Leave a Review Notability
New Mac App is not good
I’ve been using Notability for the past few years and love it. Being able to upload PPT and PDF decks for meetings and then take notes on my ipad has been a game changer for productivity. I can review documents - mark them up - and then send the notes directly back to my team. Except for a (very) slight delay sometimes between my Mac and my ipad, everything was seamless. I recommended Notability to everyone.
However, the latest release of Notability for Mac is a disaster. It crashes often. When it isn’t crashing it’s nearly impossible to use. Trying to drag notes from one folder to another is incredibly frustrating - difficult to accomplish and takes a ton of time to get it to work. Often I can’t seem to drag and drop except on the fourth or fifth try. Imagine if your mouse pointer only worked about 25% of the time. Also - I used to be able to “print to Notability” directly from PPT (incredibly useful for quick uploads) and that feature is gone. And uploading a folder from Finder by dragging it over to Notability is frustrating - super laggy, often results in the “spinning wheel of death”, or just crashes the app. I would go back to the previous version is a hot second if I could. It’s so annoying that I’ve even considered moving to a different notes system - although I really don’t want to do that.
I love Notabilty and the ipad version works great. But I need my full Notability ecosystem to work well together. Like it used to.Show lesstroyfig
Still using every day five years later
My favorite thing is having one long infinite vertical space to write to. I can easily scroll down, or use the side bad to find a specific page. Searching is easy. Pen selection is my favorite across apps (use the short cut tab)with pen size and color selection quick and intuitive.I have a work tab with several different documents and a home tab. Its nice to go to my home tab and select taxes and see my notes from last year’s meeting say, or anytime I research something, its there waiting for me. Oh doctor’s office visits, all right there scrolling up through years of in office visit notes. For work I have a Daily log, for just writing, then specific docs. It syncs between my devices easily. I am waiting for a web based version so I can cut and paste directly from my work windows machine into my pages. Thats my biggest disconnect right now. I use OneNote at work for a lot, but I would use notability more if I could.
I keep trying other programs here and ther, but nothing ever competes with the simpliticity and joy of note taking that Notability has.Show lessPatrick6367
Notes deleting as I am writing them
I have been using notability for the past two years on my iPad. I am a person who loves to hand write their notes, so I usually take notes with my Apple Pencil. This issue has never happened to me before, but while I was in a class taking some notes, I went to a different notebook to check on something and when I went back to the notes I was taking for my class a certain portion of the notes deleted. So I quickly rewrote the notes since they were still fresh in my mind. Then I went to my home screen and then back on to the notability app the section of notes that were deleted had been deleted again! There was also no way for me to undo this. I do not know what happened to what I wrote, but of course when I was writing out meaningless sentences to see if this problem would persist, those were staying. This is really sad to me because I have loved notability and using it with my Apple Pencil. After this though, I am not sure that I am able to trust that my notes won’t be deleted again. Being in college, there are many times where I cannot review the information from my lectures, which is why this is a problem. If I had reviewed this app before this incident, I would have given it 4 or 5 stars, but unfortunately this is no longer the case.Show lessxxabby21xx
Overall, A Really great app
Something that I really liked about notability was the simple and intuitive layout. This made it really easy for me to organize my notes and help me maintain order with my notes. Another thing that I really liked was all of the new updates that really helped with making things run more smoothly (i.e. the favorites bar, being able to search for key words within the notes themselves instead of just the title, and the magnifying glass).
Some areas of improvement would be being able to adjust the shape of the magnifying box because there are sometimes when I’m trying to edit a specific place and the magnifying box just doesn’t fit right. Another thing would be to be able to open more than two notes at once. This would come in handy for those to do notes simultaneously on multiple sections. It would also be cool if when your in portrait mode for the notes you have the option to be able to stack the notes top of one another instead of seeing them side. Then one last area of adjustment would be to be able to have a bookmarked notes bar like how there is a bookmarked pages (within each notes) bar. It would make jumping between two desired note documents a little bit easier.
Anyways, that’s it from me. Thank you for making a really great app. Totally looking foreword to what’s in store for the future of this app.Show lessBibleUser123
Great app, so close to Awesome
I really like how easy it is to use, find notes, and search within notes (handwriting recognition is amazing!)
The layout is really intuitive and there are plenty of qualities that make it really friendly for school and work notes (recoding function of course, but also the shape detection, being able to import and export files between app is such an amazing function, and enough color customizing/options but not too much to be overwhelming). What it lacks is a better organization system. Right now, it’s like binder dividers, and while that is superficially nice, I’d like to be able to nest my documents, or at least be able to quickly visually recognize them with an icon or “cover page.” Additionally I really want to be able to change the page layouts for individual pages within a file. It is so frustrating to have to have to keep switching back and forth between layouts because my needs change within the file. There are other competitor apps of course, that have either own features and deficiencies, so for now we’ll see how long I stay with this as my main note taking app.Show lessCroutville
Needs more organizational ability
I have seen several other complaints about notability needing better organization, so it is upsetting knowing that nothing has been done to address this issue. There needs to be some kind of additional their of organization that allows you to either 1) put the dividers into a folder. For instance, all my dividers have a bunch of subjects in them, and when i am done with this semester, I would like to be able to put those dividers into one large folder that says “fall 2020.” Or, 2) you could keep the dividers/subjects, but add another teir underneath subjects where you could subdivide specific lessons. All in all, the divider and subjects organization that is in place is too simplistic.
I cannot recommend this app to someone who is doing most (potentially all) their school work on it. It just doesn’t have enough organization. Another issue is when you go to send a file to notability, it brings up a ton of subjects, all the subjects you have ever created. If you are using the subjects tab for weekly modules like I do, it gets very annoying to find the correct subject as I have around 50 (and i have only been using it for one semester).
This app is nice to take notes in, but not long term. It has worked well for a single semester, but I do not know how I will be able to continue adding files with such a simplistic organization style.Show lessjfletcher2020
Needs better organization
This app is very helpful, especially the feature to record lectures. I can stay on top of what my professor says easier, and use the Apple Pencil to highlight or emphasize certain points. There is a bit of a delay for the notes and the audio, so when I click on a note, I know to automatically hit the “rewind 10 seconds” button, but I just deal with it because it is so helpful regardless. However, while the recording ability is the star feature of this app, the other features need improvement.
1. Since more classes are taking place online due to the pandemic, there should be an option to record lectures using the iPad’s internal microphone. Right now, I play the lectures on my phone and record audio with the iPad, since I do not have a better option.
2. Second, and my biggest gripe with the app is ORGANIZATION. Although you can have subjects, and place notes in the subjects, I want the ability to make folders within the subjects. A lot of my subjects in school are so complex - with labs and assignments in addition to lecture notes and different subtopics, the ability to make folders within subjects is seriously ESSENTIAL. The most I can do is change the name at the beginning of the file to reflect what kind of material it is (ex: Lab 1, Assignemnt 2, etc.) but the ability to make folders really holds this app behind. I still use it for the recording feature, but the lack of organizational options available is really frustrating.Show lesskmc121084
the worst customer support
I love this app, it is definitely the best for note taking on a tablet out there. However, I had a performance issue last year and I tried to contact support and no one ever got back to me. I’ve had similar issues and didn’t bother reaching out because I knew it would be futile. In my opinion, a product can be mediocre, but if it has great customer service, that sets it apart. Notability is the opposite. The product is great (in theory), but whenever there are issues, there is no support. This app is constantly glitching, between the handwriting jumping around the page randomly, not allowing me to close out of the right side menu that allows you to search in the document, or the most annoying bug where a note scrolls to the bottom of a page and will not let you go back to the top until you close out of the app. Currently, I am having an issue where I have two notes open at once (one is a pdf of my textbook, and one is the notes I am taking from it), and there are numerous problems, including those I just mentioned, as well as tools not working as I am trying to go back and forth writing on both documents. This is the best notetaking app I’ve tried, but the constant bugs are extremely frustrating when this is the main mode I use to read textbooks, take notes, and get homework done.Show less(ง ͠° ͟J ͡°)ง
Perfect For Students
This app is my go to app for anything I do in school. It has made taking notes fun and easy. And now after using this app for a little over a year and a half, I can absolutely say that this is my favorite note taking app. Practically everything that I do for school is on this app, which when paired to my phone makes it a breeze to quickly scroll through my notes at any time. The writing feels fluid with great options for size and colors. Importing files and documents is extremely easy and fast. On tops of this, the line straitening and shape recognition is amazingly useful and easy, without being intrusive or correcting things that were not meant to be corrected.
My one issue I have is with organization. Especially towards the end of the year when I have hundreds of notes and files, they can often be lost in the clutter. I have found ways around this by specifically labeling my files so all of my notes, quizzes, tests, and handouts are all sorted by category alphabetically, but I wish there was a way to put folders inside of subjects. This app is my favorite, but to make it the best it really needs a better way to organize files inside of subjects. Again, I cant imagine creating folders inside of subjects would be hard do and I really hope they include this soon in an update.Show lessGDOGUNDERSCORE
This is the one -You can stop looking now, get Notability
I’m a scientist, back in school, going to grad school soon. I spent whatever it took to check out all of the notes apps, and Notability is the best. I can record a lecture or seminar, while I’m taking notes, I can draw molecular structures, I can import PowerPoint slides and annotate them. If my page/slide is pretty crowded, I can create a “sticky” and take notes on it, and I can move it around when I need to see what is under it. I have made entire multimedia presentations with this app. You can save your page as a PDF, or I’ll even just take a screenshot of what I want to present or turn in, crop the margins, and use that. I can have sections of slides and book pages, or a picture of a handout, then work the problem out with my Apple Pencil, and turn it all in as one convenient PDF or pic I can email to my professors. The interface is much more flexible than Microsoft apps, and plays better with other apps and platforms. Seriously, I use the crap out of this thing. I checked out all of the common note apps, and this one is just more capable and adaptable than any of the others. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️Show lessScarlet in the Living Room
