Notability App Reviews

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Notes, Nickels, and Dimes. I use this app for all my schoolwork. Its ability to have to notes open at a time has been essential. I have been able to have power point slides open on one half of my screen and my notes on the other, and then easily copy and paste diagrams from power points into my notes. Another amazing feature is the ability to search your own handwriting. This has made it considerably easier to search for a specific topic, when my notes become many pages long. The only downside to this app is its lack of organization. You can only create one layer of folders. Meaning instead of being able to have sub folders for each of my classes such as exams, quizzes, homework, notes, etc. I am only able to divide my content by semester and class. I really hope they add the ability to create sub folders to help with organization. Because have 30+ notes for one subject isn’t very efficient. My other big complaint is with the pricing changes. I liked how you could buy a single sticker pack or a technology piece, and you only had to pay once. However now, you have to subscribe and a pay a yearly fee to access these features. Build the cost of these features into the app, and please take away the subscription, or allow people to buy things at a slightly higher rate… but without need to pay a regular fee.

A great note taking app for school but the Bugs are becoming annoying. This app could probably be the best note taking app for students just because of the recording feature. The tools up top are fine but they are missing so much compared to GoodNotes. Most of the size for the Pen are useless. After the 4th or 5th size the strokes become way too big for any practical purpose. Same thing with the highlighter except it the opposite. The varying sizes for the erasers is great though because I can basically erase pixels or entire sentences if needed. The cut and paste tool will not select small strokes or words for whatever reason, so sometimes I’m forced to erase and redraw or write. Other than that its works great. Seriously the only tool carrying this app is the Recording feature, GoodNotes has them beat in every other department. (I never mentioned the lack of templates). If GoodNotes has that feature I would go back to GoodNotes immediately, but they don’t so I stay with Notability. Now the bugs are getting annoying. I cant go a 1 minute without my lines not drawing or the app freezing or the zoom in feature freezing the app. Also the random shapes I get when writing sometimes that I cant delete with the back button and for some reason can only be removed by the eraser. Idk maybe these bugs will eventually send me back to GoodNotes and lectures will have to be recorded the hard way.

Perfect For Students. This app is my go to app for anything I do in school. It has made taking notes fun and easy. And now after using this app for a little over a year and a half, I can absolutely say that this is my favorite note taking app. Practically everything that I do for school is on this app, which when paired to my phone makes it a breeze to quickly scroll through my notes at any time. The writing feels fluid with great options for size and colors. Importing files and documents is extremely easy and fast. On tops of this, the line straitening and shape recognition is amazingly useful and easy, without being intrusive or correcting things that were not meant to be corrected. My one issue I have is with organization. Especially towards the end of the year when I have hundreds of notes and files, they can often be lost in the clutter. I have found ways around this by specifically labeling my files so all of my notes, quizzes, tests, and handouts are all sorted by category alphabetically, but I wish there was a way to put folders inside of subjects. This app is my favorite, but to make it the best it really needs a better way to organize files inside of subjects. Again, I cant imagine creating folders inside of subjects would be hard do and I really hope they include this soon in an update.

Amazing apps, needs better organization. I have been using Notability for more than 2 years and it is my absolute favorite note-taking app out there. It got me through Highschool and now university, and the voice-recording feature has saved me countless times. The ability to save favorite pens and highlighters has also made it incredibly easy to take colorful and neat notes, which I really appreciate. My only problem with the app is organization. I have around 715 notes and it is getting extremely hard to navigate through them. The inability to have folders within folders has made it incredibly hard to organize my notes in a way that makes sense to me and allows me to find them easily. Each of my classes, for example, has exams, labs, homework, textbooks, and other important documents. Scrolling through 50 notes per subject has become very tiring, and I believe it will only get worse with time. Right now, I change the name of the note to make them easier to find, but an organization feature will make this app complete for me. I’ve downloaded another note-taking app purely for its organization but greatly prefer Notability’s layout, so I hope they implement better folder management soon.

Notability is great...but not on iPhone. Writing a review of Notability is hard. On the one hand, I use it every single day on my iPad. I do a lot of reading/research for my job, so Notability has saved me from being buried under an endless pile of paper. I even pair it up with Scanbot so I can quickly scan materials in meetings and then have all my notes/handouts in a single place. Being able to search my handwriting is a game-changer! So is having access to my documents and notes everywhere, including my laptop, and having all changes and edits synced through iCloud. I’ve always wanted to go paperless with ubiquitous access to everything; Notability is my hub for that. Which brings me to my chief complaint about Notability: it’s iPhone app is terrible. It’s nice to see my notes on my phone if I need to skim something quickly on the go, but basic functionality is missing. You can’t search a document, highlight pages, see all the pages in a document—if you’re looking for something, you can only scroll until you find it. That’s ok if you’re talking about two pages of notes; but if you are looking at a 50 page journal article trying to find something, it’s ridiculous. Competitors have this functionality on iPhones, but Notability has never added it. I wish they would! I also wish they would format text-only notes like Google Docs, adjusting text size for a given display without affecting the formatting.

the worst customer support. I love this app, it is definitely the best for note taking on a tablet out there. However, I had a performance issue last year and I tried to contact support and no one ever got back to me. I’ve had similar issues and didn’t bother reaching out because I knew it would be futile. In my opinion, a product can be mediocre, but if it has great customer service, that sets it apart. Notability is the opposite. The product is great (in theory), but whenever there are issues, there is no support. This app is constantly glitching, between the handwriting jumping around the page randomly, not allowing me to close out of the right side menu that allows you to search in the document, or the most annoying bug where a note scrolls to the bottom of a page and will not let you go back to the top until you close out of the app. Currently, I am having an issue where I have two notes open at once (one is a pdf of my textbook, and one is the notes I am taking from it), and there are numerous problems, including those I just mentioned, as well as tools not working as I am trying to go back and forth writing on both documents. This is the best notetaking app I’ve tried, but the constant bugs are extremely frustrating when this is the main mode I use to read textbooks, take notes, and get homework done.

Needs more organizational ability. I have seen several other complaints about notability needing better organization, so it is upsetting knowing that nothing has been done to address this issue. There needs to be some kind of additional their of organization that allows you to either 1) put the dividers into a folder. For instance, all my dividers have a bunch of subjects in them, and when i am done with this semester, I would like to be able to put those dividers into one large folder that says “fall 2020.” Or, 2) you could keep the dividers/subjects, but add another teir underneath subjects where you could subdivide specific lessons. All in all, the divider and subjects organization that is in place is too simplistic. I cannot recommend this app to someone who is doing most (potentially all) their school work on it. It just doesn’t have enough organization. Another issue is when you go to send a file to notability, it brings up a ton of subjects, all the subjects you have ever created. If you are using the subjects tab for weekly modules like I do, it gets very annoying to find the correct subject as I have around 50 (and i have only been using it for one semester). This app is nice to take notes in, but not long term. It has worked well for a single semester, but I do not know how I will be able to continue adding files with such a simplistic organization style.

Have loved this app for years, and then…. I will start by saying notability has been an amazing note-taking app for me. I purchased notability for iOS and macOS. Two separate purchases. The reason for the one star review though is the planned change in their pricing structure. Giger labs has determined it best to transition to a subscription model. I don’t mind this on it’s own. Where I take issue is that they are legit removing features such as iCloud sync, hand-writing detection, and math from the upcoming “free version”. These are not new features- but instead features that were added in previously to those who paid for the app, essentially crippling our versions and “stealing” our money. Ginger labs are going about this transition all wrong. If they want a better model, look at fantastical. They too transitioned to a subscription, but when they did, all the features added up to that point still accessible to those who previously paid for the app. I strongly believe that Ginger Lab’s plan to lock away features previously provided to those who paid for the app amounts to theft, and unless this policy is changed, I suggest everyone who bought this app files a complaint with the BBB, Apple, and their State’s attorney General. For those that have paid for this app, please do not update to subscription until they change course. Goodnotes is also a wonderful not taking app, and even Apple notes has become pretty darn good.

One major flaw that ruins the app for me. I've used this app for several years now and have loved it on the whole. Cross-platform user interface and Drive and iCloud backup were a major plus. Customer service is also pretty quick. However, the lack of native landscape orientation is a dealbreaker for me. I was aware of this issue when I first purchased the app but thought that the developers would eventually address it, and I thought that I could find an easy workaround in the meantime. This app has been out for a decade yet they still haven't created this feature. Every time it's brought up, the developers offer a "fix" which you can download a landscape template into your document—as a medical student who lives off this app, it takes far too long to find the exact paper I want in a high quality file to duplicate whenever I want to write in landscape format. The developers' failure to address this problem with any real solution shows that despite frequent bug fixes, they have no intention of providing answers to real requests or problems customers have. Unfortunately, I will be migrating to a different note-taking app and will no longer be recommending this to my classmates in any professional or graduate program.

If my iPad could only have 1 app, this would be it. I don’t take time to write many reviews, but I have to take a minute to throw a bone to the most used app on my iPad Pro. The design of this app is perfect for me. It has exactly the features I need—I use just about every feature it has (nothing seems superfluous or overly complex), yet there are also no other features that I feel it really lacks. It is just a really solid, well-designed notes app. I think where it really excels is how easy it is to import all kinds of visual materials, take notes all over them, and synchronize recordings with the note taking. I draft patent applications and being able to import an invention disclosure and have synchronized note-taking while I go over the document with the inventor is extremely useful. I have found lots of fun and useful things to do on my iPad Pro, but the app I use most, and the last one I would ever give up, is Notability. My compliments to the team for creating a great product and keeping it updated. Whatever I paid for this was worth every penny and much more.

Giving up. I've used Notability for years, but have finally given up. Overall, it's a good App, but still lacks a lot of functionality that other note apps have. However, Notability continues to have issues regarding saving notes and working with iCloud. Last week, I lost over 100 notes and all my notebooks (36) have been lost. I have followed all the instructions online to try and recover, but with no luck. I know they are there in iCloud as the Notability app has not changed regarding memory usage. For some reason, those notes and notebooks are lost. Notability has a serious issue of linking with iCloud. So many times my notes had to be downloaded to my iPad every time I opened Notability. Every time before I boarded a plane, I made sure my notes where downloaded. I can't tell you how many times I have download partial notes because I didn't have time to download the remaining before boarding. In the end, Notability blames iCloud, but not another single app that I use linked to iCloud has this problem. So, I'm done with Notability. I HIGHLY recommend that if you do use this app to make sure you backup to another cloud service (Dropbox, Google, etc.). Good App, but I have lost all faith in this App going forward. More importantly, I need the confidence that my note App will function at all times. Notability failed that important test.

A real app for work. I need to produce about 1000 well-organized words for my editor each week. When I am at home, I can use my iMac. But we travel much of the year. During the time on the road I rely on Notability. Although I have an older iPad and can't use the split screen, I can take advantage of Notabilities Web clips that can be lined up nicely along one side of the paper I am working on...keeping my notes easily available. Better yet, Notability handles the complex notes like a champ...no slowdown in typing, etc. The app is also aces in with a first-rate filing system...I do many versions before I get my 1000 and I can keep the versions together by putting them in the week's subject. I have been using Notability since it came out and find that it has gotten better with each new version. My hard-earned pennies were well-invested in this app. My desiderata: word count and the ability to add space to the lines...It's easier to edit when text is double-spaced. I could use Pages which has both of these but I like how Notability feels as I write....the text comes out smoothly; Pages doesn't have web clipping or the nice filing system. There are LOTS of note taking apps but I find Notability to be really great....I actually can get stuff done with it. Ok, here’s a suggestion. I would like to be able to popup a notability note while I am in another app—

Not as great as I thought it would be. Many issues that I don’t like. The microphone function has a lot of potential but ultimately the only thing I can hear after recording in large lecture rooms are staticky background noises and the tapping of my pencil when I’m writing. The left handed mode doesn’t make much sense to me. I’m used to functions being on the top and now functions are on the bottom and don’t actually help with being left handed. There’s also A LOT of skipping that occurs which is incredibly annoying and there are times when I will be writing a letter but it is automatically changed to a shape. When I try press the back function to erase the shape, letters written before the shape are erased so I have to use the actual eraser. In instances like that, it would be nice to have a forward function because somethings are accidentally erased but now I have to completely rewrite it. The font size for pencil and higher are completely out of wack. I tend to write pretty hard so the writing gets very thick even though I have it on a thin setting and the examples of the thickness aren’t very representative. I also wish we had more control over the colors we prefer. All default colors are first which I only use black and it comes with a bunch of colors I don’t like but can’t delete them or change them to colors I’d prefer. I came from GoodNotes and I’m very use to their functions which might be the issue but since I paid for notability I actually want to use it.

This app could be the crème de la crème, if only…. This app has almost everything anyone who is going to school could ask for, except one very vital thing, that I know for me makes this app a total nightmare to use. This app is great for grabbing PDF file imports and webpage imports for references, which I need lots and lots for my masters program that I am in. However, the organization of this app is a logistical nightmare! Trying to separate the pages is difficult since they all seem to download into the “new” directory, and then once you locate them, putting them in any orderly fashion is nearly impossible. Why haven’t you, with such a wonderful app, been able how to figure out how to add notebooks and folders? Notebooks for the class subjects, so we could create a folder called something like “625 BUS Ethical Business Practice” and then have file folders within the notebooks to put out PDF files that we need for our weekly research papers, and then have them accumulated for reference if we wanted to use them for our final 10-15 page papers, without having to try and sort through all of the pdf files that have been downloaded again. Because the organization of files is so difficult to do, and working full time and school, I don’t have time to try and force this program to work the I want it to work.

Great app! But needs some improvements. I have been using this app for about 6 month now for college. It is extremely useful with my iPad Pro! I have been able to almost completely replace all my books, laptop and notebook. It is a super convenient app that will allow you to have everything you need to study on the go on any device with the app. Although this app is pretty reliable, I have two complaints that I would like for them to be resolved. First, when trying to import a pdf file from the internet to a note that has been already written, and selecting “add to another note” there is a bug that misplaces the categories of the notes, so the “easy way” for selecting the note goes away, and you’re left scrolling through all of your notes until you find the one you want. Also, it would be a great addition if one could have two notes open at the same time, because sometimes you need to see a note while copying on a blank one. These are two minor bugs that can be resolved easily, as the app is constantly being updated, so do not hesitate to buy this app. Its really useful.

I’m using it! ☝🏾. I love the app it is almost everything I’ve ever wanted. I’m very happy with the usability of it in comparison to other note taking apps. I’m not a fan of the subscription model I would rather pay an obscene price one time instead of having an app potentially affect me in the future. My advice is to throw in a lifetime deal for like $50. People could complain but at least they’d have the option. Two features that I would love to see come to the app is to be able to pin audio to a page visually, with a play button and a slider. I use this app for creating story boards and if I can have audio cue in correlation to my my scene breakdowns; I would make more practical use of the audio player. The second feature that I would like to see, is a lasso tool for images. Or an eraser for images. when I create a scene I want to be able to take a picture of my scenes and props and arrange them within the app. The Apple Pencil support is BEAUTIFUL! It would be nice to get some smudging features and paint for it. I would like the option to highlight over pictures as well so I’m able to simulate lighting on my subjects. GIF’s. This is definitely more than two things 😅 but currently AS IS Notability is a complete product is worthy of its asking price. However I feel that if those few tweaks were added it would be worth even more and it wouldn’t be debated.

Good medicine studying tool. I’ve used notability for my 4 years of medicine, NBME tests, step exams, organization of documents, logbooks, and extracurricular. What I like the most was the option to import any document that needs signing or writing on, and being able to do so. Allowing me as a student to have different documents, ppt, word documents and pdfs in a single place facilitated my studies and work. The iCloud setting for apple devices is another good option to be able to instantly refresh documents to your mac or iPhone. Sometimes it would malfunctioning and would not want to refresh as indicated (ie: documents would not appear on their folder, they would appear under all notes) but it’s not that big of a deal. A handful of times the app crashed and I lost all my documents, it is important to have a backup, even though after that incident I still did not backup. I recommend this app to any student who is starting undergrad and/or postgrad and want to take their education seriously. “A well organized education should not be one which prepares students for a good remuneration alone. It should be one that can help and guide them towards acquiring clear thinking, a fruitful mind, and an elevated spirit.” -Haile Selassie

Great, one major flaw. I love what I can accomplish in this app without paying for a subscription, and use it regularly (more on that below). BUT it regularly drops and re-downloads ALL my notes, even whichever one I’ve left open for editing, which costs me both time (waiting instead of working) and data/money (my internet is pre-paid by the Gb). I’ve asked twice and been told both times that it’s probably because I don’t have much free storage on my iPad. I have four or five Gb free, and Notability is one of the main apps I use on here, so I really feel it should have an option to never erase notes unless I have deleted them. If the storage gets full, yes, I’ll have to deal with it, but I’d rather cross that bridge in other ways than re-downloading all my Notability notes multiple times a month. On the plus side, some of the great uses I’ve found: for handwriting notes around pasted-in scriptures during sermons, for pasting in passages in a language I’m learning and practicing my handwriting, for reading & marking up PDFs of academic documents for class, and for marking speaking tests using a rubric - I can import the rubric PDF filled with names for an entire class and then export it back to Drive as a new PDF with all my marks, saving me printing the several-page document week after week.

Overall, A Really great app. Something that I really liked about notability was the simple and intuitive layout. This made it really easy for me to organize my notes and help me maintain order with my notes. Another thing that I really liked was all of the new updates that really helped with making things run more smoothly (i.e. the favorites bar, being able to search for key words within the notes themselves instead of just the title, and the magnifying glass). Some areas of improvement would be being able to adjust the shape of the magnifying box because there are sometimes when I’m trying to edit a specific place and the magnifying box just doesn’t fit right. Another thing would be to be able to open more than two notes at once. This would come in handy for those to do notes simultaneously on multiple sections. It would also be cool if when your in portrait mode for the notes you have the option to be able to stack the notes top of one another instead of seeing them side. Then one last area of adjustment would be to be able to have a bookmarked notes bar like how there is a bookmarked pages (within each notes) bar. It would make jumping between two desired note documents a little bit easier. Anyways, that’s it from me. Thank you for making a really great app. Totally looking foreword to what’s in store for the future of this app.

Still using every day five years later. My favorite thing is having one long infinite vertical space to write to. I can easily scroll down, or use the side bad to find a specific page. Searching is easy. Pen selection is my favorite across apps (use the short cut tab)with pen size and color selection quick and intuitive.I have a work tab with several different documents and a home tab. Its nice to go to my home tab and select taxes and see my notes from last year’s meeting say, or anytime I research something, its there waiting for me. Oh doctor’s office visits, all right there scrolling up through years of in office visit notes. For work I have a Daily log, for just writing, then specific docs. It syncs between my devices easily. I am waiting for a web based version so I can cut and paste directly from my work windows machine into my pages. Thats my biggest disconnect right now. I use OneNote at work for a lot, but I would use notability more if I could. I keep trying other programs here and ther, but nothing ever competes with the simpliticity and joy of note taking that Notability has.

Great app, so close to Awesome. I really like how easy it is to use, find notes, and search within notes (handwriting recognition is amazing!) The layout is really intuitive and there are plenty of qualities that make it really friendly for school and work notes (recoding function of course, but also the shape detection, being able to import and export files between app is such an amazing function, and enough color customizing/options but not too much to be overwhelming). What it lacks is a better organization system. Right now, it’s like binder dividers, and while that is superficially nice, I’d like to be able to nest my documents, or at least be able to quickly visually recognize them with an icon or “cover page.” Additionally I really want to be able to change the page layouts for individual pages within a file. It is so frustrating to have to have to keep switching back and forth between layouts because my needs change within the file. There are other competitor apps of course, that have either own features and deficiencies, so for now we’ll see how long I stay with this as my main note taking app.

Great app. I absolutely love this app. Between work, school, and life, this app helps with notes, and my planners for everything. It’s so much more convenient to carry my iPad around rather than a bunch of books. This app is very user friendly, making it very easy to take notes and convert from the pen to highlighter, etc. You can even search your own handwriting and text from a pdf that has been uploaded in the same file which makes it easy to go back and look for something specific instantly rather than scroll through pages of notes. Great app!!! Update: I recently tried to access my notes on my iPhone, but half of the files wouldn’t sync between the ipad and my phone, which was annoying. I had down time to study and couldn’t because they wouldn’t sync. The only way to fix was to duplicate the file on the ipad so it would sync to my phone. It wasn’t a huge deal for that day, but could potentially be a major issue down the line if you don’t have the original device you used for the notes. Other than that, I still think it’s a great app and recommend it to anyone who is switching to digital notes and who doesn’t want to carry around a bunch of binders/notebooks!

WHAT?. I haven’t been paying much attention to update when suddenly I realize that my Notability App is awesomely different. I have been a long time user of this app and have loved it since day one. I have experimented with other note taking apps but very quickly return to this workhorse of an app. Now with the latest update I am blown away! I love to write with my apple pen and being able to convert to text is extremely useful. So far it has been flawless in conversion; however I am old school in my penmanship so that my work in my favor. Being able to put notes side by side? Since I convert all documents into files in Notability for meetings, to be able to pull up other documents alongside of the notes I am taking is absolutely amazing. One thing that I am watching and am unsure of yet is that in watching battery consumption Notability seems to have suddenly become my primary drain, outstripping my FaceBook app. So this is something that I will be watching since I tend to leave Notability running in the background. But overall I want to give a big shout of thanks to the developers for making a great app even better.

Almost perfect. This app is almost perfect. From the beginning I downloaded both GoodNotes and notability to try both. I can honestly say I can hardly use GoodNotes now, because I can do so much more here I one place. If I could suggest a couple of things that may make this program a little better for a student. First , It would be great if you could choose a folder from the drive or photos(of slides)and then pop the entire file IN the document I’m writing on and it default to a page size image - as doing them one by one , then having to size each one is a real pain when I have a bunch to add. One thing GoodNotes / books does well. Or at least if I could choose more than one image from my note to drag in ...OR not have to click back into the photo options button after each one as its a real pain if I want to import several pages and to a note in a hurry. I would love to have the option to read and turn my pages horizontally like a book and have a book folder file to confine or open it easily - like GoodNotes. Besides these two things - it seems perfect. Its a great well thought out program that keeps progressing with so many great options. Good job to the developers

Not sure what the hype is all about... So, here’s the thing. There are a lot of note taking apps on the market. I feel like if you want a quality one, maybe you need to pay for it. So, I purchased this one and Good Notes. I’ve used Evernote and Microsoft OneNote as well. Nothing sets this apart from competitors besides the price. And please beware: that price for the iOS app does not include the desktop app. That’s a separate charge. You can’t access it through a browser either. That’s a huge negative in my opinion. Additionally, sometimes this app will crash (like during iOS updates) and you’ll lose your subjects and dividers. So, there’s a way to get your subjects back, but you’re out of luck with your dividers. What does this mean? It means that all of the classes you’ve set up for multiple semesters will be wiped out. Whatever was organized under is able to be obtained, but you have to go back through and sort all of it. Do you know what an incredibly awful and tedious task that is? When you contact their customer service, they’re basically just like “Oh, sorryyyyy yeah we don’t care.” If you’re still reading this, oh hey. One last final note: don’t waste your money. I’ve tried them all and think Microsoft OneNote is really the way to go. It’s free, you get cloud storage, the app on the computer is free, and you get full functionality of program. Recent updates means it does EXACTLY what notability does.

Great for Handwritten notes, but inconsistent shapes. To help me diagram charts and graphs I like to use the shape feature where the app tries to guess the shape you’re drawing such as a square or a circle and makes it clean and orthogonal for you. One particular thing that frustrates me is that I would draw a rather crude rectangle and it only registers it as a rectangle like 40% of the time. The app has a tendency to turn my rectangles into an arrow or some random trapezoid or rhombus shape. I think a solution to this problem would be to have the app have a built in calibration setting that the user can set up. This way I can draw a rectangle and tell the app to ONLY recognize rectangle, circles, or oval shapes. I have no need for rectangles or random trapezoid shapes and don’t know why they were even considered when the conversion system is super buggy and inconsistent. Having more shapes for the app to recognize just makes it more difficult for the app to be consistent. Please give the user an option to select what shapes are recognized or at least gives us the ability to draw a shape and tell the app this is what we want and calibrate its sensitivity to how we draw shapes. Either that or give us the option to place the shape into our notes like a sticker as done in Microsoft word.

So much promise, so little delivery. I love Notability. I’ve used it almost every day for three years. I’ve recommended it to friends and purchased features I didn’t even want just so I help support this app. That said, it is an incredibly frustrating experience. The company communicates very poorly with its user community and makes it extremely difficult to provide feedback and submit even minor feature requests. I have been politely asking for a minor feature tweak for years, and every time I do I am directed to the product page where the community can vote on features. I understand that my feature request might not be a priority, but Ginger Labs won’t even add it to the suggestion page for others to vote on. Combine this with a long series of minor incremental improvements, while features the community pleads for are ignored, and overall it’s a frustrating experience. I also lowered my score to discourage the anti-consumer practice of making users pay a never-ending subscription to use an app. I have been grandfathered in (after community outrage forced the devs’ hands) but no one should have to deal with that. I continue to use and love Notability, but I wish it lived up to its potential.

Great for school. I’ve been using this for med school, and it has been fantastic. I’m able to download all professor’s powerpoint presentations to notability and sort them in a pretty simple way. I’m able to search all my notes pretty easily, even for things that I write on the iPad which can come in handy. No real complaints about the app, but I can always ask for recommendations. 1. I wish I could search in one division. For instance, if I am searching a drug that works in a combination like phenytoin, one subject it can be found in is cardiovascular and also neuro. I can search all notes or I can search one ‘subject’, but not a division (one tier higher than subject, a division holds subjects). I do think that the phone app and computer app can be improved to be more on par with the features of the iPad, and I think the sidecar ability can definitely be improved to work a lot better with the computer version of notability. Also, I wish it was possible to be able to organize with 1-2 more tiers. That being said, this app has worked way better than I expected it to for school. I’ve never used goodnotes or onenote, but notability is worth a shot for sure.

Notes deleting as I am writing them. I have been using notability for the past two years on my iPad. I am a person who loves to hand write their notes, so I usually take notes with my Apple Pencil. This issue has never happened to me before, but while I was in a class taking some notes, I went to a different notebook to check on something and when I went back to the notes I was taking for my class a certain portion of the notes deleted. So I quickly rewrote the notes since they were still fresh in my mind. Then I went to my home screen and then back on to the notability app the section of notes that were deleted had been deleted again! There was also no way for me to undo this. I do not know what happened to what I wrote, but of course when I was writing out meaningless sentences to see if this problem would persist, those were staying. This is really sad to me because I have loved notability and using it with my Apple Pencil. After this though, I am not sure that I am able to trust that my notes won’t be deleted again. Being in college, there are many times where I cannot review the information from my lectures, which is why this is a problem. If I had reviewed this app before this incident, I would have given it 4 or 5 stars, but unfortunately this is no longer the case.

I can see why this is #1. Honestly, I was really debating on whether on not I should use Notability to take my notes or if I should use GoodNotes 5. In the end, I ended up getting both just to try them out, and what I found was that the UI for Notability was almost flawless for me. Being able to record audio on here is great, but I think the biggest factor for me was how it felt like writing notes in this app. It’s literally feels like I am just writing on paper. My handwriting on Goodnotes 5 just seemed messier and I noticed that they would try to alter my handwriting a bit. If I could make some suggestions, it would be nice if the highlighter could go under the words rather than over it. I would also love the option to just automatically switch back to pen mode after using the eraser (Useful tool in goodnotes). There would be times where I’m writing and the app doesn’t register it and would momentarily freeze a bit. But these are minor inconveniences. Overall, this is a great app to take notes on and annotate PDFs (what I mainly do). The partial eraser is amazing and the automatic backup is a extremely convenient. Definitely recommend it for college!

Best Notetaking App I found. I’ve been using this app for years, and appreciate all the updates that have occurred since then. This app has sufficed all my note taking needs, in and out of the classroom. One feature I would like to see is the ability to rename recordings, and possibly to attach these recordings to individual pages. One thing I’ve tried doing this semester is have the recording function on while at a lecture, but having numerous recordings in a file that grows daily is difficult with the current set up. If you don’t remember the time stamp or recording number for a particular point, you have to guess and listen for a bit to see if it’s right. It’s either that, or guess based on the date the notes were recorded. If you could at least rename the audio files, the app would be more useful. It would also be nice if you could change the paper style of individual pages, as well as a feature that easily allows you to draw geometric shapes (adding a figure on top of a graph sticky or any other element get tricky when you click on the wrong one. Sometimes because of that, the graph background ends up on top, and the figure behind it, rendering it useless). There aren’t really any visible bugs with this version of the app, Would recommend for someone looking for a suitable note taking app, whether it’s handwritten or type. I think the addition of a few features would make it better.

Best Invention Ever - Student Perspective. I’m a computer science student graduating in August 2020. Notability has been incredibly helpful as a work tool for school. I bought myself an iPad as a freshman in university. I also bought Notability to take notes. Not having to worry about carrying notebooks and losing papers has been an enormous help. All my notes are taken and saved in notability. I have an entire 4 years of university on this app. The synchronized recording with pen note taking has been the single most helpful thing for me. In some of my toughest computer science courses I would record the lecture (with audio built in on the Notability app) and when I was confused (because I couldn’t keep up with the speed of the lecture) I would go back and listen to the audio and know exactly where the confusion occurred because the writing was synchronized with the location in the audio. I’ve tried multiple note-taking apps (paid ones too) and this is by far my favorite. Thank you Notability team! One thing I would appreciate is a better file management system. Having four years worth of work on my notability app makes file management essential and the current file management could be improved!

I’ve never had this issue before. I’ve been using Notability for about 7 years now. As a student, it is important to make sure you don’t miss any information and sometimes that can be difficult if the professor goes too fast. One tool that I started using about 3 years ago was the microphone to record lectures. I loved it because I could follow along with what the professor was saying and what I wrote as well. Right now I’m really upset with Notability because of a bug. Recently I’ve been having problems when I completely close out of the app. Not only are my recordings getting deleted, but so are my notes!!! That’s a major problem that needs to be fixed immediately. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find an app quite like notability, so I will have to stick with good old fashioned pen and paper until this problem is resolved. I’ve also been having problems with the other tools. I usually have no problem with changing colors, font sizes, or anything related to that nature but I can’t even do that anymore! This isn’t a huge issue as I can still select the right tool, but it’s hard to organize my notes. I also can’t create subjects or dividers anymore which is driving me insane! It’s the beginning of the semester which means I need to be able to organize myself from the start to work efficiently throughout the rest of the semester. I’ve never had any issues with this app before, but these are some major problems that need to be fixed before I continue using it.

New Mac App is not good. I’ve been using Notability for the past few years and love it. Being able to upload PPT and PDF decks for meetings and then take notes on my ipad has been a game changer for productivity. I can review documents - mark them up - and then send the notes directly back to my team. Except for a (very) slight delay sometimes between my Mac and my ipad, everything was seamless. I recommended Notability to everyone. However, the latest release of Notability for Mac is a disaster. It crashes often. When it isn’t crashing it’s nearly impossible to use. Trying to drag notes from one folder to another is incredibly frustrating - difficult to accomplish and takes a ton of time to get it to work. Often I can’t seem to drag and drop except on the fourth or fifth try. Imagine if your mouse pointer only worked about 25% of the time. Also - I used to be able to “print to Notability” directly from PPT (incredibly useful for quick uploads) and that feature is gone. And uploading a folder from Finder by dragging it over to Notability is frustrating - super laggy, often results in the “spinning wheel of death”, or just crashes the app. I would go back to the previous version is a hot second if I could. It’s so annoying that I’ve even considered moving to a different notes system - although I really don’t want to do that. I love Notabilty and the ipad version works great. But I need my full Notability ecosystem to work well together. Like it used to.

Fix iCloud syncing issues. I love noteability and would give 5 stars if it weren’t for the iCloud issues. I have the app on my phone, MacBook, and iPad. I mainly use noteability on my iPad and enjoyed being able to create a note, and seamlessly read or edit it on my laptop or phone. However every once in awhile noteability would freeze all of my notes on my iPad and I wouldn’t be able to read or edit until it was done syncing which would take at least 30 minutes, sometimes hours. What’s even more frustrating is that sometimes I’ll be editing a note and the app would be syncing that same note to the cloud in the background. So when I exit the note I have 2 sometimes 5 copies of the same note, and I have no idea which one is up to date. This especially happens if I have noteability open on more than one device at a time. I got so sick of it that I’ve disabled iCloud syncing and only use it on my iPad, which is a shame because I paid 10 extra dollars for the app on my MacBook (which is absolutely not worth it on its own by the way). The only device that gives all of the features that noteability has to offer is the iPad. With that being said, I absolutely love the app on my iPad and I hope that the dev team will fix this issue soon.

Great university study tool with a couple issues. I was using OneNote on a Surface tablet until the digitizer stopped working. I decided to try using an iPad Pro instead, since they’re lighter. Notability was the only app to offer most of the same functionality as OneNote on a Windows tablet. There are many things that I prefer about Notability, but there are a few issues that prevent me from giving it more stars: first, I would like the ability to create a group of commonly used highlighters/pens for marking up documents. I have a system of using certain colors to represent certain things, and I would like to be able to organize all those highlighters and pens into a group where I determine the order and placement. If that is possible in Notability, I haven’t been able to figure it out. Secondly, I use Notability in a setting where I’m regularly working with several languages (including RTL - Right to Left languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic). Notability does not have good support for combining multiple languages in one document at this time, especially not mixed English-Hebrew or English-Aramaic. Please give Notability the ability to recognize and format RTL languages. I can do that natively on most Apple apps, and many 3rd party apps, so the inability to do that on Notability really sticks out. Please improve these issues, and I will gladly give it a 5 star rating. In fact, if those two issues are fixed, I won’t even miss using OneNote for most of my coursework.

Could add more features !!!!! Please !!!!!!!. I wanted to type my notes using the Cornell method (where there’s a line about 1/4 from the left to separate keywords and body text/notes). I went to check out the different types of papers but realized there aren’t that many templates. I normally use the dotted one to write out my notes, so drawing that 1/4 line is no big deal. But I wanted to work faster and now type it out. I could always just draw the line but then when I type, the words would just go over the drawn-on line. Using types boxes would be a hassle since it was constantly redshift. I wished there were more templates around it. Also, I wanted to type out something on the center of my page but am having a difficult time trying to center my text. I looked up a way to center my text and found that if I hold down on my toolbar, more functions show up…..but it doesn’t let me use them?? I try clicking on it but it never works. It just says drag items to the edit toolbar, but even when I move the centering tool to the front, it just automatically goes back to its original position. I’m not sure if what I’m using is correct, I just wanted to center my text but it doesn’t seem to be working.

Great app but could be improved for teaching. I gladly bought this app as I use it to teach University classes. It allows me to write with my ApplePencil while projecting my notes from the iPad, so after every lecture I have an editable version of the notes and I can produce a PDF. Also, I can include multimedia contents, and images from the web. However I found difficult importing external PDF in an open note as a page, and if this is the first page I cannot remove it anymore. Also, the app could be improved with a couple of very helpful additions: 1) to re-use the notes the following academic year, I would like to be able to “hide” part of the notes, to “unhide” one line at a time as I explain the notes; 2) an even better option would be to be able to create a greyed-out version of the notes in order to re-write on them during the class, i.e. as if I was writing for the first time. A found a workaround using semi-transparent boxes to overlay to the notes, but now this feature seemed gone with the latest updates, which is disappointing since updates shoul “add” and not remove features. I hope someone from the developing team is reading these reviews .

Needs better organization. This app is very helpful, especially the feature to record lectures. I can stay on top of what my professor says easier, and use the Apple Pencil to highlight or emphasize certain points. There is a bit of a delay for the notes and the audio, so when I click on a note, I know to automatically hit the “rewind 10 seconds” button, but I just deal with it because it is so helpful regardless. However, while the recording ability is the star feature of this app, the other features need improvement. 1. Since more classes are taking place online due to the pandemic, there should be an option to record lectures using the iPad’s internal microphone. Right now, I play the lectures on my phone and record audio with the iPad, since I do not have a better option. 2. Second, and my biggest gripe with the app is ORGANIZATION. Although you can have subjects, and place notes in the subjects, I want the ability to make folders within the subjects. A lot of my subjects in school are so complex - with labs and assignments in addition to lecture notes and different subtopics, the ability to make folders within subjects is seriously ESSENTIAL. The most I can do is change the name at the beginning of the file to reflect what kind of material it is (ex: Lab 1, Assignemnt 2, etc.) but the ability to make folders really holds this app behind. I still use it for the recording feature, but the lack of organizational options available is really frustrating.

A staple, but disappointing. Update: I have used this app for YEARS now through high school, college, and now medical school. I love the app and appreciate it to no ends. However, one ongoing issue I have noticed is its unreliability with downloading ppt files to PDF within the app from Canvas. I don’t know if it’s a problem with communication with canvas or just a general issue with converting to pdf within the app, but it’s annoying to have to convert all my lecture notes to pdf on my MacBook then transfer them to my iPad. It’s so unreliable I don’t think I can use only my iPad anymore, which is what my goal was. Anyway, long story short: I love this app, but it’s been frustrating for about the past year or two. The new update added better pencil integration, ,earning now it has actual pressure sensitivity rather than just the way they did it before which was through speed sensitivity determining the weight of the line drawn. This combined with the other amazing aspects of this app that I have always enjoyed make this my favorite app ever. I use it in college to take notes and annotate presentations during lecture as well as at work for taking notes during meetings or as a work log. It is simply an amazing app, well worth the money, and I look forward to continue using it with my iPad Pro through medical school. Thank you ginger labs!!!

best notes app by a zillion miles. I love this app, have used it every day for a few years, and couldn't get along without it 🥰 I use it for a lot of things, including trying to learn Spanish and French 😅 For me, new languages aren't exactly a snap, but Notability makes it so much easier, and more fun. I also love looking up at the stars, and then taking a few quick notes about what I saw. I can add screenshots from SkySafari that show exactly what was visible at the time I was gazing. Even though I've got lots of dividers, and tons of subjects, with gobs of notes, I can find everything!!! Organization is a breeze in Notability.......... I've tried several other note apps, including Goodnotes 5, but for me, they didn't work as well. In Notability, I love the ambience (I use several "themes") 🎨 and it's a pleasure to work in such a wonderful, colorful atmosphere. I often work in two notes at the same time which makes life easier, and is a lot of fun. I usually use it in portrait, even when working on two notes (top and bottom), but side-by-side is available too. To my surprise, Notability handles huge PDFs with ease. I have several PDF files that I write in often that are over 200 pages 😳 Notability handles them without blinking, even though I've added in a ton of images 😂 Nothing seems to faze Notability 😄 WISH LIST: layers palette for making sure that overlapping images stay in desired order.

Best note-taking app. I’ve waited a long time to write this because I want to know an app fully before judging it. I’ve used Notability for the past 3+ years along with GoodNotes. I can confidently say that Notability is the superior app. Yes, there are many more features that I wish were present in both apps but, as a whole, this is the best note taking app. In its basic form, handwriting in the app is perfect. Whatever software that GoodNotes uses to try to improve your handwriting is incredibly annoying and causes it to look worse. Its not that way with Notability. What you write is what it shows. The file management style is much easier to follow than the endless folders in GoodNotes. Also, when major updates come, you don’t have to pay for it. Paper templates and being able to set your 3 most used colors and pen sizes right on the task bar will HOPEFULLY be coming to Notability soon. That is the biggest drawback I think. Having to do multiple touches every time I want to switch pen size can be annoying and when taking notes in lecture, can take up valuable time. Having those right on the top bar would be INVALUABLE. Other than that, this app is superior to GoodNotes in general.

Suggestions for Developers. There are some missing features that hold it back from 5 stars: 1) When I take notes and annotate, I like to have multiple pens and highlighters out. There should be an option to add additional pens and highlighters to the toolbar. When rapidly taking notes, time is precious, and this would make it less tedious. 2) inserting diagrams is too difficult. There should be a math or shape mode that you can toggle on and off that auto recognizes shapes and fixes them. Having an math text mode that auto recognizes math notation would also be fantastic ... p.s. OneNotes version of this is poorly executed. 3)**** when I record lectures, I am always slightly behind when note taking. If there were an advanced feature where we could choose where the audio track lines up with the notes, that would be spectacular. Revisited notes would be much superior and would be more like sitting through the lecture again.**** 4) there should be an option to directly add in PDFs to our notes. They could be added in as entire pages to the document, just integrating the PDF, or auto convert to an image to be pasted in. But working with PDFs in existing notes should be an option.

Do not buy - Orwellian Doublespeak. So Notability is now “free” but you’ll have to buy a subscription to continue to enjoy the basic features (cloud storage, unlimited editing of your notes) previously included in your purchase. Oh, and they didn’t opt for this subscription model to maximize profit but to give more people access to this hobbled trial version. As if they couldn’t offer a hobbled trial version without moving to a subscription model. Come on Colin Gilboy. This pretense that it’s now free is insulting. I’ve used and recommended Notability practically since it’s inception. And I’m an educator who won’t be personally impacted by this move, at least until you decide students and educators can be squeezed along with the rest of your users. But no more. I will never again recommend Notability to my students or colleagues. Instead, I will go out of my way to tell anyone and everyone AVOID BUYING ANYTHING FROM GINGER LABS. What get’s me heated is not the change in model but the pretense that you’re making the app “free” when in fact you’re eliminating (setting an expiration date on) functionality for which I’ve already paid. If you need a subscription model to adapt/grow, then own up to it. Don’t insult your customers by pretending you’re not doing what you’re obviously doing. There’s nothing “free” about charging customers a monthly fee to retain functionality they’ve already purchased.

The Best App You Will Ever Purchase!. I know for starters this app may seem like a lot, especially with the cost for both the iPhone/iPad and the cost of the Mac apps, BUT ITS WORTH IT! Being a college student I use this app every single day in all my classes. The app is so easy to use, and so intuitive. The iPad app is amazing for use with Apple Pencil or other styluses, and the fun pen colors and paper choices make notes less boring. This app also works with TONS of file types which you can import and annotate. I have nor used the voice feature yet, but I am thrilled to as I am sure it is as good as everything else this app offers. Finally my favorite feature is that notability automatically saves all my files and updates them constant across all my devices, so I never have to wait for my files to load. The useful feature of backing up the notes to google drive or Dropbox is amazingly helpful and lets me have my notes accessible even when I am not on my own laptop with the app. Overall MUST BUY for college students especially, or anyone who is a frequent note taker or writer. Absolutely, 100%, hands down, the most amazing app on the App Store!!

Great app, but does have some flaws. Flaws - It is hard to toggle between pen and eraser. The interface isn't as aesthetically pleasing as good notes. It is very hard to add a different page that isn’t the same template as previous pages. The palm rejection is bad. Even if you put on palm rejection it’s still bad and glitches a bunch. Greatness - But through all of that, the app is great. You can record lectures and play them back. There are infinitely more template and page options. And there is a special “social media”, basically a gallery where people can create calendars and fancy note sheets for you to use for free! The reason why I did “social media” is because you can like it and post your own custom page templates. The two tap for undo works much better than good notes, but I turn it off so that it doesn’t randomly undo stuff due to the bad palm rejection. There are more brushes, like dotted and dashed brushes. THE SHAPE MAKER IS BETTER! So you create perfect circles instead of an ellipse or a square. You can also get polygons for those weird boxed. I’m sure there are more things that are great about this app that I may have missed, so please buy it! But if you are more for the aesthetics rather than a student and wanting those good grades, get the other apps! But if you are a student and are okay with a less aesthetically pleasing interface, (but still great templates and note pages!), get this!

Saved My Bacon. I’m currently in grad school and after my first semester, I decided to switch to digital note taking. I was simply overwhelmed by the massive paper trail that often happens in grad school. I shopped around and I saw this app and decided to give it a go. I don’t normally spend $10 on an app, but it has been worth every penny! The organization is top notch, it works with many different type of styli (I use the Friendly Swede interchangeable tip stylus, because of the cost, but Apple Pencil works great if you have an iPad Pro), the recording feature is great, sharing notes is super easy and it’s been so convenient to have all of my school documents in one place. So far, I’m at 600+ documents and I haven’t lost anything since using this app. I absolutely credit this app with helping me pass my comprehensive exams. My only complaints is that I wish I wouldn’t have to buy it again for Mac. I also would like it if they were to incorporate tabs, so I wouldn’t have to back out to the menu every time I wanted to switch between a few related notes. In spite of these shortcomings, I still give it five stars because of how much it’s helped up my game as a grad student. Thanks, Notability!

Solid, but could easily be better. The app is solid, as everyone else has already pointed out. The thing is, it could easily be better for those that like tiered organization. If you’re using a divider for a subject, you can’t use dividers within that subject. Dividers are meant to /divide/. The app describes a “divider” as “dividers group subjects,” which is literally not the definition of dividing. GoodNotes’ organization system is bounds better, but this one has a few features that make me stay with it. It would be perfect if they just added additional organization levels, but it’s a real hinderance for the schooling that I do between my engineering major and sociology minor. Update: I moved to Apple during my internship 2 years ago. For school, I try limiting everything to just my iPad and MacBook. I even get digital copies of my textbooks. I used Notability and GoodNotes to try testing which was better. They each had their pros and cons. What ended up nudging me to GoodNotes was how engaged they were with their forums and feature requests. I forgot what Notability didn't have, but it was a big thing people had been requesting for literal years. In their feature request forums, there was absolutely no engagement from the devs. I knew they were only making this product for money. Now they're going subscription based? Especially with lack of interest for customer input? Lame.

This is the one -You can stop looking now, get Notability. I’m a scientist, back in school, going to grad school soon. I spent whatever it took to check out all of the notes apps, and Notability is the best. I can record a lecture or seminar, while I’m taking notes, I can draw molecular structures, I can import PowerPoint slides and annotate them. If my page/slide is pretty crowded, I can create a “sticky” and take notes on it, and I can move it around when I need to see what is under it. I have made entire multimedia presentations with this app. You can save your page as a PDF, or I’ll even just take a screenshot of what I want to present or turn in, crop the margins, and use that. I can have sections of slides and book pages, or a picture of a handout, then work the problem out with my Apple Pencil, and turn it all in as one convenient PDF or pic I can email to my professors. The interface is much more flexible than Microsoft apps, and plays better with other apps and platforms. Seriously, I use the crap out of this thing. I checked out all of the common note apps, and this one is just more capable and adaptable than any of the others. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Palm Rejection Problems Since Updating. I can attest to the comments regarding the palm rejection issues after the recent update. Since the update, anytime I attempt to take class notes with the Apple Pencil results in erratic screen behavior. It will zoom in or out randomly, delete the last portion of what is written, or the screen will shift/shake. This only occurs when I am trying to write and my palm is resting on the lower portion of the screen. I have had some previous issues with palm rejection, mainly with the shifting of the screen or zoom but it has been manageable up until this update. It has become basically unusable for me in terms of handwriting since the recent update and the handwriting feature is nearly the sole purpose for purchasing the app in my case. I’ve basically had to resort to other apps for note taking because this has become nearly impossible to write on (unless I write without my palm on the screen and that is definitely not an alternative for me). After reading the previous comments, I have already performed a hard reset of my iPad (an iPad Pro 11” on iOS 12.3), turned off the palm rejection feature in Notability and turned it back on, and finally uninstalled the app completely then reinstalled. None of these attempts have rendered any improvement. Hopefully this is something that can be investigated by the developer and corrected quickly as this has been my preferred app for note taking.

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Gone completely downhill. So with the latest release 11.8.8 my account is back working properly. Which is fantastic, I was showing as basic account even though I was on premium. Notability features are great and with well over 1000 notes stored, id be lost without it. I spoke with support today and it seems the previous support issues are now resolved. I use it for everything, import pdfs to make notes or edits on, meeting notes, full planner and diary I use daily, recordings correspond to your notes which makes minuting easy, auto back up. To Google drive. Plus the drawing and scribble

Five stars. I take a huge number of hand written notes, have tried all the notes apps, and always end up returning to Notability. The latest update has just finished indexing six months worth of my hand written notes (probably over 1,000 pages). And I have been totally blown away by how accurate and fast the searches of all my notes now are. Just amazing. I am a very demanding user with extremely high expectations of technology. I rarely write reviews and only do so when an app really deserves feedback. In the case of Notability the developers have produced a fantastic app that works extremely well.

Best app for note taking & general typing documents. This is a brilliant app that I pretty much use daily in high school. There is *almost* nothing to hate about this app. The overall interface is extremely easy to use. Someone could easily know what to do without needing a tutorial! If you can afford it, I would recommend this app 10/10. However, ther are a few things I would like to see. Firstly, the ability to change the orientation of pages. Secondly, the ability to add a table. I find myself needing to do this time and time again and it frustrates me that I’m not able to do it in the app itself. Lastly, the ability to make shared documents where multiple people can edit and annotate on a singular document, similar to the way Microsoft does it. However, these are just small blemishes on an overall great app!

Useful but with drawbacks. Notability is really useful for taking notes for class (especially in uni when annotating a powerpoint is easier during a lecture). It has allowed me to make some truly useful notes! That being said, there are some bugs that can be really annoying. The two most prominent for me are that when I try to change the format of a note into A4, when I click ‘Apply’ the change isn’t saved. Instead, if I go back into templates, I find that the app has switched it back to ‘Letter (optimised)’. This occurs even if I haven’t even started to note anything down, and it’s particularly frustrating when I’m trying to print my notes; they look so small when they’re in the letter format! I like using a particular online template that looks like a ruled notebook, and I don’t know if this is the issue or not, but even so I think for the price I paid to use the app I should be able to have any template changed in A4 format. The second problem is the zoom feature. I can’t zoom in or outon anything without the pdf file becoming jumbled and unreadable. In the time it takes the file to load back to normal, I’m not able to click away from it; the only thing I can do is exit the app. It’s really annoying when I’m trying to edit something for class. Despite these issues, Notability has some great features that I love using for my notes. Hope you guys are able to fix these problems! Thanks

Revolutionised note taking!. Everyone needs this app to take notes in class, it’s literally amazing! I use this app for uni and its awesome, I can record the lecturer speaking and take notes at the same time and can play back the recording and it also plays back my note taking in real time, so handy! You can take pictures and paste them into your notes, highlight, and make your writing colourful, and you can go back and edit notes at any time. I use an apple pen because I prefer handwriting, but you can also type notes in as well, or even change your handwriting into text (as long as you don’t write like a Doctor...:) another awesome feature is that you can export your notes into say PDF, or another program and look at your notes on your laptop! I just checked the updates and oh my goodness they’ve made it even better! Rotating a picture and showing page margins... yessss. Buy it, it’s totally worth it! It’s a game changer! Thank you to the developers who made this app! :) :)

Only 1 thing would make it better…. This app is one of the best that I have used for my uni studies and will continue to do so until I graduate. I pay for the premium membership and it is totally worth every $$$. I would highly suggest for all those with an iPad or apple product. The only thing that would make it so much better for me is if it were accessible on the Microsoft store or via the internet. I do not own a MacBook or iMac and would love to be able to do more with the app on my desktop computer if it were available. I hope that there is a plan to expand the application to non-apple devices because I believe that in doing do it would really increase the users/customers. I know that I will be suggesting the app to all of the people I know with an Apple device. So please, please, PLEASE consider expanding!!! But otherwise, if you are considering if you should download this app… THE ANSWER SHOULD BE A “YES”!!!

Love the minimalist setup but lots of annoying errors. Switched to notability at the start of this semester purely due to the love for the beautiful page set up. Previously used GoodNotes for all my lecture note taking and even though the topbar are not as pretty, suits all the purpose and the mac sync is amazing. For notability, the eraser sometimes just does not work at all and leaves an ugly mark that CANNOT be removed by eraser, the screen will get stuck for no reason which is really annoying had to restart during the lecture. But the most annoying thing happened today- I tried to sync the notes with iCloud but had to quit in the middle because I can’t stand the waiting time so I did the usual thing- restart. Now more than half my notes are gone thank you very much notability and I haven’t figure out how to SYNC on my MacBook. So disappointed and definitely reconsider if you are like me who switched from GoodNotes

This is my favourite writing app. Once Apple finally perfected the stylus, I started downloading all sorts of different writing apps for my iPad pro. After using lots of different ones over the course of a couple of years, Notability was the one I kept coming back to. No it’s my default note taking app, paired with my Apple Pencil. The ability to convert writing into text, the smoothness of the pen strokes, the ability to select pen strokes and highlighting and immediately change their style, from colour to thickness. These are the traits I like most and only a small fraction of the full range of features. I like it, it’s my favourite, I recommend it..

The best with organisation and productivity. I love how receptive Notability is with their customer’s feedback, and I can witness how they are constantly changing and adapting to out needs. The organisation is so much better than any other apps in my opinion, definitely better than GoodNotes. A feature to improve on is that when you leave the application for a bit, and return to it, there is a slight lag where the opening blue Notability screen appears for a second or two, and THEN it directs you to your recent worked document. Could this feature be removed? Can Notability immediately direct me to my document without the slight lag? A minor feature, but could definitely be improved on! Overall, love it!

Slays, but what extent???. Notability was amazing, I study for all my classes, took down hundreds of pages worth of notes, the features, design and usefulness were extremely helpful and allowed me to properly and effectively take notes, do assignments and record lessons comfortably. However. Day of my math exam, I went into notability, with the intentions of looking at my terms worth of math notes, only to be met with a loading screen. This didnt bother me much as I thought it would eventually load, but alas, it did not. Instead, it KICKED ME OUT of the app, and after multiple attempts of getting back in, turning on and off my ipad and a range of other things, i decided to delete it. I would have never delete it if i had known what was yet to come. Notability says that they back up your notes on iCloud, and I definitely have space so that wasnt the issue, but to my dismay, when i clicked back on (after a day of the app loading/ installing), My notes were nowhere to be seen. If it wasn’t assessment week and I didnt have every single note on there, I probably wouldnt mind, however, If i inevitably fail my math exam, I am blaming it on you notability. XOXO gossip girl 💋💋💋

Once great app now ruined by bugs. This app used to be pretty much flawless. But after recent updates, it feels like the experience you’d get from a free app. Every time I use it there is some bug. Often, you simply cannot scroll or use gestures of any kind on a note. You have to either exit the note or exit the app in order to move around. Another common issue is that the toolbar will stop functioning. You cannot switch between Pen, Eraser, Highlighter, use the Undo button, or anything. Also, the app will fail to register Apple Pencil input very frequently. Pretty much every not taking session, at multiple points I will have to tap the screen with the Apple Pencil several times before it starts registering input again. I don’t know if these issues are universal, but they’re pretty bad on my iPad Pro 10.5

Terrible - Notes keep deleting/disappearing (0 stars). I have had so many of my notes disappear, or half of the pages delete, or (if I’ve downloaded a PDF and written over the top of it), the writing disappears. I am currently at uni and the notes I take are not only time consuming, but extremely important and the fact that this app can so easily delete, change, or remove the notes is absolutely despicable. I have no idea how many other of my notes have been affected as I only become aware of it when I’m looking for a particular set of notes and I can’t find it, or I find a particular set of notes and when I open it half the pages are missing/my writing has been removed (on PDFs). If you want to get the job done, then choose absolutely any other note taking app than this one. In addition to this, it uses a lot of my iPad’s battery. I have been in contact with someone via Facebook Messenger, but all of a sudden they stopped replying - pretty terrible customer service if you ask me. If I could go back, I wouldn’t have even downloaded this app if it were for free (let alone the $14 I paid for it - absolute waste)

Exactly what I was looking for. When I got my ipad for uni work I needed an app that could convert my ipad into an efficient smart note pad that I could use to import script PDFs that I can then add notation to, this app does exactly that. However, when making a script notebook, I’d like to make pages horizontal without having to import a horizontal PDF template. Furthermore I wish I could lock an imbedded image onto the page, so when I’m writing notes on top of the image, I don’t have to worry about the image moving around the page. Other than those nit picks, this app is amazing and I use it as a daily driver for everything uni related.

Seeuchange. Features to improve: 1. Enable creating folders freely on the left hand side section, by dragging notes you want to put together. Now it’s hard to categorise folders as you have to put notes to certain place on the list, often unrelated notes get in the folder and it’s not quite user friendly to take them out 2. Within a folder, other than listing the notes by name, created a date and modified date, allow user to list them freely, as organising notes usually happens after you finished writing the note. 3. Apple Pencil strokes: not sure if you can improve this from you side, but the size of the stroke is somehow reversed? Especially when writing Asian language characters, when you pressing the hardest to finish a stroke, it is supposed to become thinner and thinner and finishes like a dog’s tail, but in the app doing strokes like this it actually thickens at the end. By using the exact same iPad and Apple Pencil in drawing app like sketches, it does not detect stroke strength like notability. Please improve stroke detection to make it like writing with real pencil on paper.

Amazing. This is the second favourable review I have written for this app. I have owned it for quite a while now, a year perhaps, and it still impresses me. I am involved in theatre, Primary Ethics teaching, literature clubs and every thing I take on it accommodates. I was using it just now and was so happy with it I had to tell someone. I have been using computers a great deal for 30 years in work and recreation and I find this software the most flexible and useful I have ever come across in my sphere. THAT WAS what I WROTE A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO AND IS THE LAST FAVOURABLE REVIEW I WILL WRITE. I was such a big fan but it is now virtually unusable on the iPhone. This is a common complaint why the hell don’t you fix it!!!!

Still love it. I personally bought Notability and GoodNote at the same time, I love both of them, Notability has this amazing planner and GoodNote is more convenient for note taking. I can see that users are angry at subscription mode, but still, notability is not replaceable for me. I love the math mode and every planner you guys make. I actually wanna say that subscription mode is better for those who use planners. It’s cheaper if I subscribe than buying planner every year. And those who subscribed can use all planners, including dash planner and daily planner, which is awesome.

Please add improvement to writing, searching and quick bar. My hand writings appear more messy on notability and there should be quick colour switch and basic function tap like good notes 5. In addition please add options where you can only get rid of highlighter not text. Personally I prefer the layout and pages on notability but GoodNotes are better at details and handwriting experience! In addition searching for words in all documents are hard, there are words that I wrote perfectly or words on images won’t show on in all search, please fix! Improving searching functions and I lost notes before by logging into diff Apple ID! New subscription is confusing and greedy but I’m glad I still have the features I purchase from before, nevertheless any new features or purchase I didn’t have will be locked behind subscriptions for us long term notability supporters):

Great app but I have one bit of feedback. This is a truly great app. I have tried other note taking app’s but this is by far the easiest to use, has a lot of features, and pretty good voice to text recognition. One thing that I waste a lot of time on in this app, however, is that it seems to be programmed to have two spaces after a full stop. The old convention used to be two spaces after a full stop, however, it has now been a long time that the new convention is just one space after full stop. This means that I need to frequently erase the extra space added by the app. Also when I am doing dictation, the app tries to add in an extra space before starting again so I have to constantly go back, stop it, erase it and then start again. It’s quite annoying. So, in short, if the next release can just have ONE space after the full stop that would be amazing. Thank you.

Initially fantastic app now rendered useless. I adored everything about this app and it had become the only app I used for note-taking. Excellent features, great handwriting feel (far superior to Notes app) and the recording feature is so useful in so many work/study contexts. HOWEVER, a few updates ago, the iCloud backup feature made the app need to re-download EVERY note each time I re-enter the app. You cannot open the note while re-downloading and this can take anywhere from 2-10 minutes (no exaggeration, and the app must be open to do so)! This means I can never quickly access my notes! Quickly switching in and out of the app within minutes, even with Background App Refresh disabled, causes everything to re-download. Extremely frustrating; particularly at work when important information is in a past note and I’m forced to idly wait and make others wait until I can access it. I need to access my notes across devices but turning off iCloud is the only impracticable option. This has rendered the app useless to me now. GINGER LABS, PLEASE FIX THIS ERROR! 🙏🏽

Wow very nice update (8.0). This update pretty much implements all the deal-breaking features that were missing before but were found in GoodNotes, such as searching handwritten notes and converting them to text. Now it has (almost) everything special found in GoodNotes and much more. Now unique to Notability is not only the voice-writing dual recording feature but also split screen! Split screen! Still somethings are implemented better and more intuitively in GoodNotes such as ability to quickly add shapes, holding and selecting text in PDF files (helpful for using define function and other actions), and also I prefer notebook organising in GoodNote as well as the notebook styles and customise ability with the cover pages etc. Please add another depth to the notes folder hierarchy, would be so helpful for organisation. But everything else seems so much better now in Notability, I am now leaning towards switching back to this as my primary note taking app once again.

The 11.6 Update is Very Annoying. This is a small thing, but incredibly inconvenient. The “editing together” thing added in the 11.6 update has ruined my ability to properly annotate images and stuff! When you write on an image, there is now NO way to scissor tool the writing off. If you want to move the writing, well, you just can’t! The only way to get rid of it is to erase it! Please just put it back to the way it was before! It’s especially irritating when you’re not even trying to annotate it, and you just catch the edge of the image. Then your writing is permenently attatched to the image, and you have to go back and write whatever it was again!

Excellent note-taking tool. Notability definitely lives up to its name in enhancing the ability to take notes. I've used this app since Year 12 and during my university studies! Extremely helpful in allowing me to highlight keywords/phrases, jot ideas and overall save printing money and paper. One recommendation I have is perhaps to add a function where the user can 'pin' or 'star' particular 'notes' in a 'Subject'? This would be fantastic since I would like to favourite, say, a manual/assessment rubric at the top for quick reference. Thanks so much for all your amazing work and efforts, Notability team! You're definitely notable.

Awesome, tiny flaw. I LOVE this app, perfect for taking notes and not wasting a tonne of paper. I did take one recording during a lecture, the sound is great, can hear even when moving further away, however the background “tap tap tap” of the Apple Pencil is extremely distracting. I have tried altering the tone frequencies, but it didn’t make much difference. If there is any way to “muffle” this a bit more it would be a perfect app! Photos of my slides with scribble all over them, doing up diagrams during workshops... totally awesome! I have played a little with convert to text and it hasn’t misread anything I have written so far, even adjusts the font size by what I have written!

Disappointed. Notability, which used to have a buy-out system (including downloads and in-app purchases), was updated to the new version on November 1, 2021, and now has a free download + subscription system (the update announcement did not specify how the subscription system will be changed). For those who bought the software under a buyout, it will only be available for a free subscription for one year, with an additional subscription fee after that. This kind of behavior violates the purchase agreement already reached with the old user, belongs to the commercial fraud. Moreover, as a note-taking software, the unsubscribed free version has limited functions including "limited note editing", and even a dot will be recorded, which means that the use of free users will be greatly restricted, so the software is also suspected of inducing consumption. The official Apple platform has the responsibility and obligation to punish such behavior.

One gripe, but it’s probably because Apple. When I am using the pencil to write, then I use the selection tool (to move an object, or copy and paste, or convert to text), then I double tap the Apple Pencil to switch back to the pen mode, it switches to the erase mode instead, then if I double tap again, it switches back to the selection tool. I think in the Apple Pencil settings there should be an option to use double tap to switch between a “pen and eraser” only, not just “eraser and last tool”, or “current tool and last tool”. Only workaround is to manually select the pen mode after using the selection tool. This might sound petty, but I switch between all 3 of these tools very frequently and it constantly slows me down.

Is good but wouldn’t want to $ subscribe. I purchased this app 3 years ago for work in education and used it for hours everyday to take notes and save/ edit pdf and docs without Apple Pencil as had an older iPad. With the 2022 update of an annual fee I do not think it is fair for students to continue to pay for something if they are not interested in the stickers and specific note templates, for such a large payment cost. Now with an updated iPad Air and new Apple Pencil, like many others I will switch to using good notes 5

Great new features — same ol’ crippling iCloud issues. I once viewed Notability as the pinnacle of stability on iOS. I trusted more than system apps, and used it thoroughly for university, with iCloud syncing between iPad, iPhone and Mac. As other reviews have mentioned, something happened a few updates ago that has fundamentally broken the app for iCloud users. Nearly every time I open the app, it has to redownload the entire library of files and sort them into their Subject folders, basically unusable for the (long) duration of this. I had held hope that a bug fix update was in the works, and the large recent update had me optimistic that the situation would be better. But despite some seriously great features added, the issue remains the same, and I can not recommend the application until the issue is resolved. My partner, who also uses Notability and has ~700 files saved, is now in the situation where they do not trust the application to keep things safe, and is having to export out each file to a safer format. The new features in this update kind of makes the situation worse, because I really want to use Notability. But it’s basically unusable for me, which is supremely disappointing. I encourage the developers to reach out about this issue, and I would love to be able to change my score to five-stars once this serious bug is fixed.

What’s happened??. This app was functioning fantastically, until a few recent updates. Firstly, I noticed when inserting images that it no longer displays the most recent image first. This is incredibly frustrating when taking notes from lectures, as I now have to scroll down in order to access the most recent images. I would say it takes about 5-10x longer, especially for long lectures where I will have to scroll through dozens of photos to get to the one I want, rather than it being on top. After the update today, I noticed that the lines no longer stick to the words, and so you end up with lines on the page going haphazardly through words. Previously, the lines on the page would move up and down dynamically so as to keep the words on the line - however, now the lines are static and regularly-spaced down the page, which does not match the words I’m typing. This looks awful. I have since turned off the lines on the document that I am currently working on, but it just looks terrible. Please fix these things, and stop making unnecessary changes. The only reason that I’m still using Notability is for continuity this semester - however, I am very much considering switching, unless something changes.

Great note taking app. I have been using this app for almost two years now and I use it everyday. I love the simplicity, some apps you spend more time trying to make things happen than actually getting work done. As an innovation manager I use the app for notes which often include photos or quick sketches. These are all easy to do on my iPad Pro 12.9. I use different coloured paper for different types of work and the only thing I would like to see is the ability to adjust the darkens if the lines on the paper. Great work done over complicate things

Great app! Hard to fault. Enjoying it so far, been testing various things out for the past month before I use it this semester at uni. Overall the standard of the app is really high and I think it’s well worth the money if you’re remotely serious about electronic notes. Some things I’d love to see are: A darker line that separates pages, or better yet a small gap as well. I suspect no gap was a conscious decision by the developer/s for continuity (fantastic for maths), but it’s too easy to miss when a page starts and ends, and I’d like my notes to be legible as PDF’s in future, so making the page end line darker would be great. Also the available size of the lines for writing and graph paper are a bit of an awkward size for me. I write on my 12.9” iPad mostly in portrait mode, and I can’t write on the small line size as it’s too small, and the medium size does work, but it’s so spaced apart that I’m unable to actually fit much onto a page. 2/3 of what I write on a regular paper notebook at best. Everyone will have different needs here due to different iPad sizes and writing in portrait vs landscape, but a few more line sizes would be really appreciated. Keep up the great work guys :)

The best. I’ve tried so many note taking apps, and this is by far the best! Ive been using this for years now, and every now and then I download another app to try it out, but none of them can compete. Not only do I use this daily as a note taking app with my Apple Pencil, but I use it to save and sort any important paperwork. I’ve got tabs for receipts, tabs for registration paperwork, and tabs for recipes. Whenever I need something in a hurry I can find it in two seconds. I could not work without this app. In fact it’s the only reason I keep buying iPhones instead of switching to Samsung.

The best note taking app. Trust me, I have tried most of them and listened to many reviews. This is by far the best note taking app. best this game for me is that it syncs smoothly between I pad and the Mac book. Notes are also on my phone if I need a quick reference. The reason I bought an IPad is this app. IT is helping me immensely with my studies and it is sold for peanuts for it’s potential. Please don’t change a thing. Only one suggestion, if you could, addition of shapes,tables. I can live without it if not doable. Please don’t do anything that would compromise the stability of the app. Thanks for a fantastic app and keep up the good work.

Great App but needs some foundational work. Notability is a fantastic app that has proven to be vital to my daily study and workflow needs. I have tried some other note taking apps such as goodnotes, however, found myself coming back because of the superior feature set notability has (Voice recording, better PDF Search, better shape tool). The app is an easy recommend, however, it lacks some seemingly very basic “useability” features as of April 2020. Where notability needs to improve is in the app workflow. Something Goodnotes gets correct. My complaints are: You are unable to access the same note simultaneously (Mac & iPad and iPad & iPad with multi note) like goodnotes. A feature that is incredibly useful when it comes to working in one document. The Mac app needs some serious work to catch up to the competition. Features such as the simultaneous viewing I mentioned above and handoff. Notability does not take advantage of iPadOS and its ability to work in multiple spaces (not just multi note) The filing system is limited in terms of you are not able to put folders inside of other folders so organisation can get a bit tedious. I would still recommend notability over goodnotes because of the superior feature set, but in the longer term, goodnotes seems to have a better foundation in terms of general use, making it easy to recommend to people who are not interested in the voice recording feature.

Disaster and Relief!. i never leave reviews but this experience was worth sharing. i thought i had lost all my information - total panic station - nothing made sense - total disaster there one minute gone the next - only files that survived we’re ones locked in folders - no explanation - real measure of an app isn’t when things are good but how things transpire when things go wrong. tech support took it seriously and helped me and stayed in communication while i was losing my mind. no stupid stuff like have you tried switching it on or off etc. if you don’t have backup switched on pleeease do it - icloud syncing is only syncing not a back up - protect your data like i didn’t. thanks johnathan i’m tech support for communication.

Apple Pencil issues with this app (as of current). I love this app for note taking but as of late me and my friends have noticed the same issue on our iPads, this is no coincidence. Sometimes the app doesn’t “paint” a stroke when the Apple Pencil is used to draw on the screen and the palm rejection isn’t great. This app used to perform better in these areas so that’s why I have rated it 3 stars. It’s got great tools but unfortunately has a frustrating writing experience. I hope the developers can see this and improve upon this CURRENT problem (it didn’t happen anywhere near as much in the past).

Not a trustworthy and respectful developing team. 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮Everyone knows abt their new subscription policy, very disappointing. I purchased both iPhone and Mac version just to show the support of how much I enjoy using Notability on iPad, despite I don’t even use them elsewhere than iPad. Now I really regretted. Honestly the subscription fee is nothing to me, it’s the attitude and decision that they make really hurts ppl’s feeling. It also make me look like a fool since I have recommended this app to so many ppl around me. 😇😇😇 There are many old users out there struggling, trying to export their notes. Despite the fact, I might be using this app until the day that my self esteem defeats my laziness. But it does not contrast to me as an old user, will keep trashing Notability to everyone around me and try my best to stop any possible new user to use this app. 🗑🗑🗑 Maybe the developer think that they have earned all this due to their good techniques, please remember the reputation was also built by all the users around the world. Think about all those YouTubers who uploaded video about this app. 🤔🤔🤔👎 “Morality doesnt constrain capitalism” suits this event. And I hope one day you will get a taste of it and hopefully it’s not something as minor as a personal replaceable noting app😊😊😊 Best wishes to the developers you guys can definitely earn a hell lot from the subscriptions💵💵💵

Needs higher level of organisation. I’ve been using this app for note taking during lectures, all was going well until I started a new semester and wanted to archive my notes from the previous semester so they weren’t in my way when taking new notes. However, I didn’t want to lose the organisation of those notes, so that they would still be easy to find later on. The only way I could effectively achieve this was to send all my notes into google drive as PDFs, and then delete them all from notability. While this is fine, being able to put all those dividers and subjects into a folder on notability would have been much better, as it would have kept everything in one place, which was my plan for notability. My only complaint so far. Add folders, please. Thank you.

iCloud syncing a concern. I have used this app since the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil came out. Consistent iCloud syncing issues are making it unusable for me. I don’t have issues with other apps that use iCloud syncing. It seems that the app never stops syncing notes, which means they cannot be accessed. Sometimes I leave the app open and then it seems that everything has synced due to no more spinning wheels. I close the app, then open it again, and the whole thing starts again. Cannot recommend this app anymore. Update: sitting here waiting to get some work done while Notability works out in which folders my notes should reside. They were perfectly organised the last time I opened the app - the usual terrible iCloud synching.... UPDATE: Sitting here again waiting for my notes to sync with iCloud. Probably 30 minutes before I can be productive. An anti-productivity tool with this subterranean level of iCloud synching functionality (a problem from which none of my other apps appear to suffer)… UPDATE: iCloud ‘synching’ letting me down yet again. This time I had dragged pdfs into Notability - yet still got the spinning arrow saying wait for download from iCloud to be able to edit notes. Seriously? This app is becoming anti-productivity

Annoying. The app has recently been very annoying to use. When i type a text box, the first word i type constantly changes to capitals even it I’m in the middle of a sentence. I have figured out that you have to press shift but not hold it. It is still very annoying, and using word would be more preferable if i didnt need to use this for school. Furthermore, dragging ou the text boxes can sometimes be very slow, and trying to move them is very time-consuming, please try and fix this. Finally, when i try to change the past stuff i have written on the text box, it doesnt let me click on the part i want to , wherever I click it goes to the very top and start of the text box, completely wastes my time when I need to get these done. Please fix it.

Very helpful with my study. I’m very happy with using notability to assist with my study. I’m going paperless since I have downloaded this app. I like how it can group different subjects into different folders. It is just so user friendly compare to other study app I have been used. Several suggests: 1. It might be better if we can create folders inside each subclass so for each subject I can have lecture notes in one folder and revision notes or past papers in another folder. I think that will be better than making all notes in the same folder. 2. When we zoom out of the note to try to view two page at the same time it will be better if we can put two pages next to each other. Now we can only scroll up and down. 3. It will be great if each note can be marked or flagged. I’m revising for my final exams now and I would like to mark the notes I have went through so when I come back to it next time I can easily know where to keep going.

Great but .... I have both notability and GoodNotes and can say this app is by far better and more user friendly. I love using it and taking notes on it HOWEVER, when i tried to name two subjects as “week 1” for different dividers it didn’t allow me which was frustrating. I like organising my each subjects by their time and week but this doesn’t let me do that and i have to put everything together and probably spend more time later to find them! Please, fix this issue or at least add the option to have files with similar names. Thanks

O. Dear App Store staff: Recently, the notability has been carried out - Item update, from buyout system to subscription system. November 1, 2022 In the future, all users who previously bought out Notability will not subscribe. Under conditions, it will not be able to sync with iCloud services provided by Apple. Notability's notes, this restriction comes from Notability. I recognize. This restriction has infringed on my rights and interests as an original buyout user. Root According to the official document of the App Store Review 3.1.2(a) in Guidelines: If you are changing Your existing app to a subscription-based business Model, you should not take away the primary Functionality existing users have already paid for. # When changing the business model, the issuer should not damage the right of the buyer. Benefits. Such updates should also not be revised by Apple. I hope Apple It can deal with this and protect the legality of users' purchases in the App Store. Rights and interests, I will also respond to the China Consumer Rights Protection Association.

Overall, an excellent note taking app. The level of organisation notability provides is exceptional, and the capability to link google and Dropbox accounts to the app and still back up all notes to them is a clever feature. I love the simplicity of the user interface while working on a document and I find this to be superior in Notability than in other note taking apps like GoodNotes. My only issue is that when importing files from Dropbox to notability like word docs or PDFs, it sends a duplicate of the same file, which is a bit of an inconvenience to remove every time I import a file. Furthermore, I believe the shape detection feature can be improved, as I have found on multiple occasions that the app cannot recognise and correct some shapes that I wish to draw (GoodNotes seems to perform this particular feature better than Notability). Otherwise, Notability is one of the best, if not the best note taking app for the iPad.

Noise in the recording. Notability is a must have app when I am in a meeting. It helps me out in lots of situations with the notes and recordings. As most of time I will playback the recordings, the noise made by the pencil hitting the screen really annoy me. Could developer or anyone have any idea to reduce that noise? Thanks! Ok, after a little study, no one click solution right now. But if I were the developer of it, I would value this feature because recording is one of the unique feature of Notability compared to other note apps like GoodNotes. The app knows when the pencil hit the screen and a clear sample of the noise is quite easy to collect. There are great possibilities to get the job done in a grace way.

Incredible app - use for all my notes. Being able to store all my notes across my Mac/iPad/iPhone is amazing. It’s better than OneNote as it’s writing tools are much better. Snapping from free draw to shapes is intuitive, writing is silky smooth and notes update across devices on the fly. I have the passed 6 years of uni notes on all my devices, and the hand writing is searchable (and convertible to text) so I can find my notes very easily. I have sent suggestions to the developers in the past and they have implemented them into the app. I think it’s so good because they actually listen to their users and update the app quickly. Can’t recommend enough!

Change to Subscription Based Model. Ridiculous that this change is happening and paid users can only have 1 year before having to pay more for the subscription. The free tier limits the edits you make which renders the point of a note taking app useless. The practice of removing features users have already paid for actually goes against Apple’s app guidelines. Guideline 3.1.2(a) states: If you are changing your existing app to a subscription-based business model, you should not take away the primary functionality existing users have already paid for. For example, let customers who have already purchased a “full game unlock” continue to access the full game after you introduce a subscription model for new customers.

Some suggestions. I have been using this app since the ipad education came out, I was so exceited when I got my apple pencil and an ipad that supports apple pencil. I have been taking notes on my ipad since then. It has been great and Notability has been my favourite app for note taking. So huge thanks to Notability developers! I have an idea that could really improve work flow. When I take notes, I sometimes copy a page from another document, it would be wonderful if there is an option to link these pages together so that I change something on a page, the linked pages in other documents could change automatically. I am not a software engineer so I don’t know if this is possible, but it would be great to see that function comes out one day. Finally one more question, when I use text tool to create a editing box, it delays for quite a bit sometimes, any idea why that happens?

Use this all the time. Great app, very useful with a stylus to annotate PDFs. I don't use it to take notes very often, because it does not sync with OneDrive so each device has to have different notes. Lack of sync is a real shame because the App and interface are great, but I have three computers, two iPads, two iPhones so I’m forced to use OneNote with its buggy sync because buggy a sync is better than none. Magnified view for handwriting is very useful and allows me to scribble small notes in the margins of documents,

reliable, smooth app. Really happy w Notability. Have been using for a few years as my app for reading and marking up pdfs and its smooth and stable. i like that you can mark up an add pages in the middle of a pdf with notes. The new favourites palette is great, and I like they are providing some stationery options. My wishlist for additional features: - I love that it has split screen support but i wish i could do a split screen to see two pdfs in Notability at the same time - more options for stamps / stickers and the ability to add them to a hovering palette like favourites - more stationery options

Game Changer. I’ve been using this note-taking app for studies and work and find it super easy to use. It keeps all my work in the one place and supports a variety of online drives to switch my work from device to devices. However, the issue with the Text tool highlighting in front of the text (makes it blurry) should be fixed (preferably like the actual highlighting tool). Some users like myself use the text tool to highlight and ‘define’ words. I would also like to recommend making the ‘undo’ key more prominent; It’s easier and faster to rest my left thumb near the undo action when my right hand is taking notes using the Apple Pencil but, the undo action is a bit small and I miss-tap it. Having my write right-hand taking quick notes and left-hand ready to undo errors is a great way to quickly take notes, this was the selling point for me.

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why？. let my money back, trash company

Freemium. Absolutely terrible

Awful Business practice. With the recent announcement of switching to a subscription based app, this app has just lost all credibility. I paid full price for this all to access its features and software fully. A one time payment plain and simple. You can guarantee that I will not continue with a subscription. Off to look for a new note taking up!

Bring Folders and sub-folders!!!. I would give it a 5 star review if it wasn’t for the fact that I can’t organize my 200+ notes into just subjects and deciders!!! I mean you guys have put a lot of thought into many little things.....and yet I simply CANT’T use the app!! Please please please bring folders and sub folders!! Or at least files integration so I can open my saved documents from the cloud

Very useful. Allows you to follow along with the teacher with synchronized recording of the session to what you write down. however i really wish there were different viewing options like 4 slides in one page or face to face and not only continuous downward flowing pages. I have a problem writing notes in this app. i download PowerPoint lectures and i dont have enough room on each slide to write my notes and i keep find myself adding new pages after each slide to write it the teachers notes. I wish there was a blank paper adjacent to all the imported slides to give me a place to take notes freely. Please developers i hope this gets noticed.

Hear me out. To potential notability users: GoodNotes just went free this week BUT retained the same pricing just like before ($11), as a one-off in app purchase now rather than an upfront payment. Existing users are of course not affected. AND it continues to allow family sharing. Definitely give that a go if you haven’t already made up your mind. Don’t fall prey to notability’s $15.5 yearly subscription model or listen to their crap about not supporting family sharing for whatever reason. If audio recording is a must, head over to Collanote instead. It’s completely free and works well. Now I’m actually glad notability went subscription to push people to discover other apps that undergo more conscionable transition to not jeopardize customer relationships. I feel sorry for the people stuck with this once-epic note taking app by a greedy company

False advertising. Subscription model is taking away functions users previously paid for

Subscription for users who paid the full price?. So ginger lab decided to switch to a subscription based model? So every existing user who paid the full price for a lifetime access to basic features of this app will be blocked behind a paywall? How can you take away features when I paid 14$CAD for this app? This is probably the worst move ginger lab could’ve made. This is also a breach of apple’s guideline.

The new subscription based model is a scam!. Notability is cheating loyal customers by forcing us to use the new subscription model!! Report their scam to Apple so actions can be taken against them!

Subscription? No thanks.. So disappointed that Notability has become a subscription app without grandfathering in a plan for the users who actually purchased the app (and possibly add-ons too) the way other apps have done. It almost feels fraudulent to have services you paid for in good faith taken away. Went from a 5 star app to a 1 star for me. I don’t do subscriptions, so guess I’ll be switching to Goodnotes.

Disappointing. The longer I use the app the more bugs I come across. Not a user friendly app.

Locked away core features we paid for behind a subscription. The app has violated the App Store guidelines section 3.1.2(a) stating: ‘ If you are changing your existing app to a subscription-based business model, you should not take away the primary functionality existing users have already paid for.’ They literally took away the ability to have unlimited notes and edits from all the current users who paid for it. Stay away from this shady business model. Anyone who needs a good note taking app should look at other apps like GoodNotes.

Awful. I can’t believe I paid for this app, I thought it would be better than Microsoft one note because of how heavily marketed it is by other students on YouTube etc. The notes crash all the time, and PDFs go blank so my writing is there but the PDF is gone. And the online version is different and you have to pay and half the time the notes don’t even sync.

U r cheating on all of your royalty customers. Stop cheating! Do right thing!!

Buggy. My highlights will not straighten for most documents and it is so annoying. I don’t know what happened but before the highlight would automatically straighten. This is extremely frustrating. They need to fix it immediately.

Used to work very well.. None of the customizable fonts and sizes have worked for me since the past few updates on my SE. I’m stuck with one style of font and size. Until it’s fixed, it’s really just the Notes app that’s already on your phone with a price tag slapped on it. It’s a five star app otherwise, but I don’t even wanna use it until this is fixed.

Themes are not free.... Why though?,why so greedy?! I just don’t understand why charging for something when u already sold the app, is not that I’m having a trial!!!!

Need to be fixed. I have an ipad pro 10.5 and the apps keeps on lagging. For example when after copying some part of my handwriting, I’m unable to start writing again anywhere close to what ive pasted.

Stole my money. I purchased this app full price. Now, they have literally taken it away from me and I was forced into a subscription model. This is against Apple’s TOS - Section 3.1.2(a), but they don’t seem to care.

Split Screen the same note. Love the app, would love the ability to open 2 pages of the same note on split screen. This would really improve my workflow rather than scrolling back and forth between two pages from the same note. Thanks,

This app is total garbage now. This app used to save notes as pdfs, but it converted all my files to a proprietary .note format the last time I opened it without even asking me. It then DELETED all the pdfs I had stored in its folder in Dropbox. I needed those pdfs, as I send these files back and forth to people who don’t use this now terrible app. So now I have to export every single file to pdf into a separate folder in Dropbox (it can’t even export to icloud!) before deleting all my notes and deleting this app forever. Also when syncing with icloud instead the .note files are completely inaccessable and you can’t remove them from icloud unless you totally delete the notes forever in the app itself.

Not saving work properly.... I keep losing all my notes and the progress I make on them because this app refuses to save them properly. I highly do not recommend paying for this app until they fix those issues.

Why freemium. Bought this app a couple years ago so I wouldn’t have to pay annual and now they’re changing it, you should have given all old users the subscription forever and start charging new customers annually. Not happy, choose a different note taking app over this. This is one of my first reviews on here because it’s so scummy to change payment models like that.

Very good but missing convenience. I use it for notes all the time but I’d really love a two finger tap to undo and three finger tap to redo instead of the tiny little button up top

GREEDY SCAM. Paid for lifetime services. Not even after one year, the app is now “free” and forces us, the loyal customers who paid for the full service, to switch to a subscription plan just to keep the same functionalities THAT WE PAID FOR. Such a greedy company. Will switch to other apps.

Don’t buy this. They are charging you a subscription fee for something you already own.

Scam. Paid a stupid amount of money to unlock the full app for a “lifetime” only to have to pay a subscription after one year. Do not buy

Too bad for existing users. They betrayed all the users who supported them in the past years. I won’t use it any more. Greedy company!

Disappointing. Can’t believe they turned it into a subscription service. Why would you pay more for this app while the other one is just as good plus it’s cheaper? GoodNotes didn’t cheat their users like notability.

No grandfathering?. Paid for the app. Liked it pretty well but now I'm going to lose features that I've already paid for? That's a clear violation of Apple guidelines. Time to move on. Subscription overload.

Good job freemium. That’s why Good notes are on sale now

apple pencil. my apple pencil been glitching FOR MONTHS. and on this app only. gonna have to delete.

Another app falling to the subscription model. Adios.

The dev double dips. Why am I paying for text to speech and stickers and math Functionability when I already purchased the app. STOP DOUBLE DIPPING Don’t buy this one note is free and far superior

Really bad decision for the subscription policy. Was a normal application with many bugs, for example night mode switch overnight, however the violate of the “single time purchase” is just pure scam, not recommended at all, good notes is on 50% off, don’t miss it

Bait and Switch. The developers of this app are literal scum. They create an app that they charge up front for and then decide arbitrarily that they are going to void that (whilst keeping your money) and change to subscription based platform. DO NOT BUY. You have been warned.

Good app, but ARE YOU SERIOUS?. 😡😡I can’t believe this is happening, I paid for this app already and now I have to subscribe it just because you made it free now????? It doesn’t even make sense, I bought this app already you can’t start charging me just because you made it free now😡😡😡

DO NOT UPGRADE. The new version has converted to an annual subscription mode, and old purchased users NEED TO SUBSCRIBE AGAIN. This is ridiculous, I used to love notability, but now 🙄

Battery drain issue!. Please fix the battery drain issue asap! This happened since the update of IPadOS. The battery just drains 20% within an hour use!

Favorite. I love this app but In this version the favorite/presets are kind of broken, I set my preset but later the same day it become the default preset?

Subscription? Really?. I have been an avid Notability user…will no longer be supporting Ginger Labs! Not impressed! Greedy and unethical developer!! Trying to harvest payments from current users. You cannot downgrade my current version and remove features that I have already PAID FOR!! Are you following Apple’s guidelines (3.1.2a). Plus your app isn’t THAT great or different from other apps out there. Shame on you!!! Good-bye Notability!!

Some bugs need to be fixed!. First of all, I really like this app and recommend it to anyone who wishes to take notes for classes/work/etc. I no longer need to print out lecture slides for my classes and save a lot of paper. However, I do have couple of suggestions to improve the app and I hope the developers take this into consideration: (1) Make imported images moveable like the text! I noticed that once you import an image and edit it the first time, you cannot go back to edit it for the second, third, or fourth time. I am constantly editing my notes to study and not being able to move around the image when I come to study the next day is frustrating. (2) There’s also a scrolling problem I face daily as I use the app to take notes in class using an apple pencil. The page gets stuck and I can no longer scroll up or down and have to restart the app to get it to work again. It’s a minor bug but it can be frustrating when it happens while I am in a hurry to copy down notes in class. Thank you.

This use. To be a fantastic app. Now I'm using Apple Books as it allows me to work and listen to an audiobook or music. The Notability app has a negative effect on all audio.

Variable Palm Detection is Extremely Annoying. Look, I like this app. The organizational features and the ability to back-up to google drive is a lifesaver. However, one thing that I absolutely HATE is the broken palm detection. Essentially, every now and then, I’ll be writing a sentence and randomly drawn, straight lines will appear on the screen. I’d go back and worth with the native notes app to ensure it wasn’t just the iPad that was acting up (which it wasn’t). I also tried lifting my palm off the screen while I was writing, to see if it would fix the issue (which it did, but it is completely impractical to write that way). All-in-all, I like this app when it’s NOT jittery and writes the way it’s supposed to, would definitely give 5 stars but this is just the worst.

Subscription unfair to current customers. DO NOT UPDATE if you still wanna have customized pen colours and many other features for your notes in the future. This new version is only allow existing users to enjoy the app until November 1, 2022. Afterwards, you can chose to downgrade to free version (no auto-backup/iCloud backup/customized pen colours and so on….) or pay 14.99 per year.

Fraud. I just paid for the app, and now you said that I should pay monthly after a year! This is a total fraud! You never mentioned we need to pay monthly!

I paid for this app and for its features which is now subscription based. What? I literally paid for this note taking app, I’m glad it’s free now but where’s the features I bought? iCloud sync is now a monthly subscription feature? I’m so confused and extremely disappointed.

Missing convert to text unless you pay extra. The program is ok and it does what suppose to do but one of the major features, convert my handwriting into text is 3.99 extra. I read all about this great feature and they don’t mention that in the description, very disappointed!

Digital Life Planner Introduction. The trial version does not work well. Appointment entries entered in Daily section does not show on weekly. Pencil does not automatically detect if it’s a Digital Planner links or your handwriting. It does not integrated well with Notability. In addition, support for Digital Life Planner is unavailable. I contacted Notability for support and they are unable to provide support except for a refund of Digital Life Planner.

Used to Work Great but now it just crashes constantly. Can’t get this app to stop crashing. I can’t believe I paid so much for this for it to stop working on me.

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Don’t be too harsh. I totally understand why ginger labs wants to switch to subscription based app. Reason is pretty obvious: when the market goes saturated, it becomes a zero sum game. Expanded company and increased expenses requires them to have a more stable income when gaining more market share becomes an impossible mission. Ginger Labs violates guidelines, which is bad. It corrects promptly, which is good. The app itself is good, and developers do put efforts in it. Blaming for their arrogance towards promises is rightful, but attacking ad hominem is way too much. Some suggestions here: subscription means you need to provide competitive features regularly that others can’t provide, otherwise this business model will not work. Based on some of the in app purchases of last years, like math conversion, I would say this company needs to hire some developers with more solid background in machine learning to enhance the user experience, or the subscription model will not work very well.

Average at best. I bought this app thinking it was the best app of it’s kind available on iOS but after some time I realized I barely use it anymore and decided to examine why this is. Mainly I’ve concluded it’s because I thought I had purchased it complete meaning I paid for the entire program already. Since then it’s added things on which are NOT free, in fact most of it isn’t now, and if you look at the stickers you find you cannot log into this if you haven’t a subscription and account. Nowhere is this indicated, you must find this out the hard way. As if this wasn’t enough, it’s not at all intuitive to use. I’ve been using digital art apps since their inception and yet this app is strange and nothing I create with it has been simple to do. For this reason I implore that the creators not keep going this direction and if they want to keep updating this app, please make improvements to the interface rather than look for more ways to generate extra money off of existing customers. It’s to the point of not wanting to use it now for me.

Best app for professional students. I have used notability since I entered medical school and I think it is amazing for note taking and recording lectures from professors. All of the features are amazing and the latest update that added the choice of 1.25 speed during recording replay is amazing. My one problem with notability is that while there is a “go back 10 seconds” option while playing back recordings, there is not a “go forward 10 seconds” options. This makes it difficult to skip ahead since you are left to use the scrubber and that can get messy and cause you to miss things. I hope they see this feedback and make an already amazing app even better. 4/12 Revised —- giving this app 2 stars now because they sent out an update that absolutely obliterated the app and SEVERAL times I have spent hours taking notes only for them to be erased. The text boxes are finicky as hell now and I am unable to click on a text box to adjust typing after I have started typing on it. Many times I am unable to even start a text box because it won’t realize I am trying to type. PLEASE FIX THIS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I AM ALREADY TRYING TO DO PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL FROM MY QUARANTINE AND THIS IS MAKING IT INFINITELY WORSE.

Please reconsider the paywall. I've been using Notability all through middle school and high school, and it's a great app! It's simple and intuitive, and we used it for all our note-taking in high school. So you can imagine my shock as a college student when I found out that the note-taking app I've used since middle school won't let me make more than two free notes per month. Notability is a widely used note-taking app, and it's been incredibly helpful to students especially. And students don't always have the extra cash to spare on a monthly subscription, and even if they do, they'd probably rather spend it on tuition and the ever-rising cost of living expenses. If I recall correctly, there used to be no limit to the amount of notes a free user could make. Now to suddenly limit the amount of free notes a user can make, forcing them into buying a subscription when money is already tight (and only getting tighter) seems pretty unfair to me. It's not just limiting people's access, it's TAKING AWAY access that they used to have. The paywall is an unfair addition to the Notability app, and it will likely, in all honesty, backfire dramatically. Please reconsider the addition of a paywall.

Love it! Perfect for school!. The only criticism I have is that I wish they had more long press perfect shapes other than straight lines, squares, triangles, and circles. I’d appreciate even a curved line for when I’m graphing. Other than that it’s been absolutely amazing. I never spend money on apps but this has been a dream with school notes. It keeps all my notes in one place, looking perfect and organized. Instead of flipping through pages to find a specific note, I just look it up in the search bar and it recognizes my hand writing! And best of all I can record my lectures in case I need to remember something specific that I didn’t write down! And it syncs the recording to whatever you’re working so it’s easy to find a specific snippet of a 3 hour lecture. I’ve tried goodnote and one note and I still prefer notability. I even have it on my computer so it syncs all my notes. *TIP* You can type with this app but I highly recommend hand writing your notes as it’s proven to be more useful at learning and retaining material!

Almost everything I could wish for.. I love this app. It’s improved my studying a lot. Everything is simple and easy to use. Uploading my notes to my google drive easy and straight forward. The built in mic feature wonderful. Everything is amazing. Expect one thing, when I get my professors PowerPoint lectures put on notability. Majority of the times it comes out perfectly fine. Other times, it comes out as if someone shook the entire slide, slid the words, pictures, and other graphics to one side shook them again. Change the colors fonts, and sometimes even put them upside down. It’s kinda a cruel evil joke because I can’t edit the slides to make them how they were intended. Unless I add a new page and re-write everything but i will also lose the pictures that were on that slide. Literally the only problem is that the formatting when getting slides from PowerPoint and putting them on notability is the biggest and only downside. Thats why its 4/5 stars on here and 8.5/10 on yelp.

Your experience with this app may be different than mine. My experience with this app has been that it's full with features like gifs, audio recording while note-taking that syncs with the notes you type or hand-write, I find this feature to be a wonderful tool to have when you're note taking while you're listening to a lecture. It may be useful in the event that you may miss something the professor/teacher is saying. It also has handwriting detection, which I found to be another wonderful addition to the tool set being offered in this app. I had used it in highschool and use it now as well for many things. You could submit your notebook checks to your teacher via email as a pdf (if they accept it). You may also use any one of your preferred cloud services to back up your notes, including iCloud sync between your iOS devices. One feature I'd recommend they add is the ability to back-up locally to the device and/or the option to backup to your own personal cloud storage like with external hard drives that offer that service.

Good, but so frustrating sometimes. I’ve had this app for a year and half now and most of the time, it works pretty well. I have hundreds of notes for classes saved and I continue to use it all the time. However, it feels like every time I plan on taking notes, it becomes an experience that I dread because this app is just so buggy when I use it, especially when I use my iPad’s stage manager or split screen function. It becomes a mess for me. It crashes (thankfully its good about saving progress), has visual glitches, and sometimes, it’ll do this thing where I can’t write in a text box because it won’t let me move the typing cursor where it has to go. It’ll just stay in one inconvenient spot. Doesn’t move unless I highlight words and drag both ends all the way to the spot I want it to go. It’s weird, hard to explain, and super unintuitive overall and makes writing notes such a chore. When this app actually is working, it’s pretty good though. I kind of wish I hadn’t spent money on it considering its annoying issues. Might try out a different app

Horrible app - my experience as a current med student. I have been using the app the past year for medical school and could not be more dissatisfied/frustrated. The app frequently crashes while I am taking notes, resulting in notes not being saved. I often find myself rewriting notes that I had just written prior to the app crashing. In addition the app is constantly glitching - I will try to write something with my Apple pen and it takes a good minute before I can produce any sort of ink on paper. I also have issues copying and pasting images onto First Aid from outside resources. And as of most recently, I can no longer search keywords on first aid, which completely defeats the purpose of having a pdf copy of First Aid. I have reached out to Notability by submitting a request of my current issues and have not heard back from them. Unfortunately I cannot contact them via phone and thus I am extremely frustrated with the lack of accessibility and availability to receive any sort of help. Do yourself a favor and do not download this app. I have been informed by my colleagues that OneNote is significantly better and i wish I had known this prior to using notability

Obsessed.... but have to fix some recent glitches. My favorite app ever- changed my life while trying to juggle my crazy workload in grad school (I use it with my iPad so I can take notes with the Apple Pencil directly onto my slides)- amazing! The only thing though as of recently, Notability keeps freezing/unexpectedly quitting on me (I guess since the newest update?!). Luckily, other than losing a few seconds-minutes of recordings in class while trying to get the app back on, all material is recovered. However, it’s extremely frustrating and a nuisance when trying to obviously be productive. Also, there HAS to be a way for the developer to find a way to select/copy multiple pages at once, I can’t understand how that’s still not a tool on Notability at this point in time.... This is probably my biggest frustration with the app, because I need to transfer or delete 1+ slides pretty frequently (sometimes 50+ !!) and it makes it soo time consuming to do individually(not to mention, recently, ends up freezing and quitting while doing so!). With a few more updates this app will be EVEN MORE AMAZING!

needs to allow auto-backup on multiple devices. Only been using Notability for a couple weeks but its inability to back up from multiple devices to one cloud account is really frustrating to me. I do everything through one cloud account and it’s not Dropbox or iCloud. It’s frustrating that I can’t just set up auto back up on each device to different directories on my cloud account or hey, why can’t I sync documents I am working on across multiple devices in the first place? iCloud sync is fine but I’d prefer the ability to be able to choose my cloud service of choice. Also, just on principle, I hate being forced to turn off auto-back up on another device because the developer has decided I should not have a choice. Just warn me of the risk and I’ll take the risk if I want. I know I won’t be editing files on 2 different devices *simultaneously* so I am not sure how I could accidentally write over a file that I didn’t want written over. I mean, how does iCloud sync work? Doesn’t it run the same risk? Maybe I’m just missing something. Just don’t appreciate being told what I can and can’t do.

A great product and indispensable productivity tool. I've had Notability for several years but switched to NoteShelf + and used it for a couple of years. But I would always come back and take a look at Notability. I love the way it handles text. It flows naturally into the handwritten text, just like an actual document. With this last update, Notability fixed everything that made me hesitant to use it as my primary note taking and document organization tool. I love the divider within a divder update, it was on my wishlist. As for the subscrition model, my first knee jerk reaction was, "what after all these years now I have to pay" it took about 5 minutes to get over that, I'm just surprised they were able to hold out this long. At $11 to $14 a year this is a bargain and it provides them the resource to continue to develoep new features. I was in software develeope, for larage scale commerical applications and we switche to a subscription model in the 80's. I get it and I apploud them for the more than resonable price.

Best app for taking notes. I have been using notability as my sole notebook for university. The integration within the iPad makes this app extremely efficient. The ability to be taking notes, hear something that I want to add a visual graphic for and quickly finding an image in split screen and instantly sending that image directly to the note I’m working on in Noteability, all without actually leaving my notes, is something that I use all the time. I import my textbooks into the app so that I can use the search feature to find things in the text and in my notes. I can’t say enough about how much I like this app. The UI is very simple and clean which means you spend less time trying to get the app to do what you want, and more time focusing on the lecture. In the year and a half that I’ve been using Noteability, I’ve only seen the app stutter or need to be restarted a few times on my iPad Pro so the app is very reliable. Definitely would recommend to anyone looking for a note taking app!

Notebook GOAT. I’m a PhD student in Computer Science and have used many note taking apps over the years. Hands down this is the best notebook app I’ve ever used because there are absolutely no pain points when using this app, and that takes a very clear vision for an app, and most companies miss the mark on that. The usability of moving things around a page is super intuitive and slick. I love the recording! OMG, finally you can just tap when to record and tap when to stop, and tap to resume etc, and the recording is tied to the state of your notes, so when you replay the recording you can see where you were. The recording feature on this is what sold me. A lot of other apps make u save a file each time you record, or pause... such a pain. There are a ton of other things i love about this app, but I gots to get back to it now, so I’ll leave it there. Thanks Notability ! I love you guys. U make taking notes really fun for me, and that is really big for me right now cuz my life is pretty lame as a PhD student.

Amazing Tool for College Students. I’m a sophomore engineering student, and I probably spent at least five hours a day on this app between lecture notes, studying, and doing homework. Paired with an iPad and Apple Pencil, it’s an amazing way to stay organized and keep all your notes in one place without having to bring notebooks, binders, or pencils with you. This app is great for taking notes and making study guides because you can change the pen color and thickness, add images or GIFs, highlight, etc. I download, read, and highlight scientific papers, articles, and assignments as PDFs, and I do math and engineering homework on the blank or graph paper settings where it’s super easy to erase or move things around. I also have my notes and homework from past semesters with me all the time to refer back to or to help friends taking those classes. All in all, this app has made my college experience so much more organized, efficient, and fun and I highly recommend it for anyone taking classes, especially ones involving a lot of diagrams and calculations.

Favorite App for school/work. I love this app so much. I have used it all through college and now at work. I went to school for surgical technology. I was able to put each class in its own subject then subdivide into class chapter/exams. I can upload class PowerPoints and take notes directly on them with the Apple Pencil while using the record function. Then later I can listen back on the lecture while watching myself take notes in real time. This is especially helpful when there is so much content and like being in class a second time. Now that I am working in my field I have been using with app to categorize specialty’s by surgery. I can upload pictures of my surgical set ups and take notes of procedures all on the same document which is fantastic. The only reason I am not giving it 5 stars is because I cannot add videos to my documents. I could really use this when I am leaning new equipment and set ups so I can watch it later and take notes on it. Otherwise this app has been my saving grace and I RECOMMEND it all the time. I just want that video option lol.

I love this app but it skips with the apple pencil. I have been using this app since it first came out. I keep trying other apps to see if I like another one better but I keep coming back to this one. There are only a few things that keep me from five stars and from looking around. First, the apple pencil skips and it is driving me crazy. Everything is up to date, the pencil cap is screwed and I have tried all of the suggestions to keep this from happening and it just keeps happening. Secondly, one of the reasons I was so excited about this app was to be able to look up my notes on my phone. Unfortunately, the app on my phone is its own app and not a version that syncs with my ipad. Third, when I upgraded my ipad some of my notes ended up in different files. I would also like to be able to convert the audio files associated with the notes and be able to share those as well. Those are the only things that I would fix. Other than that this is a solid app and one I have recommended to countless people both professionally and as a student.

2/1 update ???. Not only was the look of the pens changed in the favorites bar (making them look clunky and ugly) but changing the pen size to a sliding bar is super inconvenient because it no longer shows the size of the pen, just a number which means nothing unless you have them memorized which size you like to use. I think the slider could be fine if you show a circle of increasing or decreasing size as you slide it (which would indicate the pen size). Another problem that keeps coming and going for me is using the split screen two have two of my notes in the app up at once, every time I leave the app to search something or go to a different note for a second it resets and I have to find the notes and put it back in split screen. Would love for that not to happen! Love that this app is always adjusting and getting better (with plenty of bugs during the process but they always get fixed decently quickly). So hopefully y’all will make this better!

Disgusted. The new subscription model is a slap in the face to millions of notability users out there. With the new 11.0 update, old users who made a one-time purchases — on notability, on handwriting conversion, on themes and sticker packs — will have to pay an annual subscription fee for the things THEY BOUGHT UNDER THE AGREEMENT THAT THESE FEATURES WILL BE A ONE-TIME PAYMENT. Not only that, but the update will make the user pay for features such as iCloud backup and sync put a limit on the amount of edits per month — this has to be a joke, right? A digital note-taking app, whose entire purpose is to help people note-take, is taking away from the “wider audience that its trying to reach by going freemium” that exact ability. Oh did your app quit on you unexpectedly and now you lost all your note edits? Too bad, but we will still make you pay for our cloud sync services! Their lead engineer said “we want to make sure that ppl can’t just use notability and make it all the way through med school for free” for god’s sake. All of this is extremely disappointing in an app that has been a crowd favourite among students and creatives. I used notability almost every day in my junior year and now I will be happily switching to GoodNotes.

Excellent application, everyday usage by me. I’m an academic (astronomer), and as such, an integral part of my work involves paper and proposal revision, writing research notes, doing calculations, etc. When I decided to get an iPad to more efficiently do all this work, I thoroughly researched apps that could facilitate this work; that’s how I found this app. Notability allows you to do all of the above in an efficient and intuitive manner. You can easily share annotated documents, papers, calculations with other collaborators (eg, via email or cloud-based storage like Google Drive), organize your work documents, quickly access them —- basically, Notability made all that I needed and ever wanted from a tablet to happen. No more printed papers with annotations, no more scanning documents to sign them, no more ‘in which notebook did I derive my calculation’ —- all is well organized within the app. I thank the authors of the app for it! It has made my work much more efficient. In this pandemic era, I even use the app to share some live-calculations with students whenever needed (ie, use it like a whiteboard), and then I share the notes I created with them.

Getting me through college - WITH AN iPAD!!. First off, kudos for making a KILLER APP! I started school last semester dumping tons of money into a new computer but little did I know that this gem of an app would make my iPad pro the ONLY device that I need. I have the keyboard for typing, the pencil for writing and with the latest update I can’t wait to try the handwriting recognition! I must say, the best $10 i’ve ever spent on an app, HANDS DOWN! After starting college as an adult, 15 years after high school I had no idea i’d be able to carry a lightweight iPad and just a couple of accessories to do all that I need. My handwritten notes look so good on this app that my classmates ask me to email my notes to them and recording the lectures has made reviewing so easy with my busy schedule. I’ve tried them all and trust me, this app is truly the killer note-taking solution. Just buy it, you won’t regret it. Overall very stable, excellent backup options and i’m telling you the handwriting looks so good and the built-in recording just makes it a must. DO IT!!

Great app! But needs some improvements. I have been using this app for about 6 month now for college. It is extremely useful with my iPad Pro! I have been able to almost completely replace all my books, laptop and notebook. It is a super convenient app that will allow you to have everything you need to study on the go on any device with the app. Although this app is pretty reliable, I have two complaints that I would like for them to be resolved. First, when trying to import a pdf file from the internet to a note that has been already written, and selecting “add to another note” there is a bug that misplaces the categories of the notes, so the “easy way” for selecting the note goes away, and you’re left scrolling through all of your notes until you find the one you want. Also, it would be a great addition if one could have two notes open at the same time, because sometimes you need to see a note while copying on a blank one. These are two minor bugs that can be resolved easily, as the app is constantly being updated, so do not hesitate to buy this app. Its really useful.

Tech support and customer service is the worst. The app was great till it wasn’t. Everything was working perfectly fine until all of a sudden my writing was glitching on the app and my pen was lagging, but only on Notability. I exhausted every option of trying to remedy the problem myself before reaching out to Notability via Instagram and then being redirected to GingerLabs for support. Someone from there touched base with me and I gave them the rundown of my issue. Once they realized I tried everything they suggested and it wasn’t working, they stopped responding all together and ghosted me. I tried reaching out again but got no response, and Notability on Instagram saw my message and didn’t respond. I really did like this app, but this response from the Tech Team and Customer Support, or lack thereof, is absurd. I use Notability on a daily basis, paid for a subscription, and find it hard to believe that this is how they go about dealing with their customer’s and user’s grievances with their app. I was recommended GoodNotes from a peer prior to downloading Notability when I asked which app was better; in hindsight, I probably should’ve listened.

Good but eh. With the price tag like this for an app I expected more. It’s buggy at times with the apple pencil and doesn’t have as many features as I would have liked. You pay 9$ for an app and then you have to pay for themes which is dumb. Oh and theres no account where all your stuff is saved in case something happens so you have to back everything up all the time, for an app like this where all your important notes are I would think OBVIOUSLY theres a login account where your stuff is saved but there isn’t. If for some reason the app gets deleted and you didn’t back up your stuff, it’s gone for good. Another thing that’s annoying for me in particular is i write with my paper slanted and sometimes turning my whole ipad back and forth when i’m getting work done gets annoying so just tilting the paper in the app would be so much easier. Lastly, there should be an option to switch the eraser so that you can erase just part of something instead of the whole thing. Besides these issues i use it everyday for school and it gets the job done and organizes everything nicely

iPhone notability is useless, love the iPad version. I swear by the notability app on my iPad Pro. I’ve been using it exclusively for notes for the last year in my graduate program and it’s lifesaving. Very user friendly and I love that I can import any PDF into the app. I also love the recording feature for my lectures and utilize it all the time. However, I also have the iPhone version because I thought it would be helpful to sync to my iPad and have my notes readily available when I’m in clinicals (anesthesia student). Yet anytime I open the app from my phone, the files ALL have to be reloaded from scratch. Which takes HOURS because I have over 200 files. They show up as “unfiled” notes until they have downloaded into their appropriate folder, and they download at random so I can’t even pick the one file I’m looking for to get it quickly. Therefore I find the iPhone app completely useless. I’d give the iPad version a solid 5 stars but overall chose to give the app 4 stars to account for the useless iPhone version

Step your game up. I have been using Notability for a few years now and recently switched to GoodNotes and then back to Notability so I can give a good review. Note ability needs to step your game up and add the ability to use folders and organize dividers n subjects better. That is where I believe good notes is beating note ability in. Also the fact that i cant pin my favorites like goodnotes can be annoying cause i have to scroll thru subjects. The template interface has gotten better but goodnotes has a better selection for free like their planners and to do lists. Also on goodnotes you can have multiple tabs open at once mimicking a computer which is better visually than the way noteability does it in windows. I really love both but the folder thing sells me on goodnotes. Other than that until noteability adds that feature ill probability stick to goodnotes mainly. I love notability but the littlest features sell me to goodnotes. Goodnotes has been copying yall hardcore especially now that they added voice recordings. So yall should do the same and beat them! I love the interface though more than goodnotes.

Used your app since 2014, but will be migrating to a different one now. I have been using your app since 2014. The functionality, the way of taking notes was fantastic. But the minute you made the decision to screw over all of the paid users on November 2nd 2021, trying to take away already paid features and to turn it into a subscription platform, you have lost my trust but also breached a contract in purchase. People who bought your app at a certain point were made the promise this would be a lifetime feature, and you thinking it would be okay to take it away with offering a meager one year free subscription is just beyond nonsense. I will not be returning to your app, nor will I be making any more notes in this app. Now I will have to worry whether you will find other ways to scam users, and I do not feel safe having my notes stored in this app as things may change. I have already completed migrating my notes. You do not deserve the loyalty of so many consumers who have trusted your app. Even though the developers decided not to take away features to already paid users (motives of which is also highly questionable since it is against apple policy), you guys didn’t even apologize. Its the worst business move. You lost one more user today.

With the new update the app refreshes constantly and becomes very annoying to use. I’ve used this app for about 3 years now for school, and it works very well with pretty much no issues. However, with the recent update the app will constantly refresh whenever I exit the app and I will have to wait for it to load again. This becomes very annoying as I find myself switching from different apps often. Split view is not very useful to me due to having to change my zoom level and zoom area on both apps constantly. I thought it might have something to do with background app refresh, but notability doesn’t even show up as one of the apps with that option. Sometimes even if less than a minute has passed since I exited notability, it will still refresh. This is incredibly annoying, and I cannot fathom why this change was made. This update took one of the most useful apps I had and made it an absolute chore to use. Please fix this, as I really want to give this app 5 stars due to how much it’s helped me over the years, but I can’t under the current circumstances

Almost Perfect. Hello, I hope you are well. Let me begin my telling you that Notability is my favorite and most important app. The interaction I’ve had with you has been great, and I believe that all of you at Ginger Labs are wonderful. However, I am limited in what I can do with Notability, because as the Tactical Operations Bureau Commander for a major American police department, leading SWAT, Bomb Squad, Crisis Negotiations, and Fugitive Appreciation operators, I cannot fully utilize Notability to its potential due to the lack of proper security. I respectfully request that you utilize the readily available Apple API’s and include Touch/Face ID and encrypt this otherwise wonderful app, so that those protecting America’s safety and freedom can carry the sensitive information on our iOS devices that we need to. 8 out of 10 apps on my iPhone and iPad have touch/face ID, so I don’t understand why the finest notes app available lags behind in this important feature. I would gladly pay for this feature, and I hope that you will add it sooner than later. This is far more important than the emoji search that was added in 8.1. Thank you for considering this request. Be well, be safe, and God Bless!

Completely Unusable With Apple Pencil. This app use to be great. I used it for 6 years in college taking notes. The app use to do a great job of rejecting your palm so you can lean on the tablet screen to write. There were no problems. Now the palm rejection feature is useless. It is impossible to use the apple pencil with this app. Every time I go to write a sentence multiple problems occur. First, the app thinks I want to paste something so a box pops up that disrupts your writing. Second, sometime it scrolls up or down the page when writing making it very frustrating to write. And lastly sometimes it completely glitches out and draws all over the screen. The problem became so bad that I ended up buying a new Apple Pencil 2 and this did not fix the problem. Some workarounds that I have found is importing screenshots instead of copy and pasting them so the app doesn’t think you want to move the picture, clearing your copy/paste, and not resting your palm on the screen which is close to impossible. Its a shame because I use this app almost everyday and I have all my notes saved in their cloud. I have no choose but to use another app to take notes but it’s frustrating not having all my notability notes on the different app. So PLEASE fix problem.

Not reliable when needed. This was a great app years ago. Now it's never ready to use when you need it. Notes are not available when you open the app. It constantly re-syncs ALL of your LOCAL notes. Can't quickly add a note due to waiting for the incessant re-syncing, by which point you've missed or forgotten what you needed to note. Even with the glitches, it's still the best app of its kind. Just always open in advance of going to a low signal area to ensure your notes are actually with you. Otherwise you may be looking at cloud icons that need to re-sync. It's like having a forced pc update right when you're trying to work. Know it may happen and prepare accordingly. I strongly recommend backing up critical notes to a secondary app, or taking screenshots. Tons of great features, but It currently fails at the basic task of usable notes when you need them. Regarding storage, there's over 40GB free on my iphone, 100GB free on my ipad, and over 1.8TB free in cloud, with Notability using only 480 Megabytes, so it isn't a low storage issue. It could be related to how updates are handled and if/when/how notes get restored afterward.

Program hangs, a lot. There is so much to love about this app, but I cannot get past the point that it’s primary purpose is to be a note taker, and, when being used for it’s primary purpose, it hangs. A lot. When you are in the middle of taking notes, and the software freezes, you have to stop taking notes, you have to stop paying attention to what is being said or shown on the PowerPoint presentation, and you have to attend to your notetaking program which won’t let you take notes. You end up missing significant chunks of what you purchased the app to help you chronicle in the first place. Sometimes the hang resolves after a minute or so of doing nothing. Other times the only way I can get Notability to work again is to power off my iPad and power it back on. This, of course, takes so long that it is intolerably intrusive. I am running Notability on a new 2018 iPad Pro with the latest software update. Again, if your main purpose is for taking notes during a lecture or a meeting or a conversation, you cannot rely on this program.

So Good but needs more color!. I love this app. I bought it years ago and never used it on my phone, but since getting an iPad it has become one of my most used apps both for work and for personal use. It works so well and I haven’t seen any glitches or issues with the features. I will say the color choices for paper backgrounds are lacking and I would really love to see some improvements there. We should be able to choose the background from a full spectrum color palette like the pens and highlighters. Yes you could use the highlighter to change the paper color, but it only changes the section of the page that is currently on the screen. When you scroll down to continue your note and try to highlight in the new background colors, you end up overlapping the previously colored areas and end up with sections that are discolored. More line templates, like for handwritten check lists would also be appreciated. I don’t care about the themes, I’m happy with black, but to be honest the paid options aren’t even remotely tempting. Not good choices.

This is a great app UNTIL.... This is a great app UNTIL... you need to contact customer support. After the last update I ran into an issue with my computers not syncing my notes. I sent them an email in March - no response, then again in June - no response. The only response I received was an auto-generated message both times that said, "Thank you for contacting us! At the moment, we're experiencing a higher than usual volume of inquiries and responses may take longer than expected. We appreciate your patience and are working to get back to you as quickly as possible. Your ticket number is..." I then sent another email with the subject line, "Still haven't heard back after 5 months and 2 months respectively" which included the previous ticket numbers citing the same issue. THEN I got a response 8 days later letting me know my options to correct the issue. So glad I had the Classic version of this app. I doubt that I would ever upgrade to the subscription. If I were paying a subscription price, I would have canceled and went back to Evernote (for a much better customer service experience).

Unparalleled Note-Taking App. I got this app when it was in the developmental stage and I loved it back then. I couldn’t even imagine the potential this app could have. Every single update brings amazement to my eyes. This is the simplest yet most amazing note taking app you could possibly ever hope for. I am currently college student and I can’t even begin to explain how this app has aided me in my academic journey. You can record lectures simultaneously while writing down notes and then go back and see exactly when the lecturer was talking when you wrote down a certain note. That in itself is amazing. Additionally, this app also allows you to search keywords for your handwriting (yes it’s even capable of reading terrible handwriting like mine). What else could you ask for in an app? This app does everything that you could ever want while taking notes, and then some. Overall, this app deserves much more than 5 stars and I want to personally thank the creators and developers for making this app a possibility and for aiding me in me academic career.

Major issues with syncing. I have been having SERIOUS issues with how my notes sync across devices and between ios and my macbook. Overall notability is a potentially great note-taking platform. I found the way notes can be organized to be really helpful. I left One Note for Notability and would be completely happy with it EXCEPT. Every time i open notability on a different device (i have phone, macbook, imac and ipad) it completely rearranges all of my notes. The dividers disappear, the order of the notes changes, the subject colors are reset, most of my notes (about 200) get moved into the unfiled subject. Sometimes, if i wait about an hour, they get moved back into the original subjects - but who wants to sit there and wait that long. It’s INCREDIBLY frustrating. And now all of my important notes are in notability so i’m constantly worried that one day i’m going to open the app and everything is going to be gone (which has actually happened several times, but I was able to recover using help from their website - something which i have had to access way more than i should). Giving it 3 stars...for potential.

Subscription plan is a deal breaker. **update: they changed their minds and with version 11.0.2 previously paid users will keep their purchased features forever. However I’m changing to a three-star rating because while notability is a great app easily worth, say, $20 (more than I’ve paid), it is not really worth $15/year. I’m also leaving my original review in place because it’s pretty clear that they tried to screw their paid users and only changed their minds when they realized they couldn’t get away with it due to the huge number of 1-star reviews.** Original review: I’ve been very happy with notability, and last month purchased several features from the Notability shop. But now they have switched to a subscription model, and if I read correctly, they will take away the features I just paid for in one year if I don’t pay them more money for a subscription. This is a betrayal of trust and is absolutely unacceptable. There are other products almost (but not quite) as good as the new subscription version that are much better deals. The hobbled free version of notability is not as good as free alternatives.

I wish I didn’t pay for this. I downloaded notability in January after getting fed up with one notes and Microsoft, and at first I thought it was a really good choice. I didn’t like that in good notes, I would have to buy before I try, even though I ended up getting the notability subscription (btw you can’t really not subscribe…). However, I am absolutely fed up with this app. I can barely write ANY notes without the entire page glitching. I get these awful random lines that scribble across the whole page and mess up so much of my writing that I’m constantly undoing or erasing spastic lines that I didn’t intend to create. It’s really difficult as a student trying to take notes in a college lecture and not being able to write more than a word before the page messes up. I’ve tried every possible solution for this online, from turning on tap to zoom, toggling with palm detection, un pairing and re pairing my Apple Pencil, freaking everything yet none have worked. The app has had multiple updates since I got it yet it seems like this is one problem they’ll never fix. Do yourself a favor and just get good notes, this ISN’T WORTH IT

I still use this in college. This is overall just a really great app. While I don’t like they have a subscription service for certain features and templates, they are optional ones that don’t affect the base experience, so it doesn’t bother me much. I’ve used this app since high school and it is just a really high quality note taking app. I don’t have to carry around a bunch of papers and this makes it so much easier to use the PowerPoints from my professors since I can write or type my own addition to the notes. One suggestion I do have though is to have an option where the highlighter doesn’t get darker if you do another highlighter stroke on it. How it is now isn’t how actual highlighters really look when they’re marked over again and it just looks messy when I try to highlight a large area, but can’t lift my pen from the pad or else it won’t be one consistent shade. Overall, it is well worth the one time purchase!

Possibly the greatest application for students. Notability changed the game for me, I never even think about printing lecture slides and wasting paper. This is a must have for students, it allows you to essentially write on any pdf/ppt. You can even import images into your notes which makes it useful if I want to take a picture of something or even a screenshot of my textbook and import it. Also has tools for recording voice if you want to record a lecture and associate it with a particular note. Handy system for organizing and color coding topics/folders. Even syncs with most major cloud data services like google drive, Dropbox, etc. Tools to markup your notes are pretty intuitive and easy to use, has lots of useful tools to choose from. It’s very easy to study even if I don’t have my iPad since I can open this on my iPhone and everything syncs. Has a computer app too which costs more but it’s super easy to just airdrop notability notes to your laptop and open them there. I would highly recommend this if you intend to use your iPad for school.

Great app, but!. First, I was trying to contact the developer to give this feedback directly. But there’s no easy way to do this on the website. Suggestion 1, give us that ability. Suggestion 2, you should have a features request page that’s easy to find. I’m not even sure you have one. Suggestions 3 thru end: I’m a math teacher that makes extensive use of this app. There have been improvements of interest to math teachers (like the grid stickies and math symbols package), but there’s a long way to go. It would be of immense utility to be able to be able graph within the app, like maybe an embedded Desmos or GeoGebra or some such. An infinite single canvas would be super helpful, that can also be saved as a pdf. It would be nice if, at any user-specified level, sharing with simultaneous edits were possible. A chalkboard background with chalk-like pen strokes would be a nice touch too, and also pens that mimicked the look of whiteboard markers.

LOVE...but.... First off, this app is easily my favorite way to take notes. I will not be looking at other ways to take notes ever again. I do think that some updating needs to happen. It seems like the last 5+ months have been spent making a Mac compatible version (which I am thankful for) but at the expense of updating anything on the tablet side of things. I think there are some major things that should be added... the ability to fill in text box backgrounds, smoother transition when wanting to change the text in a box so the next box is not the weird abnormal setting (make a favorite setting), AND PLEASE make the ability to have size able pages in-between slides! It is so crazy having a full lecture slide that you just need two lines for a note on a whole page. AND make folders archive-able when we’re uploading to notability from another app... I am in a quarter system school and I already have to sort though 20+ classes to find the current quarter’s class.

Dealbreaker: layer handling. This seems to be one of the most popular apps for handwriting notes on iPad but a fatal flaw is the inability to lock or rearrange layers (or any other solution that wouldn’t ruin my notes irreparably). Example: I import a large image like a custom planner template or something to annotate. I write notes over it and paste other smaller images over it. I accidentally click on the image behind everything and it jumps up to the top layer, covering all the other smaller notes and images. I cannot undo this or put the large image back as the bottom layer. The only way I could fix this was to move all the small images out of the way and then put them back one by one on top of the large image. A fix in my case was to import the image as a PDF, which allowed me to use it as a fixed background, but in that case, there is no way to resize, move, or transform that background PDF. My main gripe is that this layer jump issue could ruin a lot of saved work and is irreversible via undo function. I would still continue to use this app if it allowed us to upload custom templates under “templates.”

Absolutely the best note taking app for iPad. I’ve been using this app for 6 years, all throughout high school and into my sophomore year of college. It is honestly the best app I’ve ever used for notes. It’s so easy to convert notes to PDFs and import almost any type of file, even pictures! It’s also great for writing, and I love that they have a left handed mode for all of us lefties. It makes it so much easier to write. There are also different types of paper that you can use to personalize your notes! The latest update allows you to view 2 notes at the same time, and you can write on one while recording the other! Definitely the best feature for me! The only things I would want to change is to add more colors and themes. The selection is already great of both, but I am a little bored with having to use the same selection over and over. I also think an improvement would be to let people create folders within folders or subjects. This would help me further organize my notes. Honestly though, I love everything about this app!

Don’t sync with iCloud and notes keep becoming unfiled. I’ve been using this app for almost 4 years now and have never had an issue like this until about a year ago. I have over 700 notes because I am a college student and upload lecture slides onto this app so it’s easier to take notes. Since last year I have noticed that my notes go into the “unfiled notes” section and is not longer in the subjects and dividers I put them in. I have had to manually put them back into their respective subjects. Since syncing with iCloud (as a way save my notes since the unfiling issue) they take forever to recover from iCloud. I would upload lecture slides into the app and not even be able to use them for the entire lecture because it’s still trying to be recovered from iCloud. On top of that all my notes still unfile but they do go back into their right subjects though it takes forever!! I have left my iPad on and on the app so that my iPad doesn’t lock and have the unfiling thing happen and even after leaving it on over night it still was not done filing nor was it done syncing with iCloud. I do not recommend this app for taking notes.

Want to be a forever subscriber. I would like to make a suggestion. I have been using Notability for some years now and have many notes, subjects and folders (which allows me to use for many more years to come). However, there are times when I cannot title my notes the way I want (get error message) because I have the same exact title name in some other folder. This is problematic because my mental model of hierarchical organizations and structures is pretty stable over the years. Usually people are that way—although can evolve. In fact, staying with a consistent mental model is essential for people who use notability and organize a lot. For instance, I would like to have a title “01. Introduction” as my first note title in every subject but can’t do that. I think Notability has continued to improve—particularly the flexibility in organizing and adding folders, subjects, and notes. I hope to continue to use it. If I RUN OUT of titles that I could remember, organization will become harder and continued use for many years May no longer be an option.

Amazing Navigation and Design. I’m obsessed with this app. I use it on my iPad for all my classes, as well as creative projects, any readings I want to do, and regular note taking. I absolutely love the functionality and navigation. You can search your own handwriting (don’t have to convert it to text), can import and export files (images, screenshots, PDFs, MS Word, etc.) all with extreme ease (this works incredibly with airdrop). I also love being able to switch between notes, have multiple notes open on one screen, and having my favorite writing utensils saved as a toolbar. The backup/sync works very well. I absolutely love being able to cut out and move around/paste my handwriting, it makes super neat notes that are simple to organize and clean up if you do make mistakes while writing. All of this allows me to take notes instead of typing, with all the ease and perks of electronic files. The only thing I would like to see is an option to not layer the highlighter if you lift your pen. Other than that, this is essentially my entire office now.

Randomly Deletes Notes or Edits. This app is fine if working appropriately from a features perspective, but dear god is it glitchy. iCloud backup is an absolute nightmare and it will automatically turn this off even if you initially chose a different service for auto-backups. It will just randomly decide to backup every note you ever created simultaneously including the note you are working in which you’ll be aware of because you’ll lose access to every single note you’ve ever worked on including the one you’re currently editing until the entire backup is complete. Hopefully you have gig speed internet. Of course you can try to turn off iCloud backup, but the Ginger Labs team cleverly designed their software so doing so deletes all your notes if you do this prior to one of the 30 minute backups being completed. So once you’ve managed to turnoff iCloud backup you’ll still just lose edits made to your notes. Just completed reading and taking notes on a 16 page document and I check back 30 seconds later and all the edits have magically disappeared. Finally there is no one to talk to you about these issues because the customer support team takes extended vacations and just doesn’t respond anyways. Not worth a cent. Just use onenote

Almost everything. I love this program for taking notes while listening to someone talk live. It allows you to record the speaker and quickly go back and review exactly what they were saying when you were writing down a note. My only disappointment is: I wish it allowed you add all of your PDF forms as if they were a “paper type” like GoodNotes so that you could just select the form/paper type/ page type, and then “fill in” the form (which would be the page background) like it was a real physical paper form. However, Noteability is great for just about everything else. I would give it a 9/10 on a 10 point scale. Update: Buyer beware. Bait and switch activity! Those who adopted and purchased a perpetual license are now being told they will be switched to a subscription model. I can’t trust them going forward unless they honor the license they sold. I now recommend only GoodNotes unless they rethink their decision to screw all of their prior customers. Don’t invest in this unless you are ready to possibly be lied in the future and charged even more.

What happened?!. This used to be an amazing app and now it updates and it doesn’t sync, it doesn’t read large files, it crashes, it refuses to let you work in a hyperlink document without a HUGE lag. In fact the lag is so bad you can write, type, scroll or zoom in and out and you have to wait several MINUTES before it shows up. Making it completely unusable. And it’s not the iPad - has plenty of room and it’s the latest version of the operating system and It’s not the files - they are not corrupt and have been redownloaded several times in several places and works fine everywhere else. I’ve restarted the iPad, I’ve deleted and redownloaded the app several times newest version doesn’t matter. Hyperlink documents are unusable, syncing isn’t reliable and neither is saving. And before I’m told it’s user error -I live in a household with 3 app and web developers with 7 years experience and 2 back end computer programmer software engineers... it’s not like we don’t know how to use technology. It’s so disappointing.. everything works great one day and now I’m terrified I’m going to lose everything (176 notes) because all of sudden we just can’t trust it. Please fix this so we don’t have to move to another app!