Use your iPad and Apple Pencil to take handwritten notes, markup on imported PDFs, type text, convert handwriting to text, record audio while taking notes, create multi-media notes with images and photos and much more. Handwritten notes are searchable and can be stored on any cloud file service. First released in 2010, Notes Plus has earned love from millions of iPad users for its superb handwriting experience. Notes Plus X is a complete rewrite as a document-based app where you can keep your notebooks anywhere on device or any cloud service. Learning from 10+ years making handwriting apps and reading user feedback, Notes Plus X provides a distraction-free user experience that is both simple and powerful. Completely rewritten in the latest programming language and technology, it is blazing fast and ready for many updates in many years to come. WRITE LIKE ON REAL PAPER, AND MUCH BETTER • Write with Apple Pencil or any capacitive styluses, even with your finger. • Make any handwriting beautiful with patented vector-based inking effects (US 9189695 B2) for fountain pen, ballpoint pen, wet brush and calligraphy pen. • Offer many smart gestures to keep distraction away like cross/scrub to delete or circle to select. • Easily customize pen color, thickness, brush type, and switch between favorite pen styles. • Convert handwriting to text for search or share. TYPE LIKE IN WORD PROCESSORS • Support rich text format like word processors. • Change text font, color, and size for any text selection. • Provide text boxes to be easily moved around, customized background, border, and shadow. HIGHLIGHT LIKE WITH MARKUP TOOLS • Highlight on PDF, text or handwriting with customizable highlighting styles. • Automatically straighten highlighting lines to quickly perform any markup task. • Erase only highlighting, not the text beneath it. SKETCH LIKE IN DRAWING SOFTWARE • Auto detect and draw perfect shapes and lines. Insert rich collection of shapes like rectangles, polygons, ellipses, and more. • Move, resize, rotate, group, ungroup, bring to front, send to back, and much more. • Insert, crop, rotate images and photos. BE PRODUCTIVE WITH A POWERFUL TOOL! • Create a to-do list, daily planner, journal entry, ... • Manage documents in folders anywhere on device or iCloud or any cloud file services. • Find notes directly from iOS Spotlight search. • Present on external display as a digital whiteboard. If these features are not enough, drop me a line suggesting a feature and I will consider adding it in future versions. I’m planning to keep Notes Plus X loved for another 10 years.
Best of the iOS handwriting apps
I love this app for two main reasons: First of all, It’s difficult to write cleanly on an iPad no matter who you are, but handwriting in Notes Plus X is unparalleled. I’ve downloaded and tested every major iOS app for handwritten notes and none of the others are able to make my handwriting look so good. When you write, what you see is a slight improvement over what you actually wrote on the screen. It’s fantastic, especially when using the fountain pen tip. Second, this newer version’s user interface is well-designed and practical. Menus, folders, and tools are mostly where I would expect, and it makes it very easy to navigate and just get to writing. I use a 2nd gen Apple Pencil and this is my exclusive go-to app for note taking and marking up PDFs. It has been mostly glitch-free and stable on my iPad Pro, so don’t worry about old reviews that might be referencing problems that have been long since solved. The only thing I’ve noticed is that I have to be sure I go out of my document and let it sync up before swiping the app away. That seems to prevent any loss of data.
United StatesLoses work!!
This app is the best handwriting app, period. You experience the joy of handwriting as in no other app. BUT: lately - which is to say, the last few days, after I hadn’t touched it in a few weeks, I am writing for awhile and then LOSING EVERYTHING I’VE DONE! Sometimes pages of work! This is beyond unacceptable! I can’t use it if I’m at all afraid of losing what I’ve done. And now that I’m into this ecosystem, it will be awkward to try to change to another system, and yet I HAVE to. Can you imagine if any other word processing app just randomly lost pages of your work? This needs to be fixed IMMEDIATELY or else I’ll have to go make do with some app that isn’t as fun but which actually SAVES MY WORK.
United StatesPlease keep improving this beautiful application
Please keep improving this beautiful application. Handwriting with the “ballpoint” tip works great. With Kindest Regards-BR
United StatesDoesn’t save
I have been using this app for a while with no issues and then over the last 3 months it will randomly not save and erases data. I sadly need to find a new app because I just can’t count on this app any longer.
United StatesFails to save half the time
I’ve been using this app since it was introduced. About a month ago it started failing to save. No change in configuration. Now I have to double check every time. About half the time it doesn’t. Really frustrating since I’m trying to keep a nutrition diary for a sick person.
United StatesNotes Plus X still buggy
I’ve been a Notes Plus and Notes Plus X user for a long time. I’ve introduced and got colleagues using it as well. However, although I read comments that they can’t reproduce problems other users have seen, I’ve lost too much critical work. Doesn’t matter if on the cloud or on my iPad, I can change page to check something, come back and my last hour worth of work is gone. I close the app, come back 10 minutes later, my last page is gone. I want to use it, but I feel the testing group hasn’t taken our concerns seriously enough to duplicate and fix.
United StatesGlitchy and unpredictable, prepared to lose your work a lot.
The app is often glitchy, while drawing and annotating. I like how it handles pen strokes, and the UI isn’t so bad, but I don’t know how many times I have had lost or mangled content and pages in notebooks that I have saved previously. I’ve gotten into the habit of saving my notebook several times, so that I have “backup“ copies. After all this time in development, both it and its predecessor are still riddled with bugs. I just don’t see any sort of improvement curve here, so I have to reluctantly advise everyone to look elsewhere. Even for drawings that were previously saved, I suggest you get them exported to PDF and away from this horrendous data-killing program.
United States
- Major bug fixes. - Update to iOS 17 and Apple Pencil compatibility
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