deleted all of my notes!
i’m an engineering student who takes lots of notes on my ipad and i checked and all my notes are gone! i’ve been paying for pro for 2 years now, super disappointed. stick to pen and paper
A ridiculous amount of bugs when using an Apple Pencil.
I am beyond disappointed that I even have to write this review. I have been a loyal Notability user for the past eight years, and I can confidently say that my recent experience with the app has been nothing short of frustrating. For an app that is specifically designed for note-taking and handwriting, it is embarrassing how poorly some of its most basic features function.
I recently started using a new Apple Pencil, which works perfectly fine in every other drawing and note-taking app I have tested. Yet, in Notability, it has been an absolute nightmare. Random areas of my screen suddenly become completely unresponsive to my Apple Pencil, making it impossible to write or draw in certain spots. Additionally, the partial erase feature frequently erases entire strokes instead of just the selected portion, completely defeating its purpose. Even something as simple as selecting and moving figures around the page results in excessive glitching, making basic editing tasks unnecessarily difficult.
These are not minor inconveniences. These are fundamental features that users rely on every single day. It is ridiculous that after eight years of using this app, I am now struggling to perform tasks that should be effortless. What makes this even more frustrating is that my Apple Pencil functions perfectly in other applications, making it clear that these issues are specific to Notability.
For an app that markets itself as a reliable, high-quality note-taking platform, this level of functionality is unacceptable. Users should not have to constantly work around glitches just to take notes, erase handwriting, or move objects across a page. Instead of focusing on adding new features, Notability needs to prioritize fixing the basic tools that its longtime users depend on. After eight years of loyalty, I genuinely expected better. I hope the developers take these complaints seriously and address these issues rather than continuing to overlook problems that make the app increasingly frustrating to use.
I recently started using a new Apple Pencil, which works perfectly fine in every other drawing and note-taking app I have tested. Yet, in Notability, it has been an absolute nightmare. Random areas of my screen suddenly become completely unresponsive to my Apple Pencil, making it impossible to write or draw in certain spots. Additionally, the partial erase feature frequently erases entire strokes instead of just the selected portion, completely defeating its purpose. Even something as simple as selecting and moving figures around the page results in excessive glitching, making basic editing tasks unnecessarily difficult.
These are not minor inconveniences. These are fundamental features that users rely on every single day. It is ridiculous that after eight years of using this app, I am now struggling to perform tasks that should be effortless. What makes this even more frustrating is that my Apple Pencil functions perfectly in other applications, making it clear that these issues are specific to Notability.
For an app that markets itself as a reliable, high-quality note-taking platform, this level of functionality is unacceptable. Users should not have to constantly work around glitches just to take notes, erase handwriting, or move objects across a page. Instead of focusing on adding new features, Notability needs to prioritize fixing the basic tools that its longtime users depend on. After eight years of loyalty, I genuinely expected better. I hope the developers take these complaints seriously and address these issues rather than continuing to overlook problems that make the app increasingly frustrating to use.
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Copy and paste it photos from Mac are being pixelated on Notability iPad
Copy and paste it photos from Mac are being pixelated on Notability iPad. Please fix this issue this happened after the big update.
Loss of Data, Fixed Nothing, Very Unhappy
So disappointed that this app failed. Erased several medical notes that were digitally handwritten, as well as slides from instructors where i wrote notations atop in a new layer. I used the Notability Pro at $99 plus tax per year and am very frustrated the staff at notability seemed to flake out, do nothing to try to restore lost data, or send AI responses to my repeated requests for account assistance.
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Notes are disappearing
.
My note vanished.
One of my notes vanished. It’s a file that I use almost every day, kept updated, and even favorited. Today I suddenly couldn’t find it anymore, anywhere. I even checked my OneDrive backup; it isn’t there either. Hope y’all can help me retrieve it.
Not sure yet
I really really enjoy writing. This with a “paper” cover is good so far. But just good, not great. It sync’s across my apple devices but iPhone and writing do not go together. I am still checking out both this and Good Notes to see which one. I do NOT like that even on the a notebook paper template there is no margin. I take extra notes in the margin. I am going to try calendar on both apps next and that may be the deciding factor.
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Love but needs more helpful school features
I really like taking notes but I think it would be very helpful if the sticker section had things like hexagons/shapes for organic chemistry, stickers for the brain/anatomy, muscles, etc things for a biology class. There are so many stickers for aesthetic purposes but not helpful educational wise.
Deceiving free tier plan.
The app is alright, but it locks you out after a certain amount of time spent taking notes, and puts you into “read only” mode. This caught me in the middle of my college lecture and there was nothing I could do about it.
Add passwords to login
It’s 2026. This whole “well email you a sign on link” has to be the most annoying part of the app. It wouldn’t be so bad if at every use attempt I didn’t have to sign in. Add a password, 2FA, or even a passkey. The email method takes way too long and is highly annoying
auto file conversion?
no longer auto converts pptx/docx into pdfs! unable to search for words within some documents
Easy to use
I love how easy this is to use
Use at your own risk
I’ve had Notability for years and have loved it. However, the last couple of years I have had increasing issues with stability and losing notes. Most recently, I started using Notability to record a daily journal, something I deeply regret. A couple weeks ago the app crashed, and when it reopened, it had deleted the last four months of daily journaling. Not the note, just logs I had written in the note. Fortunately, I had auto back up enabled. Unfortunately, that is also unstable. It has always been on, however, it hasn’t auto backed up since August. Notability support has more or less told me I’m out of luck. For me, this is the last straw. Thanks Notability for the good run, but it’s time to move onto something that I can trust.
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Account required
Why am I being required to make an account now? I don’t care to sync it to your cloud. I don’t want to use cloud syncing for it at all
Lovely but…
Update: The customer service’s reply is that the changes were deliberate. Well, I have also deliberately cancelled my subscription.
I have been using the app for a while now with my subscription. And it’s my go-to notebook app. However, I will like some features like ability to insert a table in a document. And it will be nice to be able to customise each page with different templates. I also noticed the recent trend of trying to impose the Notability cloud on customers. It’s sad that despite having the paid version, I am not getting the update for new features because the updates are locked in Notability Cloud. This is unacceptable. Feature updates should be available to everyone, especially paying customers. If this doesn’t change, I will be looking to cancel my subscription soon
I have been using the app for a while now with my subscription. And it’s my go-to notebook app. However, I will like some features like ability to insert a table in a document. And it will be nice to be able to customise each page with different templates. I also noticed the recent trend of trying to impose the Notability cloud on customers. It’s sad that despite having the paid version, I am not getting the update for new features because the updates are locked in Notability Cloud. This is unacceptable. Feature updates should be available to everyone, especially paying customers. If this doesn’t change, I will be looking to cancel my subscription soon
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Mac compatible…? Not so much
It is hard to find note taking apps that are compatible with Mac, as I like to use a Wacom tablet to take notes (saves me some money on an iPad). I’ve been using notability for over 2 years now for this purpose, and honestly it works well enough, most of the time. But, over the last 2 years the app crashes have gotten worse for me. The app crashes are once a day. It is really annoying to be in class and have to take the 3 minutes to force quit the app and restart instead of focusing on notes. Its frustrating that I pay money to use an app that crashes ALL the time. I once had a crash that led to the deletion of an entire semester of notes, only after contacting support and digging through my computer files was I able to recover it. The trust just isn’t there with me. Idk, I will keep using it because when it does work its really great.
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Nothing better
This app is amazing and so easy to use, a must get and a great deal!! Definitely the best purchase I’ve ever made for anything uni related
App does not work for small notes.
When I upload my class slides and try to get the AI generated quizzes and and summary, it says, “add more notes to get the summary and quizzes.” And it wont work until i add more. For reference my notes that i upload are already over 20 slide long so it should be enough for a summary and a quiz. This is a bug that needs fixed or there needs to be an option for quizzes and summaries on smaller slides. Other than that I love this app and have recommended it to a lot of people but this issue is making me think about switching platforms because it happens almost every time now.
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PLEASE FIX IMAGE SIZING ERROR
I cannot change the size of my images on my MacBook with this app and I incorporate lots of images to make personal visuals to memorize content along with my notes and I cannot size the image at all. The corner circles do not work, I can only crop the image and move it where I want. Please fix so I can update my review to 5 stars, this is the whole reason I got the app to begin with
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Needs more customization and Liquid Glass
Needs more customisation and appearance settings need more liquid glass and needs accessibility to the new Siri AI available to the limited devices in iOS 27. I think it kinda needs a refresh. It still has an old aesthetic.
