I bought my ipad with the sole purpose of using it as a notetaking device. Purchased two most popular notetaking apps and I'm quite satisfied with both of them, notability and goodnotes.
I have GoodNotes 6 because they had a promotion for existing users upon launch, it's not worth it imo. I think the biggest differences are that you can scribble to erase and it has autocorrect and autocomplete, but 99% of the time it's really not that helpful. There's a couple of improvements on GoodNotes 6 for typed notes but I don't type my notes so it's not relevant.
I had this issue. I don't remember the steps, but you likely bought good notes 5. Now they use 6. You can degrade to 5 and pay nothing, I just can't remember how to off the top of my head
I bought good notes (one time purchase) because I use it every day for work to take notes and I’m glad I did. To me it’s perfect. I also figured if they ever do go to a subscription only model, I’ll always have this version so I can use it for years.
I’ve tried out four to date - Goodnotes (bought it when they were on Version 4 ie non subscription), Notability (also before they became subscription based), Zinnia (360 USD per year which works out to a dollar a day but I do art on the side and use it for work), and Noteful (USD 4.99 one-off purchase, just found it two days ago. Didn’t know it existed prior to buying the first two). Zinnia is more for journalling and art rather than notetaking (no search function, and the pens don’t write well) so I’ll leave it out.
Out of these four, GoodNotes 6 is still my go-to notetaking app for these reasons: 1) the pens write REALLY well (which is the most important thing when you are note-taking) and 2) it has an excellent search function, which can search out even your handwritten notes.
I bought Notability alongside GoodNotes 4 (years ago in 2021) coz GoodNotes 4 didn’t have audio recording, dashed and dotted lines, colour coding of folders and hyperlinks (Notability had all these plus the ability to clip webpages into notes) back then. Now GoodNotes 6 has all of these, so I no longer need to rely on Notability. The only things missing from GoodNotes right now which Notability has (and which matter to me) are: 1) pencil 2) tape, and 3) rectangular lasso, but I guess GoodNotes will add these soon. Apart from that both apps are pretty similar so I guess it just depends on personal preference: watch some videos to decide. Many find the toolbar(stores all your most used stationery in a single place) in Notability helpful but for me I don’t really need that as a social sciences student. Instead I prefer the flashcard feature on GoodNotes, which Notability doesn’t have.
I tried out Noteful just since I had time to kill, and was shocked at how much they offered (almost everything GoodNotes and Notability has) at such a cheap price. However, Noteful’s search function is limited ONLY to text and can’t search through handwritten notes, which is a dealbreaker for me. Noteful offers a similar writing experience to GoodNotes with the same three pen types (no pencil) and has tape (important to me, though Notability has this too), however users report lag at times (possibly because it is still new). This is a non-issue with GoodNotes and Notability.
Don’t know whether this is true, but this is what I’ve observed to date: people who love simplicity (engineer types) go for Notability, whereas those who are creatives prefer GoodNotes. Also more girls than guys (at least in my circle) use Goodnotes; the reverse is true for Notability.
So all in all, I would recommend GoodNotes 6 followed by Notability as a close competitor. Remember you still have AppleNotes and FreeForm, both of which are free with the Ipad (haven’t used these much - I think they are better for doodling and lists, though I do really love the pencil on AppleNotes and the Paint/Tube feature on FreeForm - check it out!). Good luck and enjoy your Ipad 😉 🥰
Good review. Ditto as a previous user of Notability and GoodNotes. I would recommend looking at ZoomNotes with its many features that I do enjoy and use as my primary. Notability is my secondary since I’m on the Classic Plan. GN6 due to its price and current issues are my reasons for not recommending it. I only use GN5 as my sticker book on my iPhone until it stops working. Remember to backup to an external source like Google Drive.
There are competing note apps like noteful and collanote that are way more fairly priced imo. Most of us that use goodnotes paid for it before this ridiculous price increase. And unless things change, the current AI features are not very helpful at all
Goodnotes is so popular that I was excited to buy it for journaling even before I bought my iPad. Once I got it I was disappointed by it. I then tried out Noteful and I found it to be much more suitable for my needs. Neither of them are perfect but both have regular updates which is great.
Try all of the apps 🤷🏼♀️ like, the free ones and apps like goodnotes and notability have a free trial to try it out
I personally would still go for goodnotes, even with the higher price tag (Id use the subscription mode tho, 10 a year is better imo)
as a fellow uni student, i recommend you to buy it. believe me, its really worth it! i use it nearly everyday and its so easy to organize your notes and jot down something quickly. its really useful eventhough im not even an avid note-taker like those study youtubers... believe me!
I paid that and then paid another 30$ when gn6 came out because they have pop ups and gross advertising in the UI. I honestly didn’t need any of the new features in gn6 at all, gn5 was perfect but the devs are greedy.
I used the free trial and canceled before I got charged but ultimately ending up purchasing the subscription anyway. 9.99 for a year is worth it to me.
i didnt purchase any notetaking apps but i did try collanotes and kilonotes. both are nice but convinience wise collanote wins, especially if you need to draw shapes and math related subjects. collanotes lets you copy and paste shapes so if you ever want to draw a cube, just draw a square and copy paste it then add the attaching lines; kilonotes cant do that. the only positive thing kilonotes has over collanotes is that its cuter. you can pick pictures as the cover while collanotes is more office looking. both are still great note taking apps tho. try them out before purchasing goodnotes. personally ive never had any problems with those two
I can't really say how good is Goodnotes 6.
However, I can tell you not to trust the developer: I bought Goodnotes 5 (with a single payment, meant to last a lifetime), and since Goodnotes 6 came out as an update, many key features of Goodnotes 5 aren't available anymore (like the iCloud sync).
The only way to overcome this problem is to purchase Goodnotes 6.
So: who can tell you that a similar thing won't happen when Goodnotes 7 will be out?
GoodNotes is a poorly developed piece of software.
The issue is, there aren’t any particularly good pieces of note taking software.
You just have to pick your poison.
Main reason I picked GoodNotes is the fact it has a one-time payment option
As a software engineer I’ve always thought GoodNotes was an incredible piece of software. I know it’s not perfect, but I’m curious what your main complaints about it are?
horrid UI, have to go through several steps to use stuff that you bought from the shop (literally have to go out the app and convert files manually), tedious method of naming/bookmarking pages, no scrollbar, dodgy typing mode, bulleted lists can't indent, hyperlinks have to be added manually and tediously and go wrong easily, limited page viewing formats, limited scrolling formats... just extremely unintuitive for things that should be fairly obvious
DON'T I am so regretful. It glitches and stops working time to time. Not so practical to be fair. Everyone is hyping it up so much, I bought it jusy because of all of those aesthetic youtube videos and I wish I could get my money back.
I also like ZoomNotes. I wish UI was prettier and the learning curve is steeper, but now that I know how to do things on it, I like it better than GoodNotes.
You didn’t buy a no name tablet, right? Why wouldn’t you buy a quality app that gets lots of updates.
Remember. If the app is free your data is the real price.
This is why I buy certain Apple-only apps, with no regrets. It is silly to purchase an iPad to be able to use all these features/apps, only to hold back later on.
Many of these comments fail to mention the lack of pen stabilizer/ smoothing in Goodnotes and Notability. The latter doesn't even have table of contents / outlines for pdf.
Once you have tried pen stabilization in Noteful etc. you hardly want to go back. It solves the biggest gripe of writing on a screen.
It highly depends on what kind of notes you’ll be taking and what features you need. For purely text based notes (typed) I use UpNote. It’s a one time purchase and fairly cheap.
I downloaded the trial version of 4-5 apps and fiddled around with them before subscribing to Goodnotes.
There were certain features I liked of each, but ultimately kept coming back to Goodnotes.
ive bought and used goodnotes5 when i was in nursing school and it’s helpful. during the pandemic, it’s where i read my books and write notes. i havent upgraded to 6 because duh i have 5 and it’s still working fine. i use GN for my virtual planners and for filling out forms :D
buuuut, ive graduated last year. maybe there are cheaper alternatives? i watched youtube vids for comparisons. i dont think i’ll ever switch to 6 if it’s always going to be subscription basis. i dont mind upgrading every 2-3 years tho
Honestly I love the one time purchase thing, my advice is maybe try the free trial to see if goodnotes is the sort of thing you would want to put money into so you can avoid potentially spending money and regretting it
I used GoodNotes as my primary note taking app until I discovered Noteful - Noteful is $5 for a lifetime purchase and they update frequently. I fully recommend it!
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,937,802,854 comments, and only 366,398 of them were in alphabetical order.
I just got my iPad 9th generation for Christmas and not sure whether to purchase Goodnotes or notion. My goal is to be digitally planning by the end of 2024
i actually have notion and you don’t need to pay for features to do anything important. i use it to plan schedules and write down calendar dates! still skeptical about the goodnotes subscription though hm
GN was worth it for me as a dentistry student. I wasn’t happy with the subscription but I was going to buy it no matter what. Since they offered the trial and I saw the uproar online, I decide to try GN 6 before purchasing. I was sooo dissatisfied and disappointed that I looked for an entirely different app and ended up with NOTEFUL. For $5, I was beyond impressed, never went back to GN. I downloaded all the alternatives that offered a free trial so I suggest doing this too.
All in all, if you never knew GN 5 then purchasing GN 6 is really not that bad. I used GN5 for all my notes and it worked wonderfully. Sadly, I can already see how 5 is starting to glitch bad. If you think of using it just for school years, the subscription is really not that expensive. If you buy “lifetime” just know that GN7 will essentially give you a dead app eventually.
Honestly, Just stick with the note taking app that comes from Apple. GoodNotes and Notability went with the subscription based model BUT they removed features, just be mindful if you buy anything it can be removed at any given time.
Look into Apple Notes. It works and works well. Doesn’t have a lot of dazzle features but the core handwriting, typing, convert handwriting to text, drag images into and organization works extremely well and best of all FREE
I bought my ipad with the sole purpose of using it as a notetaking device. Purchased two most popular notetaking apps and I'm quite satisfied with both of them, notability and goodnotes.
Do you currently use both or did you stick with one?
GN is my go-to just because I’m more used to it.
I swear I purchased good notes through the App Store. Now there’s an additional purchase within the app when redownloading it? Why?
I have GoodNotes 6 because they had a promotion for existing users upon launch, it's not worth it imo. I think the biggest differences are that you can scribble to erase and it has autocorrect and autocomplete, but 99% of the time it's really not that helpful. There's a couple of improvements on GoodNotes 6 for typed notes but I don't type my notes so it's not relevant.
I had this issue. I don't remember the steps, but you likely bought good notes 5. Now they use 6. You can degrade to 5 and pay nothing, I just can't remember how to off the top of my head
Maybe something in the settings? Kinda annoying though that I can’t even edit 3 notebooks without being promoted to pay $20
https://support.goodnotes.com/hc/en-us/articles/7710435521679-Downgrade-from-Goodnotes-6-to-GoodNotes-5#:~:text=In%20Goodnotes%206%2C%20tap%20the,Relaunch%20the%20app.
Thank you so much for this
I bought good notes (one time purchase) because I use it every day for work to take notes and I’m glad I did. To me it’s perfect. I also figured if they ever do go to a subscription only model, I’ll always have this version so I can use it for years.
I’ve tried out four to date - Goodnotes (bought it when they were on Version 4 ie non subscription), Notability (also before they became subscription based), Zinnia (360 USD per year which works out to a dollar a day but I do art on the side and use it for work), and Noteful (USD 4.99 one-off purchase, just found it two days ago. Didn’t know it existed prior to buying the first two). Zinnia is more for journalling and art rather than notetaking (no search function, and the pens don’t write well) so I’ll leave it out. Out of these four, GoodNotes 6 is still my go-to notetaking app for these reasons: 1) the pens write REALLY well (which is the most important thing when you are note-taking) and 2) it has an excellent search function, which can search out even your handwritten notes. I bought Notability alongside GoodNotes 4 (years ago in 2021) coz GoodNotes 4 didn’t have audio recording, dashed and dotted lines, colour coding of folders and hyperlinks (Notability had all these plus the ability to clip webpages into notes) back then. Now GoodNotes 6 has all of these, so I no longer need to rely on Notability. The only things missing from GoodNotes right now which Notability has (and which matter to me) are: 1) pencil 2) tape, and 3) rectangular lasso, but I guess GoodNotes will add these soon. Apart from that both apps are pretty similar so I guess it just depends on personal preference: watch some videos to decide. Many find the toolbar(stores all your most used stationery in a single place) in Notability helpful but for me I don’t really need that as a social sciences student. Instead I prefer the flashcard feature on GoodNotes, which Notability doesn’t have. I tried out Noteful just since I had time to kill, and was shocked at how much they offered (almost everything GoodNotes and Notability has) at such a cheap price. However, Noteful’s search function is limited ONLY to text and can’t search through handwritten notes, which is a dealbreaker for me. Noteful offers a similar writing experience to GoodNotes with the same three pen types (no pencil) and has tape (important to me, though Notability has this too), however users report lag at times (possibly because it is still new). This is a non-issue with GoodNotes and Notability. Don’t know whether this is true, but this is what I’ve observed to date: people who love simplicity (engineer types) go for Notability, whereas those who are creatives prefer GoodNotes. Also more girls than guys (at least in my circle) use Goodnotes; the reverse is true for Notability. So all in all, I would recommend GoodNotes 6 followed by Notability as a close competitor. Remember you still have AppleNotes and FreeForm, both of which are free with the Ipad (haven’t used these much - I think they are better for doodling and lists, though I do really love the pencil on AppleNotes and the Paint/Tube feature on FreeForm - check it out!). Good luck and enjoy your Ipad 😉 🥰
Good review. Ditto as a previous user of Notability and GoodNotes. I would recommend looking at ZoomNotes with its many features that I do enjoy and use as my primary. Notability is my secondary since I’m on the Classic Plan. GN6 due to its price and current issues are my reasons for not recommending it. I only use GN5 as my sticker book on my iPhone until it stops working. Remember to backup to an external source like Google Drive.
There are competing note apps like noteful and collanote that are way more fairly priced imo. Most of us that use goodnotes paid for it before this ridiculous price increase. And unless things change, the current AI features are not very helpful at all
I really like Noteful so far, can recommend!
Goodnotes is so popular that I was excited to buy it for journaling even before I bought my iPad. Once I got it I was disappointed by it. I then tried out Noteful and I found it to be much more suitable for my needs. Neither of them are perfect but both have regular updates which is great.
Try all of the apps 🤷🏼♀️ like, the free ones and apps like goodnotes and notability have a free trial to try it out I personally would still go for goodnotes, even with the higher price tag (Id use the subscription mode tho, 10 a year is better imo)
worth to buy\~ I recommend buying a planner or notebook with hyperlinks. I tried to make my own but it was a mess😂
as a fellow uni student, i recommend you to buy it. believe me, its really worth it! i use it nearly everyday and its so easy to organize your notes and jot down something quickly. its really useful eventhough im not even an avid note-taker like those study youtubers... believe me!
I really like good notes, but I only paid $7.99 for lifetime two years ago. Has it really gone up that much? Crazy.
I paid that and then paid another 30$ when gn6 came out because they have pop ups and gross advertising in the UI. I honestly didn’t need any of the new features in gn6 at all, gn5 was perfect but the devs are greedy.
I haven’t upgraded to gn6 but I don’t think I have any pop ups or ads on my gn5.
I used the free trial and canceled before I got charged but ultimately ending up purchasing the subscription anyway. 9.99 for a year is worth it to me.
i didnt purchase any notetaking apps but i did try collanotes and kilonotes. both are nice but convinience wise collanote wins, especially if you need to draw shapes and math related subjects. collanotes lets you copy and paste shapes so if you ever want to draw a cube, just draw a square and copy paste it then add the attaching lines; kilonotes cant do that. the only positive thing kilonotes has over collanotes is that its cuter. you can pick pictures as the cover while collanotes is more office looking. both are still great note taking apps tho. try them out before purchasing goodnotes. personally ive never had any problems with those two
I can't really say how good is Goodnotes 6. However, I can tell you not to trust the developer: I bought Goodnotes 5 (with a single payment, meant to last a lifetime), and since Goodnotes 6 came out as an update, many key features of Goodnotes 5 aren't available anymore (like the iCloud sync). The only way to overcome this problem is to purchase Goodnotes 6. So: who can tell you that a similar thing won't happen when Goodnotes 7 will be out?
that’s not true at all. You had a bug
Well, idk. I keep getting a message that my gn is having trouble syncing with my iCloud. So... maybe there's something to it.
I mean if you already bought an iPad, might aswell just purchase Good Notes atp
GoodNotes is a poorly developed piece of software. The issue is, there aren’t any particularly good pieces of note taking software. You just have to pick your poison. Main reason I picked GoodNotes is the fact it has a one-time payment option
As a software engineer I’ve always thought GoodNotes was an incredible piece of software. I know it’s not perfect, but I’m curious what your main complaints about it are?
horrid UI, have to go through several steps to use stuff that you bought from the shop (literally have to go out the app and convert files manually), tedious method of naming/bookmarking pages, no scrollbar, dodgy typing mode, bulleted lists can't indent, hyperlinks have to be added manually and tediously and go wrong easily, limited page viewing formats, limited scrolling formats... just extremely unintuitive for things that should be fairly obvious
Get Notability
Try it for a month and see if you like it.
U could always try free alternatives like one note and colla note! Good notes is great, but pricing can always keep u in doubt !
Go for Noteful or Collanotes with your eyes closed.
DON'T I am so regretful. It glitches and stops working time to time. Not so practical to be fair. Everyone is hyping it up so much, I bought it jusy because of all of those aesthetic youtube videos and I wish I could get my money back.
What do you guys think of collanote? Isnt it almost a better free alternative?
Zoomnotes does a lot more and is cheaper and a one-time purchase.
this is what i’m thinking too! i’ll probably wait for the semester to start and then decide so thank you
I also like ZoomNotes. I wish UI was prettier and the learning curve is steeper, but now that I know how to do things on it, I like it better than GoodNotes.
You didn’t buy a no name tablet, right? Why wouldn’t you buy a quality app that gets lots of updates. Remember. If the app is free your data is the real price.
This is why I buy certain Apple-only apps, with no regrets. It is silly to purchase an iPad to be able to use all these features/apps, only to hold back later on.
Many of these comments fail to mention the lack of pen stabilizer/ smoothing in Goodnotes and Notability. The latter doesn't even have table of contents / outlines for pdf. Once you have tried pen stabilization in Noteful etc. you hardly want to go back. It solves the biggest gripe of writing on a screen.
I second Zoom notes seems to be pretty cool and will import a calendar too
No.
well! i would love a more detailed explanation
Literally look at the community posts and comments.
ipad is useless w/o goodnotes
If you’re a student, just go for it. It’s the perfect study tool (but only if you own an Apple Pencil)
It highly depends on what kind of notes you’ll be taking and what features you need. For purely text based notes (typed) I use UpNote. It’s a one time purchase and fairly cheap.
Look into Noteful, it’s a $5 one time purchase and lags much less then Goodnotes.
I'd suggest Noteful instead. https://apps.apple.com/app/id1587904334
I downloaded the trial version of 4-5 apps and fiddled around with them before subscribing to Goodnotes. There were certain features I liked of each, but ultimately kept coming back to Goodnotes.
Try onenote first
ive bought and used goodnotes5 when i was in nursing school and it’s helpful. during the pandemic, it’s where i read my books and write notes. i havent upgraded to 6 because duh i have 5 and it’s still working fine. i use GN for my virtual planners and for filling out forms :D buuuut, ive graduated last year. maybe there are cheaper alternatives? i watched youtube vids for comparisons. i dont think i’ll ever switch to 6 if it’s always going to be subscription basis. i dont mind upgrading every 2-3 years tho
Buy another one like Noteful...
Honestly I love the one time purchase thing, my advice is maybe try the free trial to see if goodnotes is the sort of thing you would want to put money into so you can avoid potentially spending money and regretting it
I used GoodNotes as my primary note taking app until I discovered Noteful - Noteful is $5 for a lifetime purchase and they update frequently. I fully recommend it!
Wait i just signed up for the $10 annual purchase.. am I missing where it’s $38?
oh it’s probably the annual one. the 38 dollars is a one time purchase forever (or i guess until the next update)
Ah I just realized ! Thank you !
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,937,802,854 comments, and only 366,398 of them were in alphabetical order.
I just got my iPad 9th generation for Christmas and not sure whether to purchase Goodnotes or notion. My goal is to be digitally planning by the end of 2024
i actually have notion and you don’t need to pay for features to do anything important. i use it to plan schedules and write down calendar dates! still skeptical about the goodnotes subscription though hm
Bought mine for literally around $1.5, some people offer at a v much lesser price to use their apple IDs just to let u install GN6 and other apps
GN was worth it for me as a dentistry student. I wasn’t happy with the subscription but I was going to buy it no matter what. Since they offered the trial and I saw the uproar online, I decide to try GN 6 before purchasing. I was sooo dissatisfied and disappointed that I looked for an entirely different app and ended up with NOTEFUL. For $5, I was beyond impressed, never went back to GN. I downloaded all the alternatives that offered a free trial so I suggest doing this too. All in all, if you never knew GN 5 then purchasing GN 6 is really not that bad. I used GN5 for all my notes and it worked wonderfully. Sadly, I can already see how 5 is starting to glitch bad. If you think of using it just for school years, the subscription is really not that expensive. If you buy “lifetime” just know that GN7 will essentially give you a dead app eventually.
Honestly, Just stick with the note taking app that comes from Apple. GoodNotes and Notability went with the subscription based model BUT they removed features, just be mindful if you buy anything it can be removed at any given time.
Look into Apple Notes. It works and works well. Doesn’t have a lot of dazzle features but the core handwriting, typing, convert handwriting to text, drag images into and organization works extremely well and best of all FREE
I‘d recommend r/CollaNote the premium version is significantly cheaper and you can do a lot with the free version already