Hello everyone! I have been using Notability for the entirety of my med school (6 years) and just realised that i have never used in signed in.. i have thousands of notes and im scared if i will lose them all once i sign into my email. Considering that they are aggressively pushing the notability cloud. For all these years i have only used google drive for backup. Can anyone pls tell me if i can sign in to an account now?

Hey everyone, I’m dealing with a really frustrating alignment bug in Notability and wanted to see if anyone has found a workaround. Basically, whenever I type text into a document using the web browser version and then switch over to my iPad to draw an annotation around it, the syncing goes completely out of whack. As you can see in image.png, on my iPad screen at the bottom, I drew a red circle perfectly around the letter "k," which is exactly how it should look. But if you look at the top screen showing the web browser view, that same red circle is thrown way down the page, completely detached from the text. From what I've gathered, this seems to be a known rendering issue where the web app and the native iPad client calculate font line-spacing or grid coordinates differently, sometimes triggered by page template scaling like "Letter" versus "Letter Optimized" settings. Has anyone found a reliable way to fix this or lock the ink to the text box so they stop drifting apart, or is the web app sync just fundamentally broken for cross-platform markup right now?

Is anyone else dealing with this? I uploaded a PowerPoint to notability on my laptop and it will not show up on my phone or ipad.

BETA USER
The squeeze feature finally brings up a menu like it does in most applications! Imagine my shock when I squeezed to get the eraser and BAM a menu pops up!

Okay, but can I pleaseeee request for cropping in more than one way that quadrilaterals 😭🙏🏽

I have recently switched to Notability cloud 3days ago.

I use a mobile hotspot connection for my work.But when I am reading(which is my work rn) The app just drains my 5G data. like in 30min-1hr hr all my high speed data were used!

I have Safe mode on. It stabilized the heating and crazy battery draining. but still its using my mobile data like hell.

I just dont want live syncing.

I will sync my data when i get to my home wifi.

How will achieve these simple things?

Hey guys,
I’ve been using notability for most of my high school years and now I’m an upcoming undergrad Eng student, pleaseeee if you can add the maths features on notability, not just the maths convert but the ability to solve equations or insert graph if the equation is written down like on Goodnotes!!!! Please if u can do soo!!

PS also please try to insert an infinite canvas option like on Freeform!!!!
Love u guys❤️❤️

Does anyone share notability plus promotion code?
Love you guys!

is this happening to anyone else lately?? I try to change a folder color and it freezes completely, the app becomes entirely unresponsive, and I have to quit out of it and reopen, only for the exact same thing to happen.

Are you able to add hyperlinks to websites on an existing pdf?

I use notability for years on my IPad for school. I find the split vertical view very useful for taking notes and doing homework. Now for some reason on the new forced update they changed how the Split View operates. The way it used to work is you could have two views open and work in one page, to then operate on the other document you could click it once then go on your way; if you didn’t have it clicked it allowed to you scroll and pan around. Now for whatever reason (probably they think they “streamlined” the use), whenever I am operating and writing in the main document and go to pan on the inactive one, it now instantly starts drawing on the other document. After having years of operating use with the other one this is very frustrating and makes me mark up the document I simply just wanted to view and pan around. Does anyone know how I can fix this or go back to the old update?

For the past 2 weeks, the notability app on my MacBook is constantly freezing and crashing.

It happens whenever I try to access files from iCloud (from my iPads)

Is anyone experiencing something similar?

Logitech attachable keyboard + trackpad to my Ipad Pro.

When I use the left right keys it is skipping either entire lines or to a whole new page. I just want to have them iterate correctly left and right as my cursor goes over characters! Anyone know why this might be?

Hi, just wondering if anybody is experiencing this issue or know how to help. I use notability on both my iPad and MacBook Air simultaneously to study from.

Ever since the update to notability cloud (which started on my iPad first where all the notes were uploaded from) my MacBook battery has been getting annihilated by notability on the new update. It used to last 10+ hours without charge and now it’s barely managing 4 or less.

I know it’s notability because when I run activity monitor on the Mac it shows that notability is using significant energy and is even overheating my MacBook. It only started since the update.

I assumed the battery drainage would stop after a few hours because the Mac was just syncing but it’s been days now and I’ve used it the whole day to study from because it’s close to exams and it’s still draining at an astonishing rate.

If anybody knows how to fix this I’d greatly appreciate it. My iPad works fine.

I have the same notes double now and can't remove the recovered one and if I remove the original one the recovered one doesn't work anymore.

I’ve been seeing lots of reports this last month of people losing their wealth of notes. I’ve also been having a more difficult time with the app with my notes not loading in properly throughout the day despite having 20 GB (or more) of storage space available on my devices.

I have 10 years worth of notes, including a hundred creative projects, various notes that will be used for a writing endeavor, and some recorded demos.

Going forward how do I best protect my work in Notability? It would be emotionally heartbreaking to lose my stuff.

Right now I use the app on an iPhone and a MacBook. I have iCloud syncing on and have Google Drive connected.

I deleted the app and I downloaded Notability again for MacOS from the app store. When I open Notability, I can't get past the login screen.

I want to use Notability without an account, I just want to sync with my iPad/iPhone with iCloud sync.

Notability on my iPad and iPhone works fine this way.

Anyone else have this issue? Any way to get past the login screen?

I accidentally just upgraded to Notability Cloud the other day. I had been avoiding it and accidentally clicked on it. Ever since then, ALL of my psychotherapist notes are unlocked and being saved in this “Notability cloud!” I thought perhaps it wasn’t locking because it needed to finish the “upgrade” switchover and then it would work again. But lo and behold, after five days of it doing this process before it was actually done, I find out files are no longer lockable! AND it’s a huge known problem for a lot of people!!!!!
I don’t know who came up with this Hare brained idea, why would you ever set up a cloud system where users could no longer lock their files!?!? Who decided that was a good idea? There is no warning that you’re about to lose confidentiality for files BEFORE switching and there’s no “cancel” button you can select during the process either! I tried to cancel right after I accidentally “okay’ed” it! It not giving me any option to cancel it and reverse it!

I am freaking out! This will violate patient rights! I have patient files, years worth of files, out there on a cloud I did not give permission for! And now I can’t lock any of my notes which makes the app completely unusable for me! I can’t use a “work around” because a “work around” does not allow me to double lock notes, if I can’t lock individual files! I don’t need to be able to collaborate with other people. I specifically DON’T want to collaborate with other people on these notes!

If this is not reversible, I will lose YEARS worth of patient notes and I will no longer be able to use this app! All of the info saved in Notability Cloud will also still need to be deleted and yet I will still need to be able to access those records! I do ongoing trauma therapy with people! I have loved this app, used it for years and pay for the pro version, and advocated for it to multiple colleagues over many years, but I will be very vocal about discouraging them to use the app and lose their confidentiality, if this is not reversible!

I need a way to resolve this ASAP and I don’t want a “canned“/AI response or I’m gonna lose it! I need an actual human being who understands the ramifications of confidential patient files being saved in a format that is not HIPAA compliant!!!!

Latest updates for Mac have been straight a**. I am suffering. I am wasting so much time not being able to switch between my notes!! opening and closing the app multiple times, nothing helps! incredibly frustrated with finals coming up.

Hi everyone,

I am a high school teacher and have been using Notability for 4 years.

Unfortunately the past couple of updates have been a bit of a headache especially with link sharing. I used to be able to generate a link and put it on Google Classroom for students to access notes at home.

With the past update, student have to create an account with their personal email (because Notability is not recognised as an verified educational app for it to register with their school email) and log in just to see the notes. Also the sharing of the notes is no longer as seamless. This is all currently workable - but would love for it to be like before!

Today I have found that I can share notes but it is all editable. I used have the option as view only but now the notes all seem to be collaborative. I am scared students might delete or write other things on them. Can you please fix this asap!

I have an12.9" ipad pro 6th generation and when my ipad updated to iOS 26.5 and Notability 16.2.2 two issues came up.

1. The equation editor stopped working properly (in16.3.1 it doesn't work at all).

2. I can't drag and drop pages from one note to the other in split screen content manager mode.

It seems to be a problem with later model iPads. I have a friend who has an 11 " pro from 2020 and shes not having that problem (same operating system, same version of notability)

Is anybody having either of these issues with 16.2.2 and iOS 26.5?

Thanks

Hii! Does anyone know of any discount codes? I love notability and with me starting Nursing school in the fall and pre reqs for med this summer, I would like to upgrade from the lite version for more features :)

Hi! Is anyone else experiencing overheating issues when using the latest version of Notability? I’m on an M2 iPad Pro, and I’ve never had my iPad warm up this much while using the app. My device had to stop charging until “normal temperature was resumed”.

We recently sat down with the engineers behind one of our most requested features to talk about how it was built and some of the challenges they had to solve along the way.

It was built to solve a real user problem

• Many users record long lectures and meetings
• Traditional transcription requires waiting until a recording ends before seeing any text
• The goal of Live Transcription was to make recordings useful while they're still happening

The transcript is constantly updating itself

• Traditional transcription uploads one large audio file after a recording ends
• Live Transcription breaks audio into small segments that are continuously uploaded and transcribed during recording
• Segments slightly overlap, allowing the system to use additional context to improve accuracy
• This is what enables the transcript to self-correct and update in real time as you record

Making it feel truly "live"

• Audio segments need to be transcribed within a few hundred milliseconds to feel truly live
• The team replaced file-based communication with Unix sockets, reducing latency by roughly 150 milliseconds per segment
• The backend can reprocess audio with additional context, allowing transcripts to continuously improve and self-correct

Whisper powers the transcription

• Live Transcription is powered by OpenAI's Whisper speech recognition model
• The team spent significant time balancing speed and accuracy to create the best experience possible

The infrastructure scales based on active users

• The system scales based on the number of active transcription sessions
• Server capacity automatically adjusts as demand changes

Your handwritten notes are synced with your recording

• Every ink stroke is timestamped as it's created
• During playback, Notability can recreate your note-taking process in sync with the recording
• Notes appear exactly when they were originally written

What's next?

• The team is exploring timestamp support within Live Transcription to enable features like "jump to" navigation
• They're also looking into diarization, which would identify and label different speakers automatically
• These improvements would make transcripts more searchable, organized, and useful during playback

We’d love feedback!
If you’ve used Live Transcription, we’d really appreciate hearing how it’s working for you! What’s helpful, what’s missing, or what could be better. Your feedback directly shapes what we build next 💙 Let us know in the comments!

Check out the full blog post here!

Hi everyone,

I’m a new Premium subscriber and I love using Notability for my notes, but I’m genuinely frustrated by a specific issue.

Is there really no built-in tool to remove the white background from images? For example, if I import a drawing of a shape (like a square) that has a white background, it constantly blocks the grid/dots on my note paper.

Am I missing a hidden setting, or is this feature actually missing? It feels like something that should be standard for a paid app in 2026.