Goodnotes: AI Notes, Docs, PDF 4+

it works wonderfully on the ipad, and its really easy to read and write and take notes on there! The select function makes life easy when you need to move things around and there are diffrent options for highlighter colours and pen styles. writing is really easy and it doesnt cram the hand because you dont have to use as much pressure. Without a pressure sensitive pencil you wont be able to get bold, curvy lines like seen in the photo though. Reading textbooks is a breeze, and you can zoom in and write in a note on a diagram which is amazing.

BUT!! on the Macbook its soooo annoying. it literally is so frustating it constantly is freezing, and its difficult to get the text box where i need it. the highlighting function on the macbook is useless i cant move my mouse in a straight line and it would be better if we could highlight with a text cursor, and you can kind of, but its impossible to select what your trying to highlight! another annoying thing is the side bar it can be removed but its annoying to add and remove or edit pages on here when on the mac, not on ipad. And the top bar with all the functions such as highlight text always goes into hiding and you constantly need to press the down key for it to pop out again.

Its really great on the ipad, but if your buying it for macbook its a waste of money, pages would work better.

I started using an ipad full time in 2017 for fieldwork - once the Apple Notes app acquired a scaleable ruler with degrees readout. By then I had already played with quite a few different note taking apps, some free, some paid for, before I settled on one (not Goodnotes).

Spring forward to 2019 and I had started noticing that the app I was using was becomoing more and more glitchy over time and was not seemingly able to keep up with the evolution of IOS. I even (gasp...) lost some data now and again - though not too much. I started doing some research again on what note taking apps were best to use. I finally chose Goodnotes 5 and have been exceptionally happy I did.

After using it over winter here are some of the reasons why I have recommended it to both my son for university and coworkers...

1) Stability. So far Goodnotes 5 has been rock-solid in my use. It has never ever crashed and I have never ever lost data (knock on wood). It also does not glitch when auto saving like other programs.

2) Ability to open multiple tabs. When I am doing fieldwork I have multiple places where I have to enter data. This is a trivial thing to accomplish in a paper field note book with tabs... but not so easy with a tablet. Goodnotes 5 handles multiple tabs seamlessly and elegantly.

3) PDF Handling. It works really well handling PDFs - especially when incorporating an existing PDF into an existing document. One can selecta PDF and open as a stand alone document, or elect to havwe it append to the next page of whichever Goodnotes document you have open. This is a great boon, especially for processing and collating the mountains of health and safety paperwork we have to deal with these days...

4) Easy incorporation of images into the notebook. Many programs do this ok, and Good notes also does it just fine as well.

5) The goldilocks level of writing options. The program I went to has a wonderful plethora of pen nib options and is quite lovely to work with and use - except for the crashing part. Goodnotes has a more limited colour palatte, but it is easy to use, and facilitates quick switching between nib types and colours. This is abotu as close as you can get to wrting on paper wiht one of those Bic multi colour selection pens.

6) Just an overall level of clean, simple, elegant UI that is easy to navigate and understand. It shows that the Goodnotes team has definitley tried to meld the best of paper and tablet together to make a solid, ease to use product. It does not have the immediacy of pencil and paper, but it is as close as I have seen so far, whilst also leveraging the power of a tablet.