Notebooks – Write and Organize 4+

Documents, Tasks and Files

Alfons Schmid

    • 4.8 • 919 Ratings
    • $16.49
    • Offers In-App Purchases

Description

Notebooks is a comprehensive writing app with a powerful text and Markdown editor, which you can use as personal Wiki, Zettelkasten, file and document organizer, task manager, PDF/eBook creator and much more—all in one place. You can seamlessly transform quick notes into actionable tasks, combine text fragments into chapters of a book, organize research material, and keep business documents separate from personal diaries without ever switching apps. Stay focused and unleash your creativity with Notebooks’ versatile and intuitive features. - You'll quickly come to appreciate this unique combination of features.

• Notebooks stores all your documents as regular files in standard formats. You are always in control of your documents, never need to worry about how to export them, and they remain compatible across devices and over time.

• Create formatted documents with styles, attachments, tables or checklists, and add a table of contents if you like. Choose between a variation of ready made document styles, or create your own, if you want.

• Write your documents in plain text and allow Notebooks to automatically handle lists, highlight and center the current line on screen, automatically insert closing characters for (, {, [, " and more. - Plain text is a universal format which can be used on any device without any specific software.

• Use Markdown to create formatted documents from plain text. Notebooks supports *MultiMarkdown* and its own flavor of *Discount*. – Click any word in a formatted Markdown text and start writing at that position. You can even create checklists (- [ ]) and tick them off in formatted view. Syntax highlighting and a set of dedicated extra keyboard keys make Markdown editing easy.

• Use your Apple Pencil to sketch ideas or annotate images and PDF documents.

• Use Notebooks' advanced editing capabilities to work on documents which are stored in other apps.

• Compile selected documents or the contents of whole books into a single document, an eBook or a PDF document.

• Link between documents in Notebooks. In Markdown you can even use Wiki style links ([[ ]]). When clicking a link to a document which does not yet exist, Notebooks suggests to create it. And when you move or rename documents, Notebooks makes sure the links remain intact.

• Create as many books as you need to structure your projects and details. Nest books as deep as you like, there is no limit in Notebooks. If you ever loose track, Notebooks' full text search helps you quickly turn up even the most hidden document.

• Turn books into task lists to display document as tasks which can be ticked off. Assign due dates and alerts, and divide projects into nested sub projects, which makes them easier to handle.

• For simple lists you can use checklists in formatted documents and Markdown.

• Assign Context tags to books and documents to create shortcuts that are accessible for a smart book at Notebooks' top level. – Notebooks can even extract context tags from the contents of documents as you create them.

• Import all documents and files you want to keep close at hand, no matter whether PDF, email, web pages, MS Office or iWorks, photos, videos, music and more.

• Scan documents and extract text using OCR (iOS 13)

• Sync files between iPads, iPhones, Mac or PC.

With all these features, Notebooks may quickly become your go-to repository for everything you want to keep close at hand.

User Comments:

“Notebooks is a wonderful App, which is so much better than the dozen other note apps I tried. It is sophisticated, in an unassuming way, so that you find yourself greatly rewarded and being productive without sacrificing time/effort to the App. I cannot tell you how much productivity I have gained. I am having a huge amount of fun, I use it constantly, more than the phone on my iPhone in fact."

“You are GTD in every way that makes it efficient and makes me efficient.”

What’s New

Version 12.6.1

This update fixes an issue on older iOS versions and brings some improvements for the integrated document styles.


New in version 12.6

This update introduces new options for document styling (using custom CSS classes), enhances Markdown syntax highlighting, improves MathJax compatibility, adds more flexibility when importing or bookmarking URLs, and ensures more reliable transfer of large numbers of documents to the Apple Watch. Moreover, context tags within code blocks are now ignored.

Custom Classes for Document Styling

Notebooks now supports custom CSS classes for formatting Markdown and formatted documents, in addition to traditional styles like headings, bold, italic etc. Custom classes can be applied through the paragraph formatting menu in formatted documents, or with the `> %...%` notation in Markdown. - For more details, please refer to the documentation.

Formatted Documents

- The formatting menu now includes heading levels 5 and 6, plus custom classes defined in the current document theme.
- Improved drag and drop functionality from other apps.
- Fixed double-tap issues: Selecting words with a double tap now works correctly in edit mode.

Markdown

- Auto-suggestions for custom classes: `> %` followed by TAB.
- Headings use variable font sizes with syntax highlighting.
- Improved checkbox detection in rendered view.
- Enhanced MathJax compatibility, especially for inline math with subscript and superscript.
- Handle `.mmd` and `.mermaid` file extensions as Markdown for Mermaid rendering.

Document Themes

- New: Support for Custom Classes. Please refer to documentation for details.
- Handbook Theme: Introduce custom styles "Sidecar" and "Box".
- Default Theme: Empty items in numbered lists no longer overlap, and add custom style "Caption".

Document List (Book)

- When saving a URL as bookmark, Notebooks now retrieves the original title, if available.
- "New from Pasteboard" better detects copied URLs and asks how you’d like to import them.
- Pinning a document now reliably moves it in the correct position.

Contexts

- Context tags are now ignored in fenced code blocks (Markdown and plain text) or in *code* sections (formatted documents).

Watch App

- Improved reliability when transferring a large number of documents to your watch.

Misc

- Dark App Icon
- Many more interface refinements.

Ratings and Reviews

4.8 out of 5
919 Ratings

919 Ratings

Tsmollett0 ,

Great Notes

I have been jusing Notebooks for several weeks now and am very happy with my purchase. The design is impressive. It is easy to create documents and to categorize and file these so that they are easily accessible. Where is my list of meds? It’s in the Medical Notebook. I have used other notebooks but this one is the best of the lot. The support is great. I have sent the developer questions and have always gotten answers back in a timely fashion. This is an app that is well-worth the purchase price because there will a tangible return on your investment (that’s another, better way to describe cost!).

The more I have used Notebooks, the more I find to like about it. It is much more than a note-taking app. It really is a wonderful tool for writing and keeping track of one’s thoughts—what one writes down are thoughts preserved—and organizing where they can be easily found. The model of the “book” took me a while to catch on to but I really like it. Also the find feature is very good at helping one to find anything that has been put into text.

Bobcatukbb ,

Fabulous! One detail needs attention

Absolutely LOVE this awesome app! Does EVERYTHING I can imagine doing for organization of many varied interests. Deserves 5 stars except for one vulnerability that cost me a lot of lost time. I went back to a file that I’ve been building for 2 years that had a ton of important information that I access daily … and it was GONE! I have noticed it’s REAL EASY to ACCIDENTALLY run my finger across a BOOK title and it gives option to delete without second stop of “Are you sure?” In normal folder I can set it to “Read Only” and it’s protected. But if that same protected folder is within a BOOK and I accidentally swipe on the BOOK it is GONE! Fortunately, my valuable data is backed up to Drop Box and I could find it there, but to get it back into Notebooks I have to go book by book, document by document to reconstruct it. Fix that one important vulnerability and I will go back to a 5 star rating. I recommend this app to everyone and use it more than any other app on my iPad and iPhone.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your feedback, we are glad to hear you are enjoying Notebooks. - Regarding accidental deletion: Notebooks usually asks for confirmation when you delete an item, unless you set Notebooks to keep deleted items in the Trash and explicitly turn off the option "Show Warning Before Moving to Trash". You find that in Notebooks' Settings > General. - When Notebooks deletes an item without extra confirmation, you should always find it in the Trash, from where you can restore it with a few taps.

Tomnovint ,

Have used daily for years

I’ve been using Notebooks for years. It is the perfect app for taking a variety of different kinds of notes and maintaining documents. It is a solid, bug-free app with Dropbox support (important for me for backups), most importantly with no required subscription! I keep a camping todo list, lists of movies and tv shows I want to see, gift ideas, and many categories of ideas that pop into my head… I get a good idea, I pop out notebooks and write the idea in a short note in one of the nested folders for whatever the category is that I want to remember something. I don’t do a ton of app reviews but my phone just asked for one, and this is one of the few apps I use where I feel a good review is actually “owed” to the developer for such a quality product that I use daily for years ;) I opened this review request in the middle of writing a note, so I better get back to it before I forget what I wanted to record and remember.

App Privacy

The developer, Alfons Schmid, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Collected

The developer does not collect any data from this app.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Supports

  • Siri

    Get things done within this app using just your voice.

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