Comparison

Whitelines vs Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Whitelines

Effortlessly digitize your handwritten notes and drawings. The app automatically captures and cleans up your content, making it easy to save, edit, and share across various platforms.

Highlights
  • Capture notes automatically
  • Save and organize notes
  • Share notes digitally
  • Edit captured notes
  • Remove background from scans
  • Scan manual notes
Features
Read full description

Use Whitelines App when you want to: ・Capture your notes. ・Save your notes. ・Share your notes on Social Media, email, etc. ・Continue to work and edit your notes digitally. The Whitelines App will capture your notes automatically when it detects all four corner codes on your Whitelines Paper and adjust the image to make it useful to you. When using Whitelines Paper the app removes the background, so all that remains is your writing or drawing over a white background. Whitelines App is perfect when you want to: ・ Review your notes on the go before an exam. ・ Share notes from a class with a friend. ・ Include a handmade drawing in a presentation. ・ Post an illustration or note to Instagram. CAPTURE YOUR NOTES WITH WHITELINES APP 1. Tap the camera icon to enter capture mode. Whitelines App will capture your note automatically when it detects the full page (including all four corner codes), with the logo at the bottom of the page. Or, if you use other than Whitelines Paper tap the button to scan the note manually. Before scanning, choose between “Auto” or “Manual” to tell Whitelines App to remove the background automatically or to edit the image yourself. 2. If you have several pages of notes that you’d like to save as a stack, simply stay in the capture mode and continue to capture pages one at a time. Of course, you can also save your notes to existing stacks in the app. 3. Save, Use, Edit and Share the Notes Choose if you’d like to save your note locally on your phone, or if you’d like to share it–with yourself or with somebody else. You can share your note with any app that processes image files, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, OneDrive, OneNote, Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox, Line, Facebook installed on your phone. Tick the boxes on the Whitelines Paper to email the note or save it to Dropbox or Evernote. SUPPORT If you need help with anything or have any questions about the app, feel free to read our FAQ. Is something not working as expected? Get in touch with us! We’d love to know where we have room for improvement. Your feedback is important, as it helps guide our future efforts. FEEDBACK Please give us your thoughts on Whitelines App, and let us know what we could do to make it better. It helps us develop the features you want. We’re already thinking about what our next step should be in order to best support your ideas and help you set them free. This update of the app is a step in our efforts to create a digital/analog interface for note-taking that will help you grow, learn the things you want to know, pass exams, and collaborate creatively. Contact us at support@whitelines.se ////////////////////////////////////////// WHITELINES LOVES TO SEE YOU GROW! We’re so happy that you’re here with us, with all your knowledge, all the thoughts that pass through your mind, and all the things you want to learn and do. If you like, we’d love to join you on your journey, and help you in every way we can. We want our white lines to support you in your quest for new knowledge, as you challenge past truths and look for creative solutions to problems. We want that because we believe in the innate genius of every human being, and in the power of collaboration. When human beings help and challenge each other, it makes the world a better place! The note on page one among the images above was made by Juliette Croce (Instagram: @julestudy) from the USA. The note on page two among the images above was made by Karin Verdoes (Instagram: @evabrittakarin) from Sweden.

About

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing

Capture and organize handwritten notes and sketches digitally. This app preserves the expressiveness of your original drawings with innovative visualization technology. Tag, annotate, and store your creations in the cloud for easy retrieval and sharing.

Highlights
  • Hybrid visualization technology
  • Image-based input options
  • Natural sketching with Apple Pencil support
  • Editable notes and drawings
  • Tagging and annotation for search
  • Cloud storage integration
  • Customizable export styles
Features
Read full description

Carbo lets you capture and organize handwritten notes and sketches, bringing handwriting in the digital age, right on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Carbo's innovative visualization technology sets you free from pixel artefacts, while preserving all expressiveness of your original drawings. Collect notes, design sketches, or whiteboard drawings. Tag and annotate your notes for easy retrieval. Store them either on the device itself or in the cloud, with native support for iCloud, Evernote, and Dropbox. Finally, turn your notes and drawings into beautiful creations using a variety of handcrafted export styles and share them with the world. KEY FEATURES • Hybrid visualization technology: note picture is cleaned up and turned into a highly accurate monochrome representation. Carbo’s innovative rendering technology offers both the advantages of vector (sharpness) and bitmap (easy editing) techniques. • Image-based input options: take a new picture, import from camera roll, or import an image from iCloud Drive. • Drawing support: highly accurate and natural sketching capabilities. Full support for Apple Pencil & 3D Touch pressure sensitivity. • Note editing: edit any part of your note, i.e. select, resize, relocate, or remove any element. Make strokes thinner or thicker. • Annotations: add descriptive text to your note. These annotations are archived along with the image, and are globally searchable. • Tag your notes. Tags are colored for easier detection, and will help you classify notes. • Notes can be stored either on your device, or in the cloud using Evernote, Dropbox, and iCloud. • Efficient file-based storage: typical note is 400KB instead of the usual 3MB JPEG of a photo. • Export styles (iOS): choose among 7 beautifully handcrafted styles and their variants to customize your notes (Blackboard/chalks combos, Blueprint, Paper with several pen styles…). • Up to 1200-dpi black-and-white high-fidelity exports for print. • Many sharing options: Twitter, Facebook, AirDrop, Mail, Messages, iCloud Drive, Open in (another app)... • Latest iOS Support: App Search, iPad multitasking, Siri 'Remind Me', 3D Touch shortcuts, modern iOS 14 photo access (browsing & searching). • macOS 11 Big Sur / Mac Catalyst (Optimized for Mac). • Universal app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. • Pro Pack 2 or Pro Plan: one-off purchase to remove the 10-note limit. PRICING You can unlock all features either through Pro Pack 2, a one-time purchase, or through Pro Plan, an affordable subscription. Pro Pack upgrade pricing is also available if you own a previous version. HELP & FEEDBACK Visit creaceed.com/carbo for more information. Send your questions and feedback to carbo@creaceed.com Terms of Use: https://creaceed.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://creaceed.com/privacy

Screenshots

Whitelines4 screens
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Whitelines at none against Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing's 3. Whitelines also leads on iOS requirement (12.0 vs 18.0). Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing's advantage is rating (4.3 vs 3.9). On price, review sentiment, ratings volume and update cadence there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. Whitelines asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing holds the better App Store score, 4.3 against 3.9. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 104 and 51 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 59% of Whitelines's written reviews are positive against 55% of Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Whitelines ships an update every 5 months, Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing every 4 months. Both last shipped on November 1, 2026.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Whitelines versus Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterWhitelinesCarbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing
PriceFreeFree
Rating3.9 (104 ratings)4.3 (51 ratings) — better
Positive reviews59.2% of reviews — better54.8% of reviews
Number of ratings104 — better51
Update frequencyEvery 5 monthsEvery 4 months — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree — betterFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS12.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size40 MB36 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperWhitelinesCreaceed SRL

Customer experience

Whitelines

All ratings103 ratings
Positive68.9%
Neutral6.8%
Negative24.3%
Written reviews184 reviews
Positive59.2%
Neutral10.9%
Negative29.9%

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing

All ratings51 ratings
Positive82.4%
Neutral3.9%
Negative13.7%
Written reviews146 reviews
Positive54.8%
Neutral13.7%
Negative31.5%

User reviews

Whitelines

From 104 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Fast scanning
  • 📁 Seamless integration with Evernote and Dropbox
  • 📝 Helps organize and digitize notes
  • 👍 User-friendly and intuitive app
  • ✨ Innovative concept of digital notebooks

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Scanning issues and app crashes
  • 🔧 Limited functionality compared to expectations
  • 💰 Expensive notebooks required
  • 🔍 Difficulty capturing pages with handwritten content near edges
  • 🌈 Poor handling of color and highlighting

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing

From 51 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Great for sketching ideas
  • 👍 Pleasantly surprised by subscription plan
  • 👍 Laser-focused on B&W scanning
  • 👍 Excellent for capturing notes
  • 👍 Manipulate scans easily

Room to improve

  • 👎 Lacking features for daily use
  • 👎 Difficult for diagrams and notes
  • 👎 Rudimentary editing tools
  • 👎 Lacks color
  • 👎 Crippled by lack of export options

Bugs and requests

Whitelines

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Inconsistent scanning performance
  • App crashes and freezes
  • Issues with detecting page corners and edges
  • Problems with syncing and uploading notes

Requested features

5 requests
  • Manual capture and editing options
  • Ability to combine multiple pages into a single document
  • Integration with more cloud storage services
  • Improved organization and sharing features
  • Support for more paper sizes and formats

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing

Reported bugs

13 issues
  • Keeps crashing on iPad
  • Update bricks app (crashes on launch)
  • Carbo keeps crashing
  • Sync problem with Evernote
  • Exporting pages (archiving) doesn't work
Show 8 more
  • Buggy on iOS 9.01 and iPhone 6S
  • iPhone keeps switching off sync with Evernote
  • App crashes frequently
  • File import from iCloud shows files but can't be opened
  • Beta Evernote sync does not work
  • Randomly selects other bits on the page
  • Clunky or doesn't quite work
  • Sync with Evernote was easy, but iPhone keeps switching off attempt to sync

Requested features

58 requests
  • Adding colors
  • More pencil sizes
  • Ability to handle multi-page docs
  • Viable export options (PDF, etc.)
  • Ability to bundle pages into PDF
Show 53 more
  • Put a title on scans
  • Copy and paste selected objects
  • Export an entire notebook as PDF
  • Desktop client for reassociating tags/annotations
  • Save notes as pictures to Photos
  • Select multiple vectors and change color/thickness
  • iCloud Drive support
  • Invert image
  • Copy/cut/paste selections
  • Export svg file
  • OneDrive cloud option
  • Scan a whole page of doodles and separate them
  • Improve paper edge detection
  • Multi-page option
  • Text box or drawing function
  • Improve captured image quality
  • Edge-detection feature
  • Better handling of lined paper
  • Sync with Evernote
  • Choice of line sizes for annotations
  • Color picker and highlighter pen
  • Support for different writing utensils on one surface
  • Multiple page support
  • Different sized pens
  • More customization for page size
  • PDF vector export
  • Filter multiple tags
  • Re-editing scanned documents
  • Cloud sync for notes
  • Copy feature for local and cloud storage
  • Save to Photos app
  • Ability to use notes as pictures
  • Select multiple vectors and change color or thickness
  • Scan entire page of doodles and separate them
  • More cloud options (OneDrive)
  • Text box or drawing function
  • Better paper edge detection
  • Multi-page option
  • Improve captured image quality
  • Edge-detection
  • Better handling of lined paper
  • Sync with Evernote
  • Choice of line sizes for annotations
  • Color picker and highlighter pen
  • Support for different writing utensils on one surface
  • Multiple page support
  • Different sized pens
  • More customization for page size
  • PDF vector export
  • Filter multiple tags
  • Re-editing scanned documents
  • Cloud sync for notes
  • Copy feature for local and cloud storage

In-app purchases

None

Whitelines

No in-app purchases

3 purchases

Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing

Subscriptions2
  • Pro Plan (Monthly)7 Days trial$3.991 Month
  • Pro Plan (Yearly)7 Days trial$9.991 Year
One-time1
  • Pro Pack 2$23.99

Questions

Is Whitelines free?
Whitelines is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing free?
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Whitelines or Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing?
Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing is rated higher. Whitelines averages 3.9 out of 5 from 104 ratings, while Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing averages 4.3 from 51 ratings.
Do Whitelines or Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing have ads?
Neither Whitelines nor Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Whitelines or Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing?
Whitelines ships an update every 5 months, and Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing every 4 months. Most recently, Whitelines was updated on November 1, 2026 and Carbo › Pencil Notes & Drawing on November 1, 2026.

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