Notebooks – Write and Organize 4+

Documents, Tasks and Files

Alfons Schmid

    • 4.8 • 169 Ratings
    • £14.99
    • Offers In-App Purchases

Description

Notebooks is a writing app, a text and markdown editor, your personal Wiki and Zettelkasten, a file organizer, task manager, PDF and eBook creator and more. This may sound like a lot, but consider you have a few text fragments, randomly created, which you want to combine into a chapter of a book and saved as PDF or eBook; or a quick note sparks off an idea, generates a couple of tasks, each of which requires you to organize further research material; or you have business related documents which need to be separated from private diaries, records and files. – With Notebooks you handle these jobs easily without switching apps, and while remaining focussed and creative.

• 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 that, Notebooks may quickly become your one and only app 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 12.4.1

This update addresses a text selection issue in formatted documents (double tap) on iPhones with iOS 17.4.

Ratings and Reviews

4.8 out of 5
169 Ratings

169 Ratings

Leighton008 ,

My favourite notes storage app

Use this daily and have used it for years. I recommend it as a notes app for students, for example. It’s delightfully straightforward to use, with features that matter and just as importantly not cluttered with features which don’t. I would appreciate improvements: black should be an option for font colour, grey too would be handy. Highlighting could be quicker and with more choices. Pasting URLs defaults to just showing a bit of the URL and to show the full URL you have to use the ellipsis menu and select "Paste link". I’d vastly prefer it to be the other way round. A button to go straight back to the master "Notebooks" level would save time. I haven’t mastered the tags and links. The delightfully good hierarchical file system does make some notes hard to find without tags etc. But I use it in preference to umpteen better publicised apps I’ve tried. Pity it doesn’t come top in App Store on search for "Notebooks" but way down.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your review, we're glad to hear you are enjoying Notebooks. - Regarding your suggestions: (1) black is the default font color, and black and grey are already available for selection. So I am afraid I am not sure which font color you are referring to... (2) When pasting links into formatted documents (I suppose that is what you are using) we assume that users typically want to insert the "title" of that link as text rather than the plain link, hence our design decision. To get the full link, you can also use "Paste and Match Style", while "Insert Link" more carefully examines the copied URL and tries to make the best of it :-) (3) To quickly jump to Notebooks' top level you can tap and hold the "Back" button in the top left corner. (4) For finding documents you can use Notebooks' global full text search, which turns up everything, independent of position in hierarchy or context tags. (5) Position in search results: I agree ... if we started today we might give "Notebooks" a different name, but changing that after 14 years on the App Store, I don't know ;-)

benjy_london ,

Excellent app, unique features

This app is packed full of unique features. The ones I appreciate the most include the ability to manually change the order of documents (ie unlike most apps, you don’t have to auto sort by date or name, you can place documents in the order you want them, like in a paper file), you can turn any document into a task (making it easy for e.g. to track documents you want to read or which require edits) and it can auto extract tasks from written notes (amazingly, when you check these actions off, they are also marked as complete in the original note - perfect for meeting minutes).

It also has one of the nicest rich note editors, with table and contents list support.

Documents can be filed in folders (“notebooks”) or tagged (curiously, tags are called “contexts” but I just think of them as “tags”, unrelated to GTD principles).

It has a lovely split screen feature to view two documents at the same time.

It’s hard to find any gripes with this - the icon could do with being modernised, but I honestly can’t think of anything else.

I’m a lawyer and use this to manage my key documents, reading lists, tasks and case notes.

DGM486 ,

Outstanding Notes App

I have tried lots and this is, by a million miles, the best Notes app. It’s elegant and simple to use, but has masses of deep features to tune it to exactly how you want to work. I have used it everyday for probably 8 years and wouldn’t be anywhere near as productive without it. Given the quality and depth of functionality, It’s worth many, many times the purchase price. And the real deal clincher is my 2,500 notes are totally portable and not locked up in some proprietary database.

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 based on, for example, 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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