Pencora vs FluidNotes

Pencora is paper that thinks: a fast, private notebook for serious study that keeps up with your hand and helps you find, build, and protect what you learn. Everything is free. No subscription. No ads. No account. FIND ANYTHING YOU WROTE Your handwriting becomes searchable as you write—on your iPad, without uploading your notes. Search across every notebook, jump straight to the highlighted word, and find text inside added photos too. Pencora supports English, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese, and handles messy handwriting, close matches, and typos. WRITE WITHOUT THE LAG A custom Metal engine draws each stroke immediately with pressure, tilt, hover, and Apple Pencil Pro squeeze. Even large notebooks stay smooth. Prefer a finger? You can write with that too. MOVE IN WITHOUT STARTING OVER Export your notebooks from Goodnotes, Notability, or any other note app as PDF. Pencora detects the paper ruling, keeps pages in order, and converts handwriting stored as vector ink into editable strokes instead of locking it inside a picture. Large documents open quickly and keep converting in the background. TYPE IT. GET YOUR HANDWRITING. Write a set of sample words once—or pick a ready-made hand—then type or paste Markdown, lists, and LaTeX formulas. The on-device handwriting model places them on the page as real, erasable strokes in your style, following the ruling of the paper. Available in English and Russian. Nothing is uploaded for generation. MATH THAT STAYS LIVE Add interactive graph planes directly to a page. Plot functions, implicit curves, points, and tables; import CSV; or draw a table by hand and let Pencora read it. Ink written on the plane stays attached to its coordinates. Build exact geometry beside your proof: points, segments, lines, circles, polygons, curves, midpoints, perpendicular and angle bisectors, parallels, tangents, intersections, reflections, and triangle centers. Drag a point and every dependent construction moves with it. Measure in real millimeters and label points in your own handwriting. THE TOOLS A REAL NOTEBOOK NEEDS • Lined, grid, dotted, or PDF paper • Shape snapping for lines, circles, and polygons • Highlighter, study tape, and scribble-to-erase • A lasso that moves, scales, rotates, and changes stroke width • A zoom-write strip for small, neat writing • Calligraphy nibs and an eyedropper • Markdown text boxes and live formulas • True-vector PDF export that stays crisp at any zoom • Folders, tags, and tabs • An infinite board with a minimap for every notebook NEVER LOSE A PAGE Connect Google Drive for automatic daily backups to your own account. Pencora keeps the five newest copies and can restore your library on a new iPad. It uses Google's limited-access permission, so it sees only its own backup files—not the rest of your Drive. You can also export your entire library into one backup file whenever you want. YOUR NOTEBOOKS ON IPHONE Connect the same Google Drive on your iPhone to read the notebooks from your iPad's latest backup, with folders and names intact. You can also open any .handynotes notebook someone sends you. Editing stays on iPad; on iPhone, notebooks are read-only. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Recognition, search, and handwriting generation run on your device. Pencora has no accounts, ads, or tracking, and never sells your data. Anonymous usage statistics can be turned off in Profile, and sharing handwriting samples for research is strictly opt-in. Your notes are not the product. Built by one developer who uses handwritten notes every day. Your feedback helps decide what gets built next.

FluidNotes is a notebook for iPad and iPhone that feels like paper: write with Apple Pencil on iPad or with your finger on iPhone – and find everything again with search that reads your handwriting. WRITING THAT FEELS RIGHT • Ballpoint, fineliner, fountain pen, pencil, felt-tip, watercolour, highlighter and more, all pressure-sensitive • Ruler, colour picker and custom colours on all your devices • Hand-drawn shapes become clean circles, rectangles, lines and arrows • Convert handwriting to typed text, with word suggestions as you write – on the device • Cross out typed words to delete them • Lasso: cut out exactly, colour, move, duplicate • Zoom window: write large at the bottom, and it appears small on the page ORGANISATION THAT GROWS WITH YOU • Folders and subfolders, tags, favourites and bookmarks • Headings automatically build an outline; links connect pages and notebooks, and a knowledge network shows topics and connections – in 3D too • Search handwriting, typed text, PDFs, photos and recordings – through Spotlight too • Collect the highlights of a PDF into an excerpt, with links back to the passage • Lock notebooks with Face ID or a passcode THE PAPER YOU WANT • Lined, squared, dotted, planners, sheet music and more – in colour too; plus a whiteboard that grows • Save your own pages as templates; import PDFs, Word, PowerPoint and Goodnotes • Photos, document scans, GIFs, tables, mind maps and reusable building blocks STUDY • Flashcards with spaced repetition and a study plan across all notebooks, with a daily reminder if you like • An exam date per deck, also as a proposal to the group; import and export decks as Anki packages or text files • Flashcards from your handwriting: circle a question or sketch and turn it into a card • Apple Watch: review due flashcards on your wrist, with a complication for the watch face • Study time with breaks, on iPhone also on the Lock Screen • Study tape: cover passages and test yourself • With Apple Intelligence: flashcards, cloze exercises from A1 to C2, summaries and mind maps from your notes – and answers to questions about them • The AI runs on the device only – no internet, no third-party AI service STUDY GROUPS AND SHARING • Study groups: join once and get every notebook of the group, including later ones • Invite others to a notebook with a link or QR code – to write along or just to view • Colour each person’s contributions and see what others have changed since your last visit • Send a copy of a notebook or of single pages, with the recordings if you like – through a link that expires by itself • Comments with replies; everyone shares the flashcards, each person keeps their own progress RECORD AND PRESENT • Record sound while you write; on playback, your note reappears stroke by stroke • Transcripts on the device: search finds spoken words too • Present on a projector or TV: only the current page, with a laser pointer HANDY • Quick Note from the app icon, as a widget, in Control Centre, with Siri or Shortcuts • Widgets for recently opened notebooks and cards due • Sync through your own iCloud and Handoff between iPhone, iPad and Mac • Automatic backups to iCloud Drive; export as PDF, Markdown or FlexiNote package • Select text in a PDF and translate it • Optional: Zotero for PDFs, citations and the bibliography • Getting started in five short exercises; help mode explains every button YOUR NOTES BELONG TO YOU FluidNotes has no server of its own and no account. No ads, no tracking, no analytics, no in-app purchases. Your notebooks live on your device and, if you like, in your own iCloud. FluidNotes is a personal project, built with care. Questions and ideas: j.gomez@web.de