# MarginNote 2 — user reviews > 52 indexed App Store user reviews of MarginNote 2 by Beijing Yunsi Software Technology Co., Ltd, rated 4.60/5 from 358 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/marginnote-2/id769389582/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/marginnote-2/id769389582.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 284 · 4★ 46 · 3★ 12 · 2★ 5 · 1★ 11 ## What do users think of MarginNote 2? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 👍 Versatile tool for annotating - 💡 No subscription for core features - 👍 Thorough developer consideration - 👍 Convenient and effective for study - 🚀 Streamlined and logical organization - 👍 Great ePub support - 👍 Best PDF reader - 👍 Good for PDF/ePub enjoyment - 👍 All necessary functions - 👍 Easy file transfer - 👍 Great for learning and reading - 👍 Good for active reading - 👍 Powerful note-taking potential - 👍 Indispensable for e-texts - 👍 Easy margin notes by hand - 👍 User-friendly tools and features - 🚀 Time saver for busy professionals - 👍 Best free app - 👍 Well-designed and simple - 👍 Fantastic for school/work - 👍 Indispensable for various tasks - 🚀 Flawless performance after bug fix - 👍 Perfect note-taking app - 👍 Nice and awesome app - 👍 Better than other note apps - 👍 Easy organization of notes - 👍 Must-have app for editing - 👍 User-friendly and easy to use - 👍 Great for students and professionals - 👍 Reliable and perfect organization - 👍 Useful for kids' studies - 👍 Awesome and useful app - 👍 Useful and awesome app - 👍 Helpful functionality - 👍 Go paperless option - 👍 Impressive handwriting recognition - 👍 Must-have for students - 💡 Brilliant thought-out functionality - 💡 Compiles margin notes cohesively - 💡 Creates mind maps from notes - 💡 Changes note-taking for studying - 💡 Flashcard system for review - 🚀 Saves time for writing - 👍 Great design **Cons** - 🔒 Privacy concern with Apple ID lookup - 💡 Lacks Google Drive/OneDrive sync - 🐛 Cannot draw on ePub books - 🐛 Not stable - 🐛 iCloud sync does not work - 🐛 Exported PDFs are bloated - 🐛 No developer response - 🐛 Trouble syncing read papers in cloud - 🐛 No integration with Mendeley/Zotero - 🐛 Handwriting writing not smooth - 🐛 Notes and highlights jump pages - 🐛 Zero customer support - 🐛 Cloud sync unreliable/limited - 🐛 Impossible to select all files - 🐛 Separate listing and downloaded function needed - 🐛 Pen annotation blurry - 🐛 Hand drawings not vector-based - 🐛 Software automatically smoothens strokes - 🐛 Memory problems, freezes - 🐛 Improperly renders PDFs - 🐛 Crushes for large PDFs - 💡 Wish for page cropping feature **Commonly reported bugs** - Not stable - iCloud sync does not work - Exported annotated PDFs are bloated - No response from developers - Notes and highlights jump to next page - Cloud sync unreliable, limited - Impossible to select all files for import/send/edit - Pen annotation is blurry - Handwriting is not very smooth - Terrible memory problems, freezes - Improperly renders PDFs - Crushes when opening PDFs or while reading - Crushes often when reading large PDF documents **Most requested features** - Sync/import from Google Drive/Microsoft OneDrive - Ability to draw on ePub books - Combination lock feature - Better Evernote/Reference app integration - Better Apple Pencil support (smoother writing) - Handwriting recognition - Vector graph format for hand drawings - Page cropping feature - Ability to underline in note boxes of link to material - Reduce cost for full version ## Newest reviews (11 of 52) ### 4/5 — Notes and highlights will jump to next page *2018-04-15, version 2.7.12* I want to know why my notes and highlights some pages will jump to next several pages! Though it does not happen every time, it kind of bothers me if I want to take notes on the next page! Other aspects are all good! ### 4/5 — Good but there’s still space for improvement *2018-03-05, version 2.7.12* Very useful app. I use it a lot to hand-annotate PDFs. But I wonder why the pen annotation is sort of blurry. It also depends on how much you zoom when you write the annotation. Can’t the hand drawings be converted to “vector graph” type of format so that it is sharp at any zoom? I think that would make the annotation look better. Also I notice when you hand-write, the software automatically smoothens the stroke, which I don’t like a lot. ### 5/5 — still learning *2016-09-19, version 2.2.5* This app can do so much that it can take a while to learn everything it can do and really figure out how to use it to your best advantage. However, this app is what academics and serious students have been waiting for ever since we first began to see what could be possible with iPads and styli. This app + iPad Pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil = POWERFUL note-taking potential, especially for those who must work closely with complex texts. I can easily see this app being useful to all Humanities and Social Sciences researchers and students, but also lawyers, social workers...well, anyone who needs to mark up texts. Someday I hope that we will replace paper texts almost entirely with e-texts and at that time, apps like MarginNote will be absolutely indispensable. I have resisted moving to e-texts precisely because there was no good way to take margin notes by hand. MarginNote makes it possible to do this. I do not have the pro version and I do not yet know if the version I do have supports handwriting recognition. I am sure this app does have limitations but since I am still learning its capabilities, it is far too soon for me to critique limits. All academics should give this app a try. ❤️ ### 4/5 — My note book… *2015-03-16, version 1.8.1* As a business person this app is very useful for me, I can take noteson my own handwriting, highlight them and make notes within the margin of ePub and PDF documents. You can organize your notes using mindmap and outline integration, you can import and export notes and also print them. You can save it on your device or in the cloud. Highlighting text and adding annotate is very easy in MarginNote reader. Overall this app has user friendly tools and features. Definitely recommend!! ### 5/5 — Time saver!!! *2015-03-16, version 1.8.1* I love the way this app work. I use this app daily, it's a very very easy to use. This app is good for person like me because I have to travel a lot due to my work and I have lots of paper work to do and also have to check daily reports and then I have to send them to my manager, by using this app I can highlight the point which I have to discuss with then. This app allow me to cut, highlight and also gives me different colors to highlight them. For me this is the best app till I have used. ### 5/5 — Best free app!!! *2015-03-16, version 1.8.1* It's a nice free app to use. I just started using it and so far I found it the best for me. It is a ver good concept and it seems to be well implemented. I have not run into any bugs so far. The app is great for organizing projects or things that you just need to get accompanied. The mapping option in app is work perfect it is very easy to understand it and to implement it. Now I can map all my work by using this app. It's easy to connect with your Dropbox account to export and import file from them. I'm happy to have this app!!!! ### 5/5 — Well designed app. *2015-03-15, version 1.8.1* I'm really happy to have this app in my iPad. I'm love the way it work, it is simple, easy to use, user friendly and one can easily get hand on it. The app is not at all complicated there is instructions how to use it, there are lots of colours which I can use to highlight the note and every important line with different colour which I can use according to my choose. The app has many features in it which are useful for me. Mind mapping work perfect. ### 5/5 — Fantastic app for school, college and general work!!! *2015-03-14, version 1.8.1* Very useful app, there are lots of note reader app available in market but it is very difficult to find all of the features available in one app. I have used 10-15 reader app, but I recommend MarginNote to everyone, it is useful for any of the profession like sketches, note, important remainder at school, project report creation during college days. Etc. MarginNote Reader is afirst step toward, a key tool for maintaining and backup plan when it comes to file organization and preparation. ### 5/5 — Indispensible *2015-03-14, version 1.8.1* I use MarginNote several times a day, I use it for different tasks ranging from personal jounaling to keeping work notes to save interesting web articles and references. And sync option to drop box helps me to download my files whenever I need anywhere at any place, even if I don’t have my ipad with me. I use this for personal remainders, set milestones, goals and tracking, positive affirmations, daily needs of home life, upload contacts, receipts, and manuals. Some time I also use this art ideas, creative writing, recipes, etc. I loved it!!! ### 5/5 — Working flawless after bug fix!! *2015-03-14, version 1.8.1* I am using MarginNote from a long time, it is a great app only sometime it was getting crashes not every time, I was thinking that may I have issue with my iPad but after latest update it is working more smoothly and crashes problem also fixed. I use this app almost everyday. I like to try recipes from different blogs at save at this app and this saved me a ton of paper. I keep my important notes and remainder saved at this. I’ll never lose any important piece of information with help of MarginNote. Very well designed, fast syncing among the various interfaces. ### 4/5 — A perfect note taking app… *2015-03-14, version 1.8.1* In our daily life it’s very difficult to carry multiple notes and loose papers but this app makes our life easy now we just need one thing that is MarginNote reader, no loose paper, no multiple notes only MarginNote reader. You can take notes, you can edit, highlight and outline it. This app is very useful and easy to use for student, businessmen and for instructors. I have been using it to take my notes during my classes. This is one of the best note reader app on the app store I have ever used. I would highly recommend it to everyone and anyone. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Not stable *2019-01-31* Not stable. **Developer response:** Apologies for the bug introduced in build 2.7.19 and we've issued a hotfix build to address the app crash right after that. Please update to 2.7.20 as soon as possible. ### 1/5 — Zero customer support, missing basic file management functions *2018-03-29, version 2.7.12* I’ve been using MarginNote (not pro) and wanted to upgrade to full version, and as suggested there are two ways, I downloaded ‘margin note pro’ fresh hoping it would sync without an issue. But it had an issue (margin note has several missing features and issues, it’s a separate discussion below), so I tried to restore purchase in the original non-pro app ‘margin note’ and it failed to restore purchase. Since the popup said I better just click ‘upgrade’ if ‘restore purchase’ doesn’t work and it will not charge again for the paid customer, I did just that. And I got the receipt for both, I was charged for both. Sent the email right away, and didn’t hear any response from them. Zero customer support. I had to talk to Apple support to cancel the charge. Margin note, explain what happened. For missing features and issues, 1. cloud sync unreliable, limited. I have over 1000 files, only couple hundreds are on icloud. I need to have all of them in icloud, whether or not they have notes attached. You can upload files to icloud by selecting one by one, when you have many files this is too much of a labor. So this is related to #2. 2. impossible to select “all” for import, send, edit In general it’s impossible to ‘select all’ or select big chunk of files with a lasso tool or drag select tool for any operation in MarginNote, need to select one by one, such a pain. This is very basic file management feature, why not have it. Lots of use cases, change icloud setting, change category for subset of files, send multiple files to another device if not synced automatically, uploading & downlowding all files etc. 3. separate the ‘listing’ and ‘downloaded’ function Once you imported a file/book on one device and ‘cloud’ option is default, you should be able to see it on another device without downloading it. ### 2/5 — Privacy? *2022-06-17, version 2.7.22* Requests look up by apple ID. “People who look you up will see your first and last name.” I have a ridiculous number of apps. This is the only one that has requested this. ### 2/5 — Promising, but show-stopping bugs *2018-11-19, version 2.7.17* Could be very useful, but iCloud sync does not work. Also, exported annotated PDFs are bloated (10x increase in size). No response from the developers either. ### 3/5 — Can be improved - Google Drive syncing *2021-01-09, version 2.7.22* I think marginnote3 also lacks the ability to sync/import files from Google Drive and/or Microsoft OneDrive. while I do use iCloud Drive, it's definitely not my primary go-to. I think this app would greatly benefit from adding this feature ### 3/5 — I want to write notes on ePub with Apple Pencil *2018-04-24, version 2.7.12* This app is great and seems very powerful, but my goal was to be able to write notes in an ePub with my Apple Pencil, not to type notes in an extra margin. I want to write in the book like it was a physical book. Please make this happen. **Developer response:** Hi there, MarginNote supports apple pencil sketch for the notes you’ve made(click on the card editing button and it has a sketch icon) but it does not and not likely to add support direct sketch on ePub given that it has a completely different mechanism from that of PDF. ### 3/5 — Great app, BUT... *2014-12-01, version 1.6.2* Has terrible memory problems! I have an ipad air and it regularly freezes when opening pdfs or while reading them. Other times, it improperly renders them when I can tell it's getting low on memory to run the program ... blurry text or even entire sectors of the page go unrendered. I have a ton of pdfs loaded into it, and even the menu can bog down at times, and I'll have to restart the application. This app is great, but it needs serious optimization work. The company needs to hire some bright, intrepid programmers to lessen the memory fingerprint and speed up rendering. ### 4/5 — This is an app to follow closely *2019-02-06, version 2.7.20* It has a lot of potential and all the options I needed to enjoy my pdf/epubs -1 star for not being able to draw on ePub books. ### 4/5 — good *2018-10-15, version 2.7.17* Very good ### 4/5 — Need Better Evernote/Reference app integration *2018-06-10, version 2.7.12* It is a great app to learning and reading academic literatures. However, I find myself having trouble sync the read/studied paper in cloud when my own iPad/Mac is not around. For example if I want to read on my lab’s mac, I will either install a new MarginNote (and buy a license for that as well?) or I could only export the read file as a pdf, upload it to my Evernote, then open my Evernote on my lab’s Mac to read it. This makes it very difficult to keep my notes and reading progress up to date on all devices, so I have to bring my iPad around all the time and I have to stay on my iPad for the reading tasks. In addition, MarginNote has no integration with Mendeley or Zotero or any reference managing apps/services, that even though I use this as my major reading app, I have to keep a separate copy of all my papers into my references management apps. And none of my notes are synced to those references apps, so when writing new papers I will need to switch back and forth between apps to be able to find my notes of a specific paper and add citations of the same paper from another app. Another thing is I wish the app has better Apple Pencil support. I have tried to write handwriting notes on my papers while I read to keep me actively reading instead of wandering off the paper, but the writing is not very smooth and look kind of weird to be honest. This has not been an old feature and hopefully we can see some improvements soon. This is a good app for reading and studying. I think what I spent (I bought pro for both iPad and Mac version) is worth it, but I wish you can make it better. The apps haven’t been updated in a while now and I really hope that you can constantly improve it. Thank you very much! ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Very good for book annotating *2024-04-24* Hello - and thank you so much for this simple yet versatile tool. I like to make notes as I read books, for discussion with others or as a means of reacquainting myself with a work months or years later. Has more features than I need or use, but that show that the developer chose to put all his ideas into the base app, without requiring a subscription to a premium level to have them all available. I appreciate the developers thoroughness and consideration of their customers. ### 5/5 — Thank you, wonderful note taking app and mind map app *2020-07-24, version 2.7.22* I really appreciate for everything created and developed in this app, and I appreciate the developer, you Thank you so much for inventing this extraordinary app which makes the study so convenient and effective May you and your family always be safe and healthy; May your families’ and your everyday life be filled with the warmth of sunshine, the happiness of smiles, and the sharing of joy, pleasure, love and pleasant; May you and the Margin Note team has a wonderful and the most bright as well as desirable future Many blessings, warmest regards, best wishes and thoughts to you, your family and the Margin Note team I really apologize. Please stay away from the pandemic Xiaohui ### 5/5 — Seems much more streamlined *2019-10-01, version 2.7.22* A good improvement over v2. The organization of content seems much more logical to me. Was mostly intuitive to start using, and the ePub support is great ### 5/5 — Unbelievably good! *2019-03-30, version 2.7.20* Thank the author very much! ### 5/5 — Great app *2019-03-09, version 2.7.20* I tried many apps but this one is the best ### 5/5 — Good *2019-01-31, version 2.7.19* All the functions I need. ### 5/5 — The best PDF reader I have ever used *2018-10-29, version 2.7.17* No words can express the experience of this app. ### 5/5 — Very useful app *2018-09-18, version 2.7.16* Very useful app. Easy to transfer files between pc and pad ### 5/5 — It is desirable to have a combination lock feature in the next release *2018-04-10, version 2.7.12* i hope there be a lock in the app,thans ### 5/5 — Best PDF Reader I’ve found *2017-11-02, version 2.7.7* I read PDFs on a phone and have to zoom in a bit for the text to be readable. MarginNote is the first app I’ve discovered that allows you to maintain your zoom level while scrolling through the text (when it’s in vertical scroll mode). Even if it didn’t offer all the annotation functions, I’d be in my daily workflow. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-06-10.*