I absolutely love the Notes App! I use it heavily and I rely on it insanely. For me, it’s indispensable. Firstly, the design is incredible. The rounded corners and simplicity of navigation makes everything feel remarkably modern and intuitive. Secondly, it’s productivity features are very useful. The ability to seamlessly move notes from folder to folder, the ease of making notes look presentable and keeping them safe with a biometric are all amazing. The optimisation with the Apple Pencil is also fantastic! For example, it’s ability to recognise and turn hand written words into typed text is a very nice addition. Even small things like the animations and being able to pin notes are highly appreciated. I’m also a huge fan of Quick Notes. It is an incredibly useful feature that I have used countless times in the past. Overall, I strongly believe that the Notes app is hard to walk away from and should be used as the primary note taking app for many more users!

I have been using the notes app as a complete replacement of a pen and paper notebook for almost three years. I do all my everyday note taking for work, including minutes of important meetings, in the notes app. I has been almost perfect and I chose it over other third party apps because I loved the handwriting experience from the beginning, the simplicity and the native capability to sync with my iPhone and Macbook.However, in the last six months I have come across two problems. The first seems like a small bug, which I expected would have been fixed by now, this being that when you insert space between handwritten text you can no longer do so with precision because the text ‘jumps’ the moment you release it. This should be a small fix and it is frustrating that it has been present for so long. The second issue is much worse. It has now happened several times that after I have finished taking notes and left the application, when I return a big chunk of my notes have disappeared and I have e no way of retrieving this crucial information. Each time it happened it didn’t happen again for a while, just long enough for me to believe the issue is resolved but just when I least expect it, it happens again. This is a costly flaw and I am seriously having to consider an alternative note taking app.

Please can I ask what in the fresh hell is wrong with this app? I’ve never, ever known an Apple own product to so completely and utterly fail on every count. The lack of having different colours to highlight text, other than 4 (there’s not even pink, yellow or green, arguably the most used colours to highlight things!!), the lack of the ability to have the writing itself different colours, the lack of the ability to change the type of font for different sections within your notes, the lack of conceivably ANY ability to get creative and personal whatsoever. However, all of this aside… The bugs are beyond unbearably consistent, no matter how many ‘updates’ it gets; I have been trying to type the same word for over 30 minutes now and every time I get halfway through, the app kicks out to my home screen… literally every. single. time. I then try using my iPad, but the same thing happens on there. This has been an issue for nearly a year and when it’s your most used part of your device, it starts to grind away at you. You know the saying “insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”? Yeah, that. If this continues without being fixed, I’m going to have to seriously consider changing to Samsung, because this really is the thing I use most on my devices. Happy to send my screen recording to any Apple Support team to prove all of the above, made using something that actually does what it was designed to do… Please, please fix this. I beg.

To be fair, it’s kind of pointless to leave review on this app. I cannot think of an iOS user, who a) doesn’t use Notes on a daily basis b) using Notes but doesn’t like/enjoy it. Super user friendly, excellent options that help you organise your notes, super easy access, if you use more than one device you don’t even notice how fast is the syncing, I love the brushes especially after the new ones, the ruler is super useful and I like that is lined as sometimes I need to count or need to choose of a reference point, colours palette decent. Lots of room for improvement in blending typed wording with drawings as at the moment this is not optional. Smart interfering with the user might be a good option. For example to get suggestions of creating a reminder based on the note I just took or create a calendar event. Don’t know if those things can practically be done but if I take GTP as an example they seem pretty easy hehe