Notes Plus User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience42.8% of reviews
Neutral7.4% of reviews
Negative experience49.8% of reviews

~ Based on 325 written reviews from the US App Store.

What users say

Is Notes Plus Safe?

Notes Plus appears mostly safe based on user ratings. AppsHunter Safety Score for Notes Plus is 70/100.

This assessment is based on 1,627 user ratings, with an App Store average of 3.5/5.

Safety Analysis

60.4% of ratings point to a safe experience
9.6% of ratings suggest some concerns
29.9% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 1,627 App Store ratings for Notes Plus.

Is Notes Plus Legit?

Notes Plus is no longer available in the App Store. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Notes Plus is 35/100.

Based on 35 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Score capped because this app is no longer listed.

Top reviews

Used to be great

Conversion from handwriting only works sometimes now. It used to work all the time. Often, the app doesn’t even open correctly and I can’t access my notes or notebooks. So disappointed! I have years worth of notes that may be lost forever.

This app has turned to complete garbage!!

I purchased this app to take notes while attending my undergrad program, now I’m scrambling just to get the PDF exports of all of my notes onto my computer, because this app is so freaking unstable it crashes perpetually! This was after they did some kind of conversion & messed up my files creating duplicates of everything so I never know which files are corrupted or which one will work fine. Because there is absolutely no consistency with the chaos!
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Inconsistent

I love it. Then I got a new IPad Pro 13 inch and now the palm recognition will not turn off. All my notes get stroke marks. I’ve checked all settings, deleted and reinstalled. Nothing works. I switched over to another app but Notes plus was my favorite.

Glitchy. Frustrating.

I have used this app on and off for quite some time. I like the layout and design, but It has issues syncing and I get locked into read only mode on some notebooks. I have also lost whole pages that just disappear while scrolling!?-I am switching to regular notes on iPhone. Pencil works great there and backup is solid.
Sorry developer, we can’t spend our precious time and loose our data or have it un-accessible. I hope you get this app solid for the current users.
Todd P.
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need to have an update

i think after years of using this app i like to change my note taking app cause i can see lots of crush and bugs during my using also there is no newer version for this app i think the last update was around a year ago so i’m sorry
this app could have a great potential to become the best note taking app compare to other but package of management could be a reason to avoid this app asap
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WAS Best…..NO LONGER! Continuing Deterioration.

2/19/25. Another update. Developer has totally abandoned this once great App. It’s an unreliable mess now. STAY AWAY !!!

UPDATE 11/25/2024
NOW WORSE THAN EVER. MORE AND MORE BUGS….LOSS OF FILES CONTAINING YEARS OF WORK. DEVELOPER HAS LEFT THE PLANET. ZERO RESPONSE TO PROBLEMS. SKIP THIS APP.

UPDATE: 11-2024 WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THIS APP IS BECOMING NOT SO GREAT!
Developer has disappeared. Now totally unresponsive after several months of trying to contact support. With each IOS update, App gets buggier and buggier. I’ve now had to switch to NOTEABILITY.

10-2023
I’ve been using this App for 8+ years. Like all apps it’s has had some bugs. However, I’ve emailed the developer about the bugs and found the developer very responsive and engaged with me to get a full understanding of the bugs. This is hands-down the best hand writing app with best organizational capabilities you can get. There is a learning curve to fully understand how to use Notes Plus so don’t be discouraged by the negative reviews.

PS..NGUYEN DUY….you need to update the app to make the Apple Pencil Pro fully compatible.
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What’s the point if all my notes get deleted with updates??

Great functionality. However, all my notebooks got deleted (including backups) - assume it was a glitch with an update. Doesn’t matter know as I lost them forever and won’t be trusting this kind of app again.

Please fix Apple Pencil mode

On an iPad mini A17 using Apple Pencil Pro, Notes Plus recognizes finger contact even when it’s disabled in iOS Settings. In the app settings, Digital Pen is empty. Even when I toggle pen/hand mode, it still detects finger pressure as writing. I want to use my finger for navigation and control and only use the Apple Pencil for writing.
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App Doesn’t Sync

The app is not syncing between devices. Many of my files have been replaced with links that don’t work. From the look of past bad reviews the developer doesn’t respond with any helpful feedback. If I could give it zero stars I would.

I love this app for notes

This is hands down the best and only app I have ever used that makes me want to write more! My handwriting is atrocious, but the calligraphy pen has helped me improve, and makes cursive fun.

There are only three things I would like to see added.

1) Custom cover arts for notebooks, as in user chosen images.
2) Two finger tap undo
3) Option for endless paper for panning

But none of that makes this program anything less. I love this app so much I have purchased the bundle pack twice so I could have it on android and apple.
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Ujang

This is very useful app and because I can use handwriting, it helps me to quickly write the important information and ideas that come to me and save them as a file.

HELP - Support do you exist!?

Are you still in operation? I have reached out to you so many times. I have been a long-time loyal customer for 8+ years, and now your application no longer functions on my iPad ios18. I can not find or open my files; the app seems to open, but just stays on the welcome intro notepad; it won't even move, draw, or go backward to my files folder. It then will subsequently just crash - please urgently help and advise! I desperately need my files, which is abhorrent; you are not replying to emails or support!
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I always come back

I've been using Notes Plus for many years, and I can say it is simultaneously one of the best and one of the worst note taking apps on the market. It has, hands down, the best user interface / input design of any note-taking app out there. At the same time, it has also been one of the buggiest apps I've ever seen. As a result, I have always returned to Notes Plus after trying very hard to switch to other note taking apps that are more stable. I am still using Notes Plus to this day.

The positives: the writing interface is incredibly efficient and intuitive, and the gestures it recognizes and uses are much better than anything else on the market. In particular, it has a powerful "circle-to-select" gesture which I use extensively. In the "circle-to-select " gesture, when you draw a closed loop around
any written marks on the page, a checkmark appears immediately next to the drawn loop
1) If you intended to draw the loop as part of the text, simply keep writing more text and the check mark disappears and the drawn loop remains as part of the note.
2) If you intended to select the written content inside the loop, tap the check mark. The written content inside the loop becomes highlighted, and you can move it around or delete it or change its pen style (color, thickness, pen style etc.) or copy it or resize it etc. These gestures are smooth and effortless, and they are localized to the region directly next to where you are writing, not way up at some menu bar at the top of the page. And the closed loop you draw to circle text can be nearly arbitrarily convoluted, avoiding specific written content, while looping around to select other text.

I am a physicist, and I frequently do long calculations on "pen and paper". On every other app, writing down these calculations is unbearably painful. If I write down an equation and I miss a term, in order to correct the equation in other apps, I essentially have to erase and rewrite most of the equation. (And typically, even the simple act of erasing text on other apps is cumbersome: Some apps have a scribble gesture, but it frequently over-deletes, including things around it. In some apps, you select text to delete or use an eraser tool to erase text, which usually involves moving up to a menu bar, choosing the “erase” or “select” tool, and moving back down to the text. And the beauty of Notes Plus’ "circle-to-select " is that it can have an extremely small and precise selection loop, and you don’t have to use some blunt, big eraser tool-tip. In Notes Plus, I am effortlessly nudging, deleting or changing the pen style of all kinds of small pieces of an equation to make it look correct. No other app allows micromanage written text like this.

At the same time, Notes Plus has been buggy. I, too, have lost vast amounts of work due to a bug that wiped out most of my notebooks. (Prompting a nearly six month search for another note taking app to replace it.) But I am back to Notes Plus, because I just don’t have the patience for the cumbersome interface of other apps.

I give it five stars in the hope that it gets enough support to stay alive and continue to get bug fixes.
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The best, accept no substitutes.

Used it for years, tried so many others. It still is the best one for written notes, with annotations of pix and typed entries. For those of us who think more clearly as we write in cursive, so great to do drafts on Notes Plus, use the handwriting recognition (that gets better and better), then copy the converted content out to a word processing app like Word or Pages. Always satisfies.
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Hopelessly buggy

It crashes, it drops whole words, it won't save work. It's a big fat mess!!!

WAS Best…..NO LONGER! Continuing Deterioration.

UPDATE 11/25/2024
NOW WORSE THAN EVER. MORE AND MORE BUGS….LOSS OF FILES CONTAINING YEARS OF WORK. DEVELOPER HAS LEFT THE PLANET. ZERO RESPONSE TO PROBLEMS. SKIP THIS APP.

UPDATE: 11-2024 WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THIS APP IS BECOMING NOT SO GREAT!
Developer has disappeared. Now totally unresponsive after several months of trying to contact support. With each IOS update, App gets buggier and buggier. I’ve now had to switch to NOTEABILITY.

10-2023
I’ve been using this App for 8+ years. Like all apps it’s has had some bugs. However, I’ve emailed the developer about the bugs and found the developer very responsive and engaged with me to get a full understanding of the bugs. This is hands-down the best hand writing app with best organizational capabilities you can get. There is a learning curve to fully understand how to use Notes Plus so don’t be discouraged by the negative reviews.

PS..NGUYEN DUY….you need to update the app to make the Apple Pencil Pro fully compatible.
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Chintzy

This app has five ink styles including "no ink effect" which is a plain, slightly too-thick line and "fountain pen" The rest including plain ballpoint are $1 extra. So I bought the ballpoint pen and it's identical to the "no ink effect" and does not resemble the "try it here" sample. Who needs this kind of nickle and diming? It cheapens an already chintzy static palette.
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Love it, but there are now problems.

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.

Update: I have to bump it down a star because the latest update broke it. When I do the convert page to text, it now puts a paragraph break between each line even when I have the setting to not recognize line breaks turned off. It also now adds at least two, sometimes three or four, unnecessary spaces between words. I ended up making a macro in Word to clean up the text after I pull it from Notes Plus. I emailed support, and though they used to be very responsive, I've received no reply after several follow-ups.
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Not reliable

I’ve had this app for a while and have much important information there for my business too. This is the second time it’s glitched and all my info has been lost, I had to download the app again, and it’s empty. There’s no way apparently to log into to an account and store your info like with pages or Apple notes. All my work is lost I’m so annoyed. This is unacceptable and very wrong for this app to not have back up or to provide your own account where your info is stored. Especially since it glitches all the time. Unacceptable. I’ve lost all my notes and folders now. Don’t trust this app
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Doesn’t work with 15.8.3

I purchased this app several years ago. Clearly, the developer does not care to upgrade so it its compatible for all users, demonstrating that the developer either doesn’t care or is inept. Either way, it’s too bad that Apple includes this app in its store.