GoodNotes 4

GoodNotes is so close to being my go to note-taking app except it’s missing 2 features. 1) being able to record or import audio to accompany the notes. This is a feature that Notability has that makes me use notability more frequently than GoodNotes. If this were possible to do with GoodNotes, I’d immediately stop using Notability. 2) the ability to add more than one photo at a time to my notes. With taking courses such as Mammalogy or an anatomy lab or biology labs which involve differentiating specimens, I’ve taken multiple photos for one specific specimen. And this usually results in having around 100 photos for a single 3hr lab period. An example is having 5 species of bats to identify based on their fur and overall size as well as skeletal features such as teeth and skull. I have to go through my photos one by one to add for each feature of all 5 species. It would take 1 min if I could select maybe up to 5 photos at once to add; allowing me to focus on differentiating and actually creating notes. Instead, it takes 5-10minutes to add each photo individually. Do this for 5 species and just adding the photos turns into a 50 minute task. Unfortunately, only Microsoft OneNotes allows this function, but its format is significantly inferior to GoodNotes that I rather GoodNotes take initiative and provide this since it seems like a function easier to fix than Microsoft fixing their entire formatting.

I have schizophrenia so I am very disorganized. This iPad Pro has been my best investment I have ever made. I call it my brain. GoodNotes is the best app (along with Things 3) on my iPad. I like to read great books and take notes. I have a Kindle Fire, with a huge book library, and it has a note taking feature, but with the way my mind works I found it to be inefficient. I tried paper notes in a Moleskine, but after making so many notes, after a while it would take forever to find a particular note I needed. GoodNotes solved all these problems for me. I can take handwritten notes. And the writing is just as smooth as pen and paper. There is no lag at all. And I have created notebooks for each area of my life. I have a category for Christianity that has these notebooks: Bible Study Notes, Prayer Journal, and sermon notes. Then I have a reading category that include a reading journal, and a Commonplace book to write the most life changing quotes I come across. Then I have my writing category that includes my personal Journal, and a notebook for rough drafts of research papers, essays, poems etc. And finally I have a brainstorming category which includes notebooks containing Mind Maps and free writing of ideas that I have. If I was to buy Moleskines for all these notebooks, I would have spent a small fortune. Plus with the handwriting recognition and search, I can go directly to whatever note I want. Purely amazing.

I LOVE this app, I hesitated to buy it for the longest time because I have been trying to go paperless for well over a year now and have tried every note app out there including Evernote, notability, noteshelf, etc. I’ve spent over 40 bucks on note apps that I use consistently for a couple of weeks and then I’m back to paper. None of the previous apps held my attention for one reason or other. I’ve been using GoodNotes consistently for about 4 months now and I love it. I recently used just this to study for a major exam I had and it was so amazing to just have to carry around my iPad and Apple Pencil and be able to study whenever I had a free moment instead of having notebooks and books. Plus being able to take pictures of slides and materials and write right on them really helped with retaining information. Also I can switch seamlessly between taking notes on my iPad and looking at them on my iPhone without missing a beat. I have a Paperlike screen protector I’m using with goodnotes and its an awesome “notebook like” experience and as close as I think I can get to paper without the weight and waste. Suggestion to developers: The only thing I wish was different is I hope they get way more notebook covers and paper types (COLORED PAPER!!) I have a lot of notebooks in my app and have exhausted all the existing covers so I’m hoping to see a lot more options.

I don’t give five-star reviews, but GoodNotes deserves it. I started using it a few weeks ago with an iPad Air 2 and the Adonis Pixel stylus and it was phenomenal, we had to shift some gear around in our home and I needed a new upgrade, even my skeptical wife loves the way the Apple Pencil works with GoodNotes on the iPad Pro! A practical example: I use Evernote for gathering all my electronic loose ends. I had been searching for a good handwriting solution since Microsoft OneNote first came around, but that turned me away from ink. I used to use InfoSelect back in the days of MS-DOS and liked the feature that let you create individual calendars, say to track a certain kind of event, like when you last had your oil changed. I don’t want this on my “main” calendar, it’s not important, but I want to be able to track it. GoodNotes lets me create a kind of analog solution for that - I can create a monthly calendar in Excel using a template, save it as a PDF, bring it into GoodNotes and then mark it up. I can also view it on my iPhone or Mac. I find myself reverting to the daily piece of paper to-do list, and as I make notes I can later copy and paste the relevant sections into Evernote. (I have a notebook for vendors, so if I call Comcast about something I keep notes and whether they’re ink or text, they’re dated, and I can find what I need). That’s key for me, where did I save it!

I love GoodNotes, and use it on a daily basis along with Notability. I can’t, however, use this app exclusively until these two features arrive. I think the “virtual notebook” layout is more intuitive and smarter than the file system in Notability, and I find that my handwriting is neater on GoodNotes compared to Notability. But until vertical scrolling and split view come to this app, I will only be able to use it as a secondary device. Additionally, it would be nice to implement some small features that come from Notability. The ability to hold down at the end of a stroke to make a straight line is more intuitive to me than having to click the shape button first (although for all shapes other than straight lines GoodNotes’ solution is fair superior than Notability’s). It would be nice to be able to rotate text that is selected, and I don’t understand why you can’t already do this. Finally, although I personally don’t use it, the ability to record audio that is paired with your notes seems to be something many users are clamoring for. I hope that the developers of this app are able to implement these features soon, because their lacking is holding this app back from being a good secondary choice to a fantastic primary one.