Goodnotes Review

One of The Best Note-Taking Apps for iPad

GoodNotes is hands down my favorite app for taking notes on the iPad. With its excellent handwriting recognition, a wide array of writing tools, and even a marketplace for assets like templates and stickers, it’s a dream for students and professionals alike. I will say, I’m not a fan of the subscription model they’ve introduced with Good Notes 6, but it’s still worth it given the quality and functionality. It’s no wonder so many students use it daily—it’s truly one of the best note-taking apps out there!

A students best friend

I have tried nearly all of the hand-writing notes apps, but I always return to Goodnotes because of its refined features, including audio recording/transcription, handwriting recognition, and simple stylus gestures like scribbling to erase and circling to select. The Goodnotes team has added AI features recently, which can create questions for testing yourself on lecture material or search your notes for details you are curious about— both of which are great uses of AI. All this to say, Goodnotes is a students best friend.

Goodnotes: An Essential iPad App

*Please note my review is based on Goodnotes 5 for the core features as I have not upgraded to the subscription model of Goodnotes 6* Goodnotes was one of the very first apps I downloaded when I got my iPad in 2020. It has worked great for me since then, but I have noticed my use of it has changed over time. Full disclosure, I am not a student so some of the available features such as the record feature are not of use to me. As well, I'm not building notebooks for studying purposes, but more for daily note-taking. I'm also not drawing with the app, but using it for text purposes. For the most part, Goodnotes has settled in as my go-to pdf reader and mark-up tool. Organizaion is simple with their file system and the thumbnails of documents make it easy to find what you need. The app writes wonderfully and I like having a selection of go-to colours to colour code my thoughts while reviewing. Writing is very responsive and feels even more immediate than writing with pen and paper at times. The snap-to feature for straight lines when striking-out text or highlighting is very useful for my purposes. My only real issue with the app is that it is bound by the "notebook" format. Each page is only a traditional page and doesn't have the option for continuous scrolling. I prefer a system such as Apple notes for handwritten notes, where each note is as long as I need it to be. I find it cumbersome to have one thought across multiple pages in a digital format. This format can make it harder to find a particular note if it's buried in a notebook, even with the outline tool. The value has also decreased for me since Goodnotes switched from an extremely affordable one-time cost model, to the yearly subscription model. The additional features didn't justify the cost of the upgrade. I still recommend the app as essential for the iPad, especially for it's pdf capabilities. I have just found myself looking for alternatives for taking daily notes.

My basic handwriting tool

It's a fantastic tool, much better than the native Apple Notes. It works really fine with an Apple Pencil. I don't like that a sync is so slow and the style of the main menu/dashboard is old-fashioned, but I can't live without it.