puts it. However, the usage licensing for the free edition of OneNote, which it inherited from Microsoft Office, may drive business users crazy. The free version has no time limits or restrictions on file types, and it doesn't annoy users with ads. To make use of those, users need to buy the version bundled with Office.

The free versions will be missing a few features, though there is no support for SharePoint and no integration with Outlook. This new release adds native platform versions for other editions of desktop Windows, as well as for iOS and Android.

Previously OneNote was only available in free-to-use versions for Windows 8, Windows Phone, and through Web browsers users of Windows 7 or earlier had to buy a copy of Microsoft Office in order to use OneNote. Microsoft's OneNote, the note-taking and Web-clipping app for multiple devices, is now available as a free-to-use product for Windows and - for the first time - the Macintosh.

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