Tag: Handwriting

When going digitally with your paperless workflows and the Apple Pencil, the need for a great note-taking tool comes pretty soon. The Pencil is a great piece of hardware, but its built-in iPad apps feel pretty lacking.

Notability comes with more features: The note-taking app optimized for the Apple Pencil can work with loose pages of notes, lecture slides, books, and virtually anything convertible to the PDF format. Your annotation will get indexed and are searchable through handwriting recognition (so-called OCR.)

It also features some rather unique audio recording tools, which allow you to record a meeting while taking notes on it. Later, you can watch the note-taking process as a video while listening to the recording.

I take a look at this app, to see how it compares to other applications when comparing things like the look-and-feel of handwriting, and more.

Recent updates (May 2018): Notability got updated to version 8.0, and I updated the review to cover the new features. In summary, there is now handwritten recognition using OCR. They also added quick jumping between recent notes, and split-screen rendering of two seperate notes. All-in-all, some pretty convincing new features.

When digitally taking handwritten notes, it is easy to lose track of notebooks and documents. Stuff can simply get lost in large digital archives, and are hard to be tracked. Unlike typed documents, most applications won’t allow for indexing handwritten documents.

GoodNotes comes to rescue. With a great text detection engine which even supports handwritten input, it can make all handwritten notes searchable. Even better: Exported documents have this information attached, so things can be filed away into other applications with peace of mind. This makes GoodNotes a great solution for taking handwritten notes in a paperless environment.

I take a look at this app and analyze how it can compete to other applications, how it is implemented and if it is worth your money.

Flexcil is an underdog in the group of annotation apps for the iPad. While rather new, it comes with some novel approach and fresh wind.

Everybody knows this situation: You work with a PDF, like literature or lecture slides, but then, you also want to take a couple of notes on the side in a notebook. Ideally, everything in digital. But, when having a PDF annotation app and another app for digital note-taking side-by-side, the multi-tasking capabilities of an iPad soon hit their limits.

Using Flexcil, you can work on multiple documents at once with an overlay interface. It supports dragging elements from your PDF to a notebook, and taking valuable notes in a scratchbook while still looking at the slides or book; all without leaving the app or using multi-tasking.

One of many usages of the iPad for productivity is the use of the Apple Pencil to take handwritten notes. Whether in meetings, lectures, or for simple brainstorming, having handwritten notes in a digital way is a handy way to archive notes and have them on the go with you all the time.

Noteshelf is yet another competitor in the area of note-taking apps for the iPad. Utilizing the Apple Pencil, this app promises to be a good replacement for your traditional notebook.

I take a look at this app and analyze how it can compete to other applications, how it is implemented and if it is worth your money.

The iPad as a 9.7 to 12.9 inch tablet is a great companion in daily life, including work. Many productivity applications like task management tools and writing apps can make it a great replacement for a laptop for light work and in meetings.

The Apple Pencil, which is now available for any iPad (non-Pro bought after Spring 2018 or any previous iPad Pro), is another great addition to this. While often discussed along the lines of art and drawing, it can be used for handwritten notes, document annotations, and more.

In this article, I look at five recommended apps for different use-cases. I take a look at something to replace traditional handwritten notebooks, something for directly working with PDF files, and then some integrated solutions for larger projects and notes spanning multiple documents or notebooks.