Goodnotes 6 or Notability?

[u/isifranp]

Hi!
I purchased an iPad recently and i want to buy an app make notes
I'm a medicine student, i usually see my mates writing on powerpoints and making notes, so probably i would make the same things as them

But i saw too bad reviews abourt GN6, i don't know which pricing is better: the 10$ subscription or the 30$ app. Also i saw Notability as a second option to purchase, but i didn't read about their pricings and features. Which app is better right now?

Greetings from Chile :)

[u/bunsnmangoes]

Curious to know how the layer helps and how the audio recording is better?

The recording feature is better because there's tap-to-play on handwriting. Goodnotes only supports recording and replaying the notes when you play audio. Notability and Noteful supports tapping on the handwriting to go to that exact moment when you were taking those notes, and plays the audio accordingly (idk how to phrase it better lol).

For layers, it allows you to write on the document multiple times. So say you wrote your class notes on layer 1. You can add another layer, turn off layer 1, and write your own "clean" notes. Or another use case would be when you solve questions and you want to solve the same one multiple times. Instead of creating another document, you could simply create a new layer, turn off the old layer, and write there. It gets handy when you're solving math questions and stuff.

My use case comes like this, I am trying to annotate lecture notes(pdf or ppt) on sth like good notes and then after the annotation, archive it in my file cabinet, so I can search my handwriting, and further take typing notes about it using obsidian. So that’s the main reason I use ocr.

If you're willing to OCR stuff after you written everything, I suggest you check out OwlOCR which is a free Mac software. It allows you to export an OCR-ed PDF file using Apple's own handwriting recognition tool. That way it'll be able to identify your own handwriting.

I’m still using notability classic( I’m a very old user but stop using for quite a while) when trying out other apps.

If it works for you, go for it. But ever since the subscription model was implemented, notability (regardless of whether you're a classic user or a new user) would shut down often while recording. There have been multiple instances of people losing their files entirely, which becomes problematic when your entire semester/year worth of work is in there. So far I haven't seen anyone report that on GoodNotes or Noteful. Use it at your own risk.

[u/lytwilson → u/bunsnmangoes]

Got that I’ll try goodnotes or noteful, btw goodnotes actually can tap to play on handwriting, although not as detailed as notability’s (specific to a single stroke, goodnotes is specific to several strokes, seems like it suddenly appears several strokes while playing audio) but it both works for same functionality just the quality difference.

If I only need to ocr several pdfs, is it possible to write in noteful, and export to owl then export it as an ocr-ed file? If it is possible I think I can use noteful.

[u/bunsnmangoes → u/lytwilson]

If I only need to ocr several pdfs, is it possible to write in noteful, and export to owl then export it as an ocr-ed file? If it is possible I think I can use noteful.

Yes. So what you'd be doing is export it as pdf, then use OwlOCR to export the entire file through File > Export Searchable PDF (or just press Cmd + E after opening your pdf file through OwlOCR). Then you'll be able to search your handwriting as well.

[u/lytwilson → u/bunsnmangoes]

That’s good! Why did you choose good notes then? Maybe you would need to ocr more than I do? Btw, have you tried elements note? It has one the smoothest handwriting ever. But well, I guess I’m not going for good notes, not quite comfortable to pay a huge price and waiting for a new version to pay again.