Notability App Reviews

I loved this program on my Ipad and have recommended it to many. That is why I was incredibly disappointed when this program crashed twice throughout my academic year (on my MacBook), in both cases it damaged the notes and recordings that I needed for my midterms and final exam and thanks to cloud sink, the damaged/changed files spread to all my divices. Although I did receive help when the issue occurred before my first midterm, I have received no response from the developers after contacting them two weeks before my finals. I have sent multiple messages with no reply. I am never going to take a risk on this program again. I have invested thousands of dollars into my education and this program is just not reliable enough to trust with such a big investment. I would never recommend this program to any student. I found this to be an unreliable program backed by unreliable customer service.

This program has gone from being excllent to a pain in the …… There are so many bugs in it now I would not buy it. In particular the find does not work. Scolling does not work

The Mac version is less friendly than the iPad and iPhone versions. Crashed oftentimes also. Dont give up, Gingerlabs!

This app is absolutely awful for Mac. You’re better off sticking to Pages or Word to take notes. Can’t use the search bar without the app crashing. PDF text can’t be selected/highlighted. Awful just awful.

-Support for text highlighting/copy-paste and active links are great, but my abiilty to make textboxes isn’t as easy as before. Generally, I find single clicks make textboxes and double clicks highlights text, but when I’m in a hurry to take notes during class, notability highlights the text when I want it to make a textbox, making it inconvenient for me. It would be great if notability can differentiate when I want to make a textbox vs highlighting text (eg. tapping with 2 fingers for highlighting text while tapping with 1 finger for creating textboxes) -Another suggestion is to have a way to organize the notes within the subject. Sometimes I like to move my notes in the order I want them to be in, and I can’t do that in notability. Notability allows me to organize the order of my subjects and dividers, but not the notes within those subjects. -Also, Notability crashes when I do a word search. It would be great if that can be fixed.

New update made the app use a lot of energy and deplete my macbook’s power FAST. Adding text to PDF used to be easy. Now you have to click to the left of the screen to get a text box and sometimes you don’t get a textbox at all. Crashes if you use the search bar. Please FIX!

This app is the reason my Macbook crashed. After exhausting all available boot-up methods and assessment techniques, the technicians at the Genius Bar concluded that there was nothing that could be done other than to restore the laptop, which meant the loss of all data on my harddrive. AVOID this application at all costs until they fix this problem. I like the concept of the app, but never will I use it until it doesn’t corrupt and destroy the device onto which it is installed.* *Note: It seems to work fine on iPhone, but not Macbooks.

No crashes to report, drawing ability is nice to have and I like the layout but PLEASE PUT IN A SUBSCRIPT AND SUPERSCRIPT FUNCTION!

I absolutely love this app - I am a big fan of highlighting and typing on notes, and I love that it syncs with my iPad. However, there are some serious glitches that I’d like to see resolved in subsequent versions: 1) For some reason, everytime I type “didn’t” it autocorrects to “did’t” (which doesn’t happen on any of my other applications) and then everything I type afterwards disappears. Additionally, unless I “cut” the textbox and restart the app, a small black square (about 1inx1in) appears on certain pages of notes and can only be moved by quitting the application again and again - as well as this, I sometimes see text that I’ve written earlier showing up in later parts of the document, but only small portions of it which cannot be moved at all. 2) It seems to be impossible to copy and paste any content, ever 3) when I click on the top grey bar to try and move the window, it moves, but it also scrolls up my notes very quickly… incredibly frustrating. 4) finally, scrolling through large PDFs can be an issue on the mac - sometimes it is a very slow and glitchy process, particularly if you are hoping to scroll through multiple pages. It would be nice to see some of these very odd glitches resolved in subsequent updates, particularly at the price we are paying relative to other notetaking apps. That being said, I am a very devoted fan of this app either way - even with its glitches I think it is a great app and certainly a worthwhile purchase for myself as a university student. Additionally, it would be nice if notes could be organized within a single subject (as others have suggested) - for some reason, it is impossible to simply drag notes to the top or bottom and sub-folders within different topics are not available - this is quite frustrating.

This is the best app… I don’t have to use my data to use it or to look at previous notes. I don’t even need wifi. I love that it syncs to icloud, and not some third party database that I have to pay for either! Worth every penny. This is a great app, highly recommended.

Notability is my favourite PDF editor for the iPad. Having the Mac version allows me to easily sync files with the iPad and notations show up in either version. I had a brief crashing problem with the upgrade to 2.0 but they fixed it quite quickly with the upgrade to 2.0.2.

This is not the same as the iPad version and is lacking much of the capabilities of what is provided for the Pad. There are better apps like this available now. “One” in particular.

I use this application for so many things at home and for business. It is great for annotating documents to share or reference later. A great timesaver!

I could not live without this app - I use it all day long for teaching. Hands down the best writing tool I have ever used - lot’s of hidden features (which unfortunately took some time to discover). One request PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE … I BEG YOU … ADD A LINE DRAWING TOOL AND A COUPLE OF BASIC SHAPES!!! You will get 5 stars if you can add these!!!

I recommend this to all my friends who need to take notes. Great syncing between my iphone, iPad, and Mac. My favorite feature is that I can record audio at the same time as taking notes, whether through typing or through writing with my apple pencil - and the audio syncs precisely with the timing of the written notes, so that if I need to go back later, I can go straight to the relevant part of the audio recording with a quick tap of a specific word. I use it to annotate pdfs, which I can share easily through message/email. I can also send just the audio clips by themselves. For people who also have the app, I can share the full note version so they can have a copy that works just like mine does. Airdrop is best for large notes. Other methods haven’t worked well. My brother introduced this to me and I haven’t found anything else that allows me to do what this does. The only thing I would like to see in the future, is a web-based version, so that i can access my notes when I am logging in on a PC and I don’t have my Mac with me, like you can do with Evernote.

everytime I use the search function of the app with the mac pro version, it just crashed. EVERYTIME!!! and I have to reopen it. I keep upgrading it, but it seems no works :(

Search function crashes the app every single time. And if the apps costs as much as the ios counterpart, it should have identical functions. Still lacking of many ios features.

Every time I try to search my notes the app crashes

For the past couple months, there has been a glitch with Notability that causes the current note to scroll up as you drag the window across your screen. It is so incredibly annoying that I’m writing this review of Notability. Please for the love of all that is good, fix this problem!

Im currently a fourth year university student thats officially studying the degree Composition in Music. Unofficially, Im working towards prerequisites to change my path and apply for an Engineering program. I went to an arts high school during my teen years and was never fond of the maths and sciences, not because I didnt enjoy them, but because it was difficult for me to organize successful strategies to meet my scholastic goals in these subjects. As a creative person with a learning disability whom aced all of my high school courses (high 90%+ average) and graduated with a high school diploma with a high skills major in arts and culture with a high 90%+ average, my biggest regret was not taking my math and science courses more seriously. Indeed, they were my weakest skills, averaging mid-70s in these subjects, and I only took the minimum requirements. Today I pay the expensive price by taking these grade 12 math and science courses in the early years of my twenties. Since Ive been pursing these prerequisites, Ive been using the iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and the Notability to study with and complete assignments. One of the difficulties Ive had with math was erasing mistakes while taking notes and correcting them in a neat organized way -- I hated the eraser marks and in the end was costing me neat reference notes when studying. The erasing, selection, and cut & paste functions in Notability make erasing mistakes and formatting SO easy though! Additionally, the way the user can organize their notes in subjects and dividers is extremely helpful. I cant stress enough that being able to currant my notes after-the-fact in a fast efficient way truly helps me learn the course content better. If anyone is reading this review wondering if this app is better than any of the competition, it is, (it even prints -- a major competitor does not... Learned this the hard way, just FYI). Im proud to say that ever since Ive been using this app that Ive been receiving A+s in all my math & science courses. Notability, please dont stop investing in this tool. Thank you so much for making such a great platform to learn and teach! You have no idea how grateful I am, especially as someone with a learning disability. Ive only given a 4-star rating because I believe nothing is perfect, ever, and believe in being humble about opportunities of growth. As a user, Ive had a few of ideas that have come to mind that I wish for how to improve the app. Firstly, I would love to be able to bookmark specific text & annotations in a way that’s similar to adding a hyperlink for a website. For example, if Im being assigned homework in class, I would love to be able to add a bookmark that when I click it, it could go to a different page in my notes with the specific formula from the course notes that could help me with that question. Secondly, my teacher posts PDF notes online and she recommends printing and bringing them to class to take notes. I obviously import it into Notability and annotate the PDFs from there, but I’d love the ability to copy and paste pieces of the PDF document itself into other parts of the Notability subject. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have enough room to make additional notes but love the notes in the PDF so I wish there was a way to consolidate this selection control to include PDFs and not just annotations. Lastly, I wish I could be able to sort my notes in a custom order that I want, whether by tag and / or in a set order by drag and drop. This feature would especially be useful when preparing structure for writing essays, etc. Again, thank you Notability for being such a great app and changing my life. I will continue to look forward to each update in the future. - a lifetime user