I love it’s simplicity and reliability
I’ve been using Penultimate for over 6 years now - almost daily. I’m on iPad Pro with pencil and like this for basic note taking , morning pages, first drafts, etc. I’m an artist and use Procreate for digital art so I like the fact that Penultimate is not tool heavy- I don’t need a lot of choices to distract me when I just want to write. I sync all of my Penultimate notes/notebooks in Evernote which is really handy for organization.
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You’d be toast if it were not for Evernote
I only use Penultimate because it automatically imports into Evernote, which makes my terrible handwriting searchable. The Penultimate writing interface is a little unusual. The sliding advancing window works really well for me. It keeps my hand in one place.
On iPadOS, the central control at the top is too close to the split screen, for example when you want to change color, you wind up hitting the 3 dots.
I’ve seen on Good Notes a really cool thing that I now can’t live without, and Penultimate suffers because it doesn’t have it. When you select the eraser, after you erase and raise your pen, Penultimate should return the tool to the one it was before the erase tool was selected. This is so smooth on other apps, but clunky here, where you have to re-select the prior tool (pen/brush/…)
And whatever you do, don’t waste your time and $80 on an Adonit Jot. Complete horror show.
On iPadOS, the central control at the top is too close to the split screen, for example when you want to change color, you wind up hitting the 3 dots.
I’ve seen on Good Notes a really cool thing that I now can’t live without, and Penultimate suffers because it doesn’t have it. When you select the eraser, after you erase and raise your pen, Penultimate should return the tool to the one it was before the erase tool was selected. This is so smooth on other apps, but clunky here, where you have to re-select the prior tool (pen/brush/…)
And whatever you do, don’t waste your time and $80 on an Adonit Jot. Complete horror show.
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Small Fixes Required
Great app, love the overall aesthetic. There are a few changes that need to be made in order for it to be more user friendly. 1st. The feature to only use an apple pen doesn’t work. It will often pick up my hand resting on the page. I’ll even recollaborate it and it continues. It’s SO irritating. 2nd. The color changing tool is now underneath apples new split screen button on my iPad Pro. I cannot change the color with ease. I also wish there were more colors or a color when to pick from. I want pink 😍
3rd isn’t that important but I wish there were a todo list template with skinnier rule. There’s so much space in between lines.
3rd isn’t that important but I wish there were a todo list template with skinnier rule. There’s so much space in between lines.
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Works great with Evernote but could use some tweaks
Penultimate could be a great app with a little TLC from the developers. It’s integration with Evernote is seamless. The only othe app that comes close is Noteshelf, but it uses a different organization system, so it’s not as intuitive.
As a note taking app, Penultimate is pretty good. It’s simple enough to start using right away but still has a fair number of features. There are a few things I think the developer could fix pretty easily but they don’t appear to have done any work on the app for a number of years.
-palm rejection with the Apple Pencil doesn’t work well. It’s pretty good, but I still get marks on the bottom of my notes.
-when cutting part of a note and moving it, there are stray marks left behind.
-you can’t add a title to the note when first entering it. You have to exit the note first.
-image manipulation is problematic. One example is if you make notations on an image and then move the image, the notations get left behind.
I like Noteshelf better, but still use Penultimate the most because of it’s integration with Evernote.
As a note taking app, Penultimate is pretty good. It’s simple enough to start using right away but still has a fair number of features. There are a few things I think the developer could fix pretty easily but they don’t appear to have done any work on the app for a number of years.
-palm rejection with the Apple Pencil doesn’t work well. It’s pretty good, but I still get marks on the bottom of my notes.
-when cutting part of a note and moving it, there are stray marks left behind.
-you can’t add a title to the note when first entering it. You have to exit the note first.
-image manipulation is problematic. One example is if you make notations on an image and then move the image, the notations get left behind.
I like Noteshelf better, but still use Penultimate the most because of it’s integration with Evernote.
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Obsessed!
Love everything about this app! From the different features, ways to organize, and the fact that you can have multiple notebooks for free is great. The only thing that you have to do is create an Evernote account so that you can create multiple notebooks. Other than that I’ve had the app for a few months and haven’t ran into any problems or bugs if I do I’ll definitely come back and update this review but for right now it’s top tier 5 stars for me!
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Getting long in the tooth - needs revamp
When penultimate first came out, it was awesome and nothing available quite like it on the market. But with the passing of time, other apps have come into the market, and one can’t help notice that penultimate /Evernote has done little to keep up. So many annoying quirks with this app are ignored.
When opening my app, I expect my notes application to remember my preferred pen size settings and not default to …’default state’
When I open my note, why am I randomly dropped in the middle of my notes, rather than at the end or latest written page? Or why not ask?
There should be support for Apple Pencil tap functions for erasing….
Scroll bars or transparent ones are ok. Maybe a page hopper?
How about tags? Oh boy how can I search for tags?
I mean seriously, these should be no brainer updates in 2021.
When opening my app, I expect my notes application to remember my preferred pen size settings and not default to …’default state’
When I open my note, why am I randomly dropped in the middle of my notes, rather than at the end or latest written page? Or why not ask?
There should be support for Apple Pencil tap functions for erasing….
Scroll bars or transparent ones are ok. Maybe a page hopper?
How about tags? Oh boy how can I search for tags?
I mean seriously, these should be no brainer updates in 2021.
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Needs update!!
This app has some significant bugs that are making it difficult to use with consistency. When you move away from the app or move to the multi page view, it returns you to a random page in the doc. SO ANNOYING. Also, the copy page button has stopped working. It just brings you to the multi page view. This means there is no way to insert a new page between pages except to add a page at the end of the doc and move it up. If it’s more than 8 pages, that is a huge hassle. This is more problematic because there should be a way to insert a page easily in between anyways, and the copy page button was a workaround for a feature which should exist anyways. The zoom has issues too.
The writing in this app is very smooth, but I’m about to switch because it’s very impractical.
The writing in this app is very smooth, but I’m about to switch because it’s very impractical.
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Best notes app out there!
Penultimate is one of the best note taking apps available on the App Store! I use this app almost on a daily basis for homework notes, notes at work, to do lists, and also sermon notes at church. You can organize all of your notes in folders within the app itself. If you are looking for a note taking app within the App Store...look no further! Penultimate is the right app for anyone!
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Absolutely disappointing
Absolutely disappointed by this app. I used it to write submissions for my university courses, and it’s done nothing but crash every time I even exit the app and try to use it again. Plus, the scroll feature doesn’t work properly when I zoom in and write. I finally managed to write my submission somehow but when I tried sharing the doc to submit it, it says it shared it, but when I check my submission portal for something else the next day I find that it never went through. I tried upgrading to premium so I could move my stuff to Evernote, but it won’t even let me do that because it restricts the card I can use to pay for premium and then fails to process the subscription payment on the card that it allows me to use. In summary: constantly crashes, scrolling doesn’t work properly, sharing files is hit-or-miss, and I can’t even upgrade so all my notes get saved. If I could give it a lower rating I would.
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Penultimate +iPad Pro +plus iPencil +Evernote
I have been using this combination for about 4 years. It does everything that I needed to do. I am sure that I am not using it to its fullest potential as I use it for a personal notebook and sketch pad but rarely share or collaborate with others. It has worked flawlessly for me in that job. I have always been a note taker. With this combination notetaking is easy, it’s fast and I can always find every note even from years ago. Penultimate is the best application for creating a combination to do, I did, I shouldn’t have done, why did I do that, and did I really do that list. And for better or worse it is all in written down for you to reflect on.
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Great but still needs progress
I’ve been using this app for a while now and it certainly proves itself to be a pretty great notetaking app for multiple purposes
However, there are some quality of life things still missing with this app which ruin a lot of the enjoyable experience by adding some level of frustration
Such things include not being able to move notes from one notebook to another, glitch where you cannot name a new notebook by the same name of an already deleted notebook, with the Logitech Digital Crayon there seems to be some confusion with how the highlighter will be angled, no edits can be made to default note names, can’t change the color of notebooks, selecting certain parts of a piece of writing will from time to time leave little dots of pencil that didn’t move alongside the selection, and a lack of a default paper style.
However, there are some quality of life things still missing with this app which ruin a lot of the enjoyable experience by adding some level of frustration
Such things include not being able to move notes from one notebook to another, glitch where you cannot name a new notebook by the same name of an already deleted notebook, with the Logitech Digital Crayon there seems to be some confusion with how the highlighter will be angled, no edits can be made to default note names, can’t change the color of notebooks, selecting certain parts of a piece of writing will from time to time leave little dots of pencil that didn’t move alongside the selection, and a lack of a default paper style.
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Great App With Few, Minor Flaws
I hemmed and hawed between 4 and 5 stars. Ultimately, I just use this app so often and have so few issues with it that I had to go with 5 stars.
Organization is definitely best done in browser rather than in app. The browser functionality allows you to more easily move notes from one notebook to another. That was a game changer. I do also wish you could share a page as a pdf out of one of the notebooks. If this is possible, I haven’t figured out how to do it yet. Someone please tell me.
Other than that, I find this to be a ludicrously easy to use, simple note taking app. I’ve got it organized to a great point where I just have all my notes easily accessible and ready to use.
I’ve only used this app with my Apple Pencil, so I don’t know how good or bad it is without a pencil or other stylus
Organization is definitely best done in browser rather than in app. The browser functionality allows you to more easily move notes from one notebook to another. That was a game changer. I do also wish you could share a page as a pdf out of one of the notebooks. If this is possible, I haven’t figured out how to do it yet. Someone please tell me.
Other than that, I find this to be a ludicrously easy to use, simple note taking app. I’ve got it organized to a great point where I just have all my notes easily accessible and ready to use.
I’ve only used this app with my Apple Pencil, so I don’t know how good or bad it is without a pencil or other stylus
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Love it, but could be improved
I’ve been using this app since 2017. I love it. I’ve always preferred handwritten notes and this app allowed me the freedom to minimize my physical notebook collection.
There are improvements that could be made, as other reviewers have mentioned. It would be nice if it were easier to reorganize notes (i.e. moving notes between notebooks). I won’t reiterate the suggestions others have made. That is my one suggestion.
There are improvements that could be made, as other reviewers have mentioned. It would be nice if it were easier to reorganize notes (i.e. moving notes between notebooks). I won’t reiterate the suggestions others have made. That is my one suggestion.
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Unexpected crash
Hello idk if you read the reviews for these or not, but just a heads up, the app just all of a sudden as of today started to unexpectedly crash and this happened right after I moved a note file from one of my Evernote folders (on the iPad) into the penultimate folder and idk if it’s got something to do with the app or if it’s my iPad in general but the syncing is an issue. Otherwise I absolutely love the app! If you need any furrther infopleas feel free to ask
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GET THIS! YOU WONT REGRET IT!
i love this app sooooo much. i whole heartedly recommend you getting this. i have downloaded about 5 or 6 notes apps and none of them worked the way this one does. tbh i didnt have high hopes for this. i needed a note app to takes notes for school. i thought it was just going to be one of those note taking apps that dont work well. I WAS WRONG. this is the best quality and writes sooooo smoothly. i have a stylus that can sometimes get a little shaky, but with this app you cant tell LITERALLY AT ALL. i just wanna say GET THIS APP! YOU WONT REGRET IT! and you will be completely satisfied with everything. thank you sooooooo much for making this!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
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So close to awesome yet so far away....
Pros -
The responsiveness is FANTASTIC compared to other note taking apps.
I like the knife feature to move bits around rather than recreate.
I LOVE that it can pop into Evernote.
Cons -
There is a severe lack of filing / organization capabilities. Even the note app has folders and sub folders.
Number of color selection is ridiculously low... need the link to color selection palette
Pen thickness jumps from 2-5 with huge difference... Needs a 3-3.5 equivalent.
So many useless paper types and few with functional needs. Thin line is not thin.. sp number of lines per page too
Snap non-existent - NEED for shape drawing or section separation. Preset shapes to choose would be major plus.
Highlighters... All but yellow and maybe red are too dark on first pass. Second pass too dark on all. Have diff shades.... second pass to get areas missed stay same color. This would be HUGE plus for students annotation.
Insert - photos ok but proportion should be optional.
NEED PDF INSERT CAPABILITIES WITH ANNOTATION.....
THAT WOULD BE A GAMECHANGER FOR MANY MANY PURPOSES
The responsiveness is FANTASTIC compared to other note taking apps.
I like the knife feature to move bits around rather than recreate.
I LOVE that it can pop into Evernote.
Cons -
There is a severe lack of filing / organization capabilities. Even the note app has folders and sub folders.
Number of color selection is ridiculously low... need the link to color selection palette
Pen thickness jumps from 2-5 with huge difference... Needs a 3-3.5 equivalent.
So many useless paper types and few with functional needs. Thin line is not thin.. sp number of lines per page too
Snap non-existent - NEED for shape drawing or section separation. Preset shapes to choose would be major plus.
Highlighters... All but yellow and maybe red are too dark on first pass. Second pass too dark on all. Have diff shades.... second pass to get areas missed stay same color. This would be HUGE plus for students annotation.
Insert - photos ok but proportion should be optional.
NEED PDF INSERT CAPABILITIES WITH ANNOTATION.....
THAT WOULD BE A GAMECHANGER FOR MANY MANY PURPOSES
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Works but a couple annoying features
I use this app every morning for journaling and note taking for 4 months now. As a whole The app works pretty well, especially with the Apple Pen. There are a couple very annoying features though that brought me to write this review.
1. When I pop between apps by swiping up in the iPad (like readings I am going through), when I come back to this app it will sometimes put me back 2-3 pages in my notes from where I left off. This happens about 60% of the time and really gets annoying when you have to keep popping back and forth.
2. You can’t rearrange anything for better organization. Or at least I haven’t found a way and have looked for a long while. What I mean is, you can create folders to house similar documents but you can’t rearrange the order of the folders so that the most commonly used or similar topics would be grouped by each other. They just become scattered without any rhyme or reason. Also heaven forbid you spend an hour taking notes on something in the wrong folder/location, which I have done a couple times now. And that is unfortunately now where those documents live. There is no way of moving it to the correct folder, which in my opinion is almost a deal breaker for a note taking app. If this is possible it is not easily found in the app.
1. When I pop between apps by swiping up in the iPad (like readings I am going through), when I come back to this app it will sometimes put me back 2-3 pages in my notes from where I left off. This happens about 60% of the time and really gets annoying when you have to keep popping back and forth.
2. You can’t rearrange anything for better organization. Or at least I haven’t found a way and have looked for a long while. What I mean is, you can create folders to house similar documents but you can’t rearrange the order of the folders so that the most commonly used or similar topics would be grouped by each other. They just become scattered without any rhyme or reason. Also heaven forbid you spend an hour taking notes on something in the wrong folder/location, which I have done a couple times now. And that is unfortunately now where those documents live. There is no way of moving it to the correct folder, which in my opinion is almost a deal breaker for a note taking app. If this is possible it is not easily found in the app.
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Potential to be wonderful
This app is one of the best free ones out there but there are certain basic improvements that really must be made asap:
1. Scrolling is a pain. It’s not smooth, and there are accidental scribbles along the page when you scroll. Why not have options to enable using only the pen for writing purposes?
2. Palm rejection isn’t great. There are always tiny dots where my pal usually is.
3. There’s something wrong with the way the clipping function works. When you select a certain portion of your notes to be moved elsewhere, for some strange reason it leaves behind tiny parts of it on the part where you wrote it. So you have to fill in the missing details and also erase all the bits left behind. God forbid you want to move it only slightly, then the two things overlap and that’s a nightmare.
1. Scrolling is a pain. It’s not smooth, and there are accidental scribbles along the page when you scroll. Why not have options to enable using only the pen for writing purposes?
2. Palm rejection isn’t great. There are always tiny dots where my pal usually is.
3. There’s something wrong with the way the clipping function works. When you select a certain portion of your notes to be moved elsewhere, for some strange reason it leaves behind tiny parts of it on the part where you wrote it. So you have to fill in the missing details and also erase all the bits left behind. God forbid you want to move it only slightly, then the two things overlap and that’s a nightmare.
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Love this app, but there could be improvements
I really love this app and use it so often, which also reveals limitations. For example, I’d love to be able to copy/paste one (or select) page(s) within a single “book” and paste; I’d then like to paste that page elsewhere in the same book or, perhaps, in a new book that already exists.
I’d also like to copy some files into other collections rather than have to reproduce them from scratch. Copying a journal into the same collection helps, but it doesn’t meet all needs, so I spend more time doing work arounds that it gets frustrating. Still, I love the possibilities and what I’ve been able to do.
I’d also like to copy some files into other collections rather than have to reproduce them from scratch. Copying a journal into the same collection helps, but it doesn’t meet all needs, so I spend more time doing work arounds that it gets frustrating. Still, I love the possibilities and what I’ve been able to do.
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It’s ok, but gets more frustrating over time
I’ve used this app with Apple Pencil for 2 semesters now. I like the writing response with the pencil and I use it in conjunction with Evernote. It generally gets the job done. A few major complaints are the color options are very few and don’t really pop, the blue nearly looks black. The highlighter option is also annoying, I wish that passing over an area twice wouldn’t deepen the highlight, it makes quick highlighting in lecture more difficult. Also, the scrolling is annoying and not very responsive so if I need to scroll up to reference past notes and then scroll back down to continue writing, it’s a struggle. The zoom function is also annoying, a regular pinch zoom would be much easier. I may look for another app to use next semester because this app is really getting on my nerves. The whole time I’ve used it, I haven’t seen any major upgrades or attempts to change so maybe I can use another app that still has active development. It just seems like if you spend the money to subscribe, you should get more bang for your buck. Hope this helps.
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