Notability App Reviews

I have a few favorite writing apps, but since Notability went to the whole “sync across devices” thing, I’m finding it hard staying away. What a perfect solution to write a note on my ipad and have it appear INSTANTLY on my mac, and vice versa. Perfect. Feature rich, intuitive, and by far the most “useful” note taking app around.

It would be nice if I could copy and paste from Apple’s Notes app to Notability, but when I do, images don’t make it.

I have long used Notability on my iPad, and I love it on my iPad Pro even more than on my older iPads. However, I am less of a fan on my iMac/Macbook. First of all, the Mac version doesn’t appear to have the same options for customizing the interface (I always set mine to dark colors, the Mac version only allows a bright white background). Secondly, there are no options to choose the paper texture that you want. As a result, any notes I create on my Macs have to be opened on my iPad to change the paper color/pattern. I’m not sure why the developers have made the Mac version less robust, but I hope they work to have the same feature set on both platforms. I’m deeply invested in Notability and would rather deal with the current, minor imperfections than start looking for a replacement.

Forcing you to upgrade it the new iCloud drive is a terrible idea. Until they allow selective sync, I’m not running it. That means I can’t run Notability on my Mac now, which defeats the purpose. Allow us to sync through Dropbox please!

This is a great note taking app that works as a companion to the iPad app. It it still lacking some key features that are present on the iPad app to make it even better. For example: -It would be great to be able to change the creation date of a document (similar to how you can change it on the iPad). This is useful when you’re trying to customize the ordering of notes or documents by creation date (for example, if you’re making a new note that is referring to a meeting or lecture that happened in the past). Other improvements to the OSX version include: -It is very useful to add graphs and figures in pdf format by simply draging and dropping. However, it would be great to be able to directly insert into a page (in line with the text), instead of automatically being inserted as a new page that you can’t move around in the document. -Being able to add tables and diagrams natively on the app would be a very welcome addition! Overall this is a great note-taking app, but it has limited use for now as a companion to the iPad app. Adding simple features already present in the iPad app, and taking advantage of the multi-tasking features of a computer (mainly adding graphs and other documents seamlessly and with the flexibility to move them around) would make this app even better.

After downgrading from El Capitan to Yosemite caused me to lose thousands of my Apple Notes, I decided it was time to find another note app. On the one end of the spectrum was Evernote…..but it was overly complex, and offline capability on my phone was going to cost me an additional $5 per month. Ummmm….no. On the other end was Google Keep, but it was overly simplistic, didn’t provide a true client for my Mac, and I don’t trust Google to continue on with Keep with it’s history of killing so many projects for no apparent reason. Then there were a plethora of featureless, buggy note apps in the middle, with no companion iOS version. This app seems like it is the best of all worlds….providing just the right amount of functionality, low cost, offline capability (mobile version), and most importantly synchronization to my phone via icloud at no additional monthly cost. Cons: 1. Not as full featured as the mobile version leaving out themes, default backgrounds, and default font colors among other things. 2. There is no way to set the first line of the note as the title. 3. I have yet to find a way to mass export all of my notes in 1 click. Overall (aside from the above-mentioned items) it’s a great app, and so far I’m very pleased with it. You won’t be disappointed…….definitely worth the asking price, as is the mobile version.

I do believe the developers aim to make this app great, but it clearly isn’t yet. If this Mac version wasn’t affiliated with such a fantastic iOS app, it would never make the cut compared to other options. A few examples of what’s lacking in the Mac version: 1- When you create a new note, there’s no field in which to type it’s title. The default title is the word Note followed by creation date. You can’t even click on that to edit it it (like you can in 99% of mac apps in 2016) You have to create the note, then ctrl+click or right-click the default title and select “Rename.” This is clunky. Little friction points like this add up to really weigh down an apps X. I love how naming works in apps like Drafts or nvALT where it automatically makes the first line of your note into the title. 2- There’s no button (i.e. trash can icon) to delete a note. This is just basic. 3- I like using OSX’s snap to split screen function, but this app cannot do that unless the note library is hidden, which makes it unusable for my purposes. 4- The iOS version allows for a great selection of paper colors and styles. No options at all for the mac. 5- No apparent way to make hyperlinks. Even when cutting and pasting a URL into a note, it just becomes text. 6- No “sync” button to force a sync when you need to quickly get stuff into iCloud and onto your iOS device I think I’ll stick around for a little longer and try to use the iOS versions whenever possible, but I’d really implore the devs to bring this Mac version up to the legendary status of those other products as soon as possible.

Overall, I like the app and I’ve been using it in grad school to take notes. But there are some key features I wish it could do. Things I like: -Ability to write on power points -When it syncs (but it doesnt always) -multi color highlighting Wish it could: -change the color of the textbox -change the size of the page -bookmark or star notes (not just pages) The app doesnt always sync immediately. I have to constantly delete and restart which is really annoying.

I take a lot of notes when I’m working that consist of random bits of information and small diagrams. A word processor doesnt work well for me, paper and pencil do. The problem with paper and pencil is that out of a whole page, I may only want to save a little bit of it and the only choice is to rewite it or cut it out. Notability on an ipad pro/mac/iphone has proven to work even better. Out of all the functionality, I mainly uise the green graph paper and black ink. It is so nice to not have to deal with a stack of paper. Plus, I can easily zoom in and out to make efficient use of the page and to keep small details neat. Talking about neat, the line quality is excellent and it really looks and feels great to write. Apple notes could be used in a similar manner, but what I like most about notability is that it works so much like a linear roll of paper. In addition to keeping notes, I’ve used it to make hand drawn pdf presentations. The ipad pro version is the most useful version of this software where the pencil makes it powerful. However, having it on the desktop makes inserting clips of information easier.

Make a “word search for current document only” option. It slows down my computer to pull up all 7,000 documents for a common word I’m looking for. Syncing, backing up, and updating current documents doesn’t work well accross all my devices. I can only do all of these on two devices currently (my macbook and iPad) More subfolders. When dealing with many documents I really need subdividers for my subdividers to keep everything organized.

Overall it works and handles almost as good as the iPad version. It would be nice if there where options on font color for typing, a button for navigation (instead of having to do command 6, becuase I can’t find another way to get out of the other tools), easier access to the pen via the track pad (without having to click and hold), and a few more options in colors for the tools in general. The highlight tool could be a bit more accurate when attempting to do so in a PDF document, instead of leaving it all to non-surgeons pulse. Being that there are not many options for Mac, and that I love this app on my iPad. The suggested improvements could make the usage more amenable and make me happier.

Everything is great, use this app very often, but it would be great if you guys could add support for force touch trackpad, so that we write in different pressure levels like the Apple Pencil.

This app is awesome! For the past 4 years I have used it for all of my classes. I use the mac app paired with the iPad app and it works beautifly! However, it would be nice if you could open multiple windows for your notes or simply split the screen between two notes. I use this app to take notes on top of the powerpoints in class and I use it to write my homework assignments. I frequently need to reference the powerpoints that I have written on while I am working on my homework, so it would be nice if there were a way for me to look at both notes at the same time. Of course as a work around to this I back up my notes to dropbox and open a browser window with my other note on it. But anyway, I think it would be easier if I could just use this app by itself. Especially since you can only backup to dropbox from one device at a time. This app is still amazing and I would with out a doubt recommend it to anyone. Thanks notability team you guys rock!

Pretty good program, great for classroom notes and what naught but it doesn’t allow you to insert a grid like microsoft word does. Add this and I will change to a 4 star easy, maybe 5

Let me preface this by saying that I love the notability app for ipad. I think it is hands down the best way of taking notes on the iPad, and Ive tried a few apps. Notability has an excellent design and features and I’m very happy with it overall. The mac app on the other hand… I should mention that my macbook pro is a bit older now, it’s best days are definitely behind it now, but it can still run most apps just fine. It might sometimes have a momentary delay or something, but it still runs well enough to work with. All of that changes when I open notability. This app instantly gobbles up half my RAM and slows my whole computer to a crawl. Every click takes about 3 seconds minimum to register, and has a 10% chance of freezing my whole computer, forcing me to do a hard reset. I’ll no longer be using notability on my computer, which is a shame because sometimes it’s more convenient to read my notes on my computer instead of my iPad. Please fix this devs. This is a great app, but until it stops taking up an obscene amount of memory it’ll be practically unusuable for me, and I’m sure for others as well.

I like it on my iPad as a great alternalive to notebook pen-and-paper style writing however on the macbook it just isn’t as versatile, especially since I use box.com to auto sync on the iOs but only google drive and dropbox available on the macbook OSX. Could you all add that please?! I bought it as an app for my Macbook thinking it would be just like the iOS version but it is more limited which is really disapointing.

I first got this app when I could not keep up with the professor and write notes at the same time. At first, I was using this app to record the audio from my classes, and add type tidbits here and there. Now, I have a notetaker, but I also take note or record audio during class. I do mainly use this app for photos of the board/example problems. The only two things I wish that this app had are 1) the ability to zoom-in while taking photos and 2) the option to record videos.

Love this App! It allows you to import whatever you want (Slides, PDF’s, Photos, etc) and you can draw, insert text, and highlight over the top of whatever you import! Just what I needed in grad-school (No more trying to scribble as quickly as possible on a sheet of paper all the info the slide holds, plus what the teacher is saying, nor do I have to piecemeal my notes with the slides to figure out which slide the teacher was on when I wrote the note. So nice to have my note or annotation right on the slide we were discussing! I would like to be able to arrange the groups within the subjects according to how I feel is best instead of alphabetically, by date modified, or by date created. Also I would like to be able to drag a slide from one group and add it to another group within a subject instead of having to copy and paste.