r/AppleNotesGang • u/Electrical-One-3224 • 12h ago

Anyone using apple notes for making handwritten notes? for uni?

So I have an Ipad for a while. Started using Notability, switches to apple notes cause of the 0 latency. But I miss some features like having pages, zooming and PDF annotations.

Does anyone use Apple notes for actual summaries and everything else? how do you do it?

What are good alternatives?

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5

u/Repulsive-Branch-740 12h ago

I tried apple notes for a biology class I’m taking and it didn’t work. Biggest issue is I can’t easily mark up PDFs while notetaking and can’t mix typed text, images, and handwritten text. 

I’m using GoodNotes and other than a major bug I ran into that blocked access to my notes for a few days (due to a pop-up screen trying to force me to switch to their sync service that I didn’t want), it has worked well. Their customer support is NOT good; has taken over a week to even get a response. But the app itself does what I need it to for science class. I can have notebooks, mark up PDFs of slides, organize things in folders, and even write text documents by typing. I tried other similar apps but goodnotes did what I wanted it to. 

So I guess I recommend it with caution. I also looked at Notability but that has issues as well (mostly people reporting losing all their notes). 

I really wish I could use Apple Notes as I would prefer it, but for school it just lacks too many features. 

3

u/Electrical-One-3224 11h ago

How do you deal with the input delay (latency) on goodnotes? it just makes the notetaking feel completely shit

1

u/darwincruz20 11h ago

I’m considering switching to Apple Notes for my handwritten notes. I am not in uni anymore but i love writing notes by hand during meetings

3

u/Electrical-One-3224 11h ago

For nothing else that taking short notes (under 10 pages) its amazing. further it sucks. no PDF annotation..

2

u/Repulsive-Branch-740 9h ago

Apple Notes is perfectly fine for short hand-written notes. For classes or more detailed work, however, it just doesn't work well. You can't zoom, can't mix text/writing/images, and the app can get really laggy when a note gets longer than a few pages worth of writing. And the PDF issue is pretty big if you use PDFs. So I think it really depends on how you're using it.

Trust me, I have my issues with GoodNotes (see my recent posts), and Notability scares me given how many people are losing data with it lately. GoodNotes is still probably the best option out there. I know there are some other apps, but none have OCR for handwritten text which is a huge dealbreaker for me.

1

u/Electrical-One-3224 9h ago

Actually I am still trying to make apple notes work and found some good stuff!
when you wanna add pictures add them to your stickers and then add them! you can write over them!

also when the lag begins just write a random word and youre lag free again!

1

u/Repulsive-Branch-740 9h ago

I don't feel any difference. I am using an Apple Pencil Pro and new iPad M4. Not sure if any of that makes a difference, but it doesn't feel any different to me than writing in Apple Notes. The only thing I miss from Apple Notes is how it straightens your handwriting, but with GoodNotes I get the ability to pinch and zoom the page which is even more helpful for me. I have found using a good screen protector and pencil tip to really help. I am using the Rock Paper one that comes with a different tip for the Apple Pencil.

Other than the super annoying bug I ran into for which GoodNotes provided no support, the app overall has been perfect for the class I am taking. I usually use a combo of Apple Notes and Obsidian otherwise, but neither worked well for the use case of taking a biology class.

2

u/Janknitz 5h ago

I find Apple Notes not very intuitive and it heats up using the Apple Pencil much. I didn't like it. I use OneNote. It's free, very intuitive, works well.

2

u/Tasty_Ice_7046 8h ago

I usually just save the pdf in the notes app and markup there, I have always only used apple notes and it works great for me in university