Leave a Review Notes Plus
Love it!
I'm one of those authors who can think and write better while writing by hand than by typing, but I always hated having to go back and type my notebooks after writing them. The handwriting to text feature saves me /hours/! The other features make it easier to change things and move things around faster than you could in a normal notebook. Pro tip: The handwriting to text feature converts cursive with better accuracy than print even if your cursive is terrible like mine. You don't have to write in cursive, but I'm all about making changes to save time, in this case when you are cleaning up the converted text.
There's only reason I'm giving this four stars instead of five. On a previous notebook app I used that was discontinued and is not supported by newer versions of iOS, it gave the option of creating a custom dictionary (Aside from that, I consider it for the best that I had to switch apps, because Notes Plus is superior in every other way). As a fantasy author, being able to have technoloy recognize fantasy terms was incredibly helpful on the other app. I keep hoping Noten Plus will add a custom dictionary. I guess I'll have to keep waiting. For the time being, I still recommend this app with no hesitation.Show lessEmaNekaf23
10 Years Strong
Ten years ago, I got my first iPad and struggled to find a good handwriting app for it until my friend bought me this one. Since then, I’ve gone to new jobs where I need to write more or less and my interest in this app has waxed and waned.
Today when I finally got an Apple Pencil, however, I came back to this app, and it remains the best app out there to take handwritten notes, convert them into text, and email them to coworkers while still keeping my handwritten notes intact.
I’ll admit I haven’t used this for anything professional in a few years, because I only had the Apple Pencil on a single Saturday so far and I left my project manager days behind me years ago, but I used it for a DnD session (while fiddling around with a couple of other note rating apps like OneNote and Notability) and this app remains perfect for how I take notes.
Honestly, the feature to beat (outside the handwriting recognition— OneNote requires you to convert to text on a computer and doesn’t support that on a tablet) is the little window to write in. It makes it easy to see what I’m doing and it’s got a natural flow to it that works really well for me and always has.
I was sold on this 10 years and three jobs ago, and I’m sold on this now. Thanks for keeping this app up to date and fantastic. So many apps over the years haven’t.Show lessCaveecat
Thank you for Note Plus
I am proud to say that I am one of the first early adapters of this app. I originally bought Note Plus for the original iPad in November of 2010 for $4.99. The developer at the time was Nguyen. Now it is Viet Tran. The app still work flawlessly on my iPhone 8 Plus and iPad mini 2. My son who is now in high school used this app in elementary for writing, counting, math, and drawing. Now he still uses this app for school work. Sometimes you give an app 5 stars not only because it’s a great app but, because of the people behind the app. I don’t know these developers but, I genuinely feel that they are people of integrity, honesty, and have a lot of love and passion for what they do. I rate these developers 5 Stars because it just struck me that this app is a digital treasure. I love. Thanks you so much.Show lessBassaBoy
Used to be my favorite handwriting app but recent versions are disappointing
This app used to be my favorite handwriting app because of its smooth strokes and features that allow me to easily erase, select, and move written text. After the iOS13 update, however, the handwriting is no longer smooth and it sometimes fails to recognize strokes if I write faster (while in other handwriting apps my Apple Pencil still works perfectly).
Another issue I’ve been having with this app is the lack of search-ability even though it claims to support conversion from handwriting to text. While the OCR button in the tool bar seems to recognize my handwriting without any issue, the intended pages never show up when I try to use the search bar in the top left corner to find specific words. Also I hope Notes Plus can keep the OCR texts when exporting to pdf so that the exported file is still searchable, which would be a huge plus.
Although I loved Notes Plus in the past, these bugs have become more and more annoying for me. If they are not fixed in the near future I am considering the switch to other note taking apps entirely.Show lesswujsioyhnm
No longer the best
I am not sure what happened with this app and the company. This app used to be absolutely perfect for taking business notes and having the notes readily accessible. Whatever was changed by the developers recently has caused continuous crashing. I lost 3yrs worth of notes. My only saving grace is that I always back up my notes with another app just because of horrific incidents of losing notes like this app did to all my work. As for customer support, I am of the opinion that they are just overwhelmed with customer disappointment right now and therefore can not get to everyone in a timely manner. So customer support is pretty bad right now. To the NotesPlus team, guys you had a really great app here; one of the very best productivity apps in the App Store. Please clean up the problems, fix customer support, and restore the app and results to the status you once had. I am certain if you do this, you can bring your app ratings back up because the recent reviews are all complaining about the exact same thing that I am. All of us users cant be wrong guys.Show lessbioeric
A little buggy
I am a pharmacy student and this app was really good in the beginning and I loved all of its features but over time it gets really buggy. I always update my apps so you would think the updates would fix the bugs but things keep happening. I download my lecture notes into notes plus and then write my notes in app but sometimes it completely wipes out my lectures, leaving behind blank pages with only my written notes left. It’s extremely annoying especially since my professors delete their lecture notes after the semester ends so I can’t even go back to download them again. Sometimes I would either be writing or typing and move the page slightly and lose everything that I wrote and typed so I had to start all over again. I mean I don’t understand why this keeps happening, if it’s only happening to me but I hope this gets heard and fixed.Show lesskaheun13
Crashes reliably
And that has become one of its best features!
I’ve used Notes Plus for years. It has never lived up to its billing of converting handwriting to typed text, maybe 15% accurate at best.
Nonetheless, I have hand-written thousands of pages in Notes Plus.
Lately (latest release) it crashes sporadically, but every time I use it. Usually, several times in one writing session.
The worst part? It deletes one or more recently-completed pages, without notice.
Sometimes, the app just sits there for minutes, while I do something else... until I touch the screen with an Apple Pencil. Then the app crashes, right away, back to the home screen.
This is getting PAINFUL to use.
I no longer recommend this app. Find a better one for your needs.
Also... it saves REALLY slowly, and apparently loses entire pages at the time. (As well as randomly)
There was a bug when migrating... it would only migrate ALL pages in ALL notebooks. But not user’s choice of notebooks. And not all notebooks would migrate. The app would crash back to the home screen. So, I had to repeatedly try to migrate. So now, I have multiple versions of various notebooks, almost all of my notebooks... hundreds. Many with 10 or 12 versions. So now I have to go thru all of these on iCloud Drive and delete the identical versions that are only taking up (paid) space on iCloud Drive. And also check to see if any of these have lost some pages that are perhaps in another version of the same file...
Painful.Show lessAmadeus152
Chernobyl of apps
Obviously no discerning consumer is installing Notes Plus at this point but it is good that it remains in the App Store so people can benefit from the lessons learned. There is no point in rehashing the details of went wrong again here except to highlight that the product was a pretty broadly adopted darling of handwriting recognition fans. They were cleverly tweaking around the edges of the cutting edge of functionality when they rolled out a poorly tested revision and decimated years of user data and essentially self destructed.
A timely reminder to be wary when you are integrating a product or function into your critical workflow when you’ve paid less than the price of your breakfast for it. It’s not the bells or whistles (or advertising & promotion) that get short changed at these companies — it’s the basic blocking and tackling ... the testing and risk management.
Many probably felt they had a lot of backup ... were as safe as they could be. They couldn’t have imagined a company, so successful to date, would release a revision that would dig all the way back into the historical data, and the way it interacts with the app, and blow it all up. Boom. Chernobyl.Show less911only_rvwr
Great App, but Palm Rejection needs some work
Fanatic App! I have switched to using the iPad (specifically Note Plus) in all my client intakes and note taking ventures—trial lawyer here...take A LOT of handwritten notes. Couple of Points I would like to see improved on: (1) Easier exporting/naming—I save all my notes as PDF in client folders on my firm’s server. I have to remember to rename each PDF Note as the app carrys the naming of my previous note to my new notebook...creating a lot of confusion when trying to locate a note; (2) Palm Rejection needs some work, very frequently when I go to write in the notebook the app zooms the note to the point that I often have to pinch to resize to normal “fit” zoom; (3) Add “insert date” button, I date all of my handwritten notes so when I print them to the file they are put in the proper order...would be nice if there was a way to insert date by default.
Otherwise app works great! But Please Please Please work on better Palm Rejection...very annoying to have to stop note taking to resize the note.Show lessZAD90
Best handwriting app but serious problems
I’ve been a digital professional since 1985 and I still write my notes by hand — for concerting, journaling, planning, and of course also sketching. The act of writing slows down and clarifies my thinking. This app combines the best of both worlds. I practically never put it down.
**I’m adding this addendum after experiencing serious problems with this app. It’s still the best writing app I’ve found; it’s versatility, pen/brush modes, and interface are great and there’s really nothing I’ve found that compares.
That having been said, I’ve been experiencing a problem that I consider catastrophic, that is, data loss. Whole pages of text simply disappear from notebooks and there’s no way to retrieve them. This is a fatal error; the only workaround is to constantly export pdf to capture the notebook at its current stage. And check that the psd exported correctly also.
I’m really hoping this can be straightened out. It’s a wonderful app but for this one fatal flaw.Show lessartministry
