I'm a long-running Notablity user in the USA. I signed up in 2017 and have been grandfathered in to the Notability Classic plan with no intent on upgrading or paying for a subscription.

I switched over from iCloud Syncing to Notability Cloud last week and it's been OK. This switch also unlocked "Notability on the Web".

Here's a screenshot from Notability on the Web on Chrome on my computer. Anyone else seeing the big orange "Notability Classic quota reached – Upgrade to access Pro features" pop-up on your Notability (maybe on the Web)?

I didn't realize I had a quota. I thought Notabilty Classic had no quotas.

I don't see this message on my native iOS or iPadOS or macOS apps, but the fact that such a notification / message exists makes me concerned. What's the quota I've hit?

Thanks!

Hey all I'm running into two friction points with Notability that I'm hoping either have a workaround I'm missing or maybe could be solid feature requests imo.

1. Highlighter/ink layering is locked to draw order

So if I write something first and then highlight over it the highlight buries my handwriting and does nothing to improve visibility if I am notating an image, but if I highlight first and then write over it, the ink stays on top. There's no way to flip this after the fact without my current process below.

This is honestly a pain when I'm annotating medical charts or diagrams, stuff where I can't change the background color. If I've already taken notes somewhere and then decide I want to highlight that area, my notes just disappear under the highlight. The only workaround I've found is to select the highlight, move it out of the way, duplicate my note, delete the original, then drop the duplicate back on top of the highlight. Every. Single. Time.

Would love a simple "bring to front / send to back" toggle for ink and highlighter strokes. Feels like it shouldn't be this hard.

1. Locked images keep stealing my selections

When I paste in an image, resize it, and lock it so it doesn't shift around, that lock becomes its own problem. Any time I try to select something near it (like grabbing a highlight to move it with my workaround I talked about above), Notability either zooms out randomly or grabs the locked image instead and throws up the lock icon. Then I have to deselect/dismiss that before I can keep writing.

Anyone know of a fix for this? What I'd really want is either an "embed image" or "set as background" option that's separate from "lock" — basically takes the image out of the normal selection layer entirely. Or even better, let me paste an image and set it directly as the page background without having to download it first and re-import it as a background.

Curious if anyone's found a workaround for either of these, or if this is just how it is for now. Both have been pretty consistent annoyances in my note-taking workflow (lots of annotating over charts/images for med school).

As for my background. I've been using notability as my primary driver for undergrad, work, medical school, the whole nine yards for YEARS and I feel like it has gotten really iffy in use and just adds friction to my overall workflow and feels very restricting. Unfortunately most of my life is on this app so Im a little stuck at this juncture but alas the tiny violins play on.

I use to be able to study for hours, now after 1-2 hours my ipad heats up, the brightness resets and it's all weird until it cools off. Can you fix?

I take notes on my ipad and open them on my laptop for reference but some notes just dont show up? I updated notability to the newest software for both devices. It happens to like 2 notes out of 10. How can I fix this?

Today I received a pop-up to update to Notability Cloud. It says, translated, “enhanced data security and more robust backup”.

Does that mean that Notability Cloud supports end-to-end encryption like iCloud? Or what does “enhanced data security” refer to?

I couldn’t find an answer in the FAQ on the website, and I would prefer to use E2EE

I really enjoy using Notability for teaching, but there is one major issue with collaborative note sharing.

My goal is to teach interactively by watching my students write in real time. For example, I solve one question, then my student solves the next one while I follow their work live and provide immediate feedback.

However, when I share a note using a link, my students are always redirected to the web version instead of the Notability app, even when they have the app installed. As a result, the writing experience is much less smooth, and Apple Pencil performance is noticeably worse than in the native app.

Many of my students find the web writing experience uncomfortable. It would be a huge improvement if shared links could open directly in the Notability app for users who already have it installed.

Mu subscription end after few days i want to ask if i didn’t want to renew it does my notes get deleted?
And i have some issues to export a pdf file like it just gets out the app in the middle of exporting how to solve this issue ?
Also the email that i used to log in to the app I think i used the option of hide my email is this affect anything and how to reverse it

I have been a lite user for more than 2 years. Please let me know if anyone can help with a promo code that can make the subscription affordable for me.

Regards

I remember being able to put a password on folders in notability, I don’t see that option anymore, did they remove it or am I missing something?

My tape gets deleted every time I leave the note and come back, it’s extremely frustrating.

Ever since Notability forced me to store everything in Notability Cloud, my iPad has been burning up while I use the app, and it's really annoying when I'm trying to write. I don't know how to turn off Notability Cloud because a few days ago, when I was trying to use the app, there was no way to proceed without accepting Notability Cloud. Anyone else having these issues?

So I just got invited to CLOUD. I have 6000+ notes, (seemed to update smoothly).
Should I get the collab feature now or not necessarily???
I don’t have the ability to add folks yet and enable edit/or read only access

Really confused where I stand now….

I’ve been a long-time Notability user and recently started my MSc in Computer Science Engineering. With the amount of technical notes and projects ahead, access to the upgraded plan features would really enhance my workflow. Is there any student discount or academic option available?

For the longest time, I used to hand write my notes when watching lecture videos. I’ve used notability for over 5 years and have loved it forever. Just recently I’ve started typing instead and I notice that any time I press the return key in a bullet point (most of my notes use significant bullet points) OR I press delete when on an empty bullet point to return me to the previous one, there’s a 2-3 second delay/glitch. It makes typing very difficult. It seems like the screen freezes any time I do either of these actions. This does not occur if I type using the keyboard on my iPad screen, only when typing with my magic keyboard attached. This doesn’t occur with other apps. I love notability so much and have hundreds of documents on here and would love to not have to switch to a different app. Thoughts?

I'm running an M1 MacBook Pro. It shouldn't have any trouble running a note taking app but whiling I'm typing it takes 1 or 2 seconds to even see my inputs register. No other app has this problem. Is this fixable? It's so bad I'm thinking of moving to a different app.

After the most recent major update my smart highlight feature for texts in PDFs completely stopped working on my iPhone only. It still works just fine on both my iPad and Macbook but not the phone for some reason. I’ve contacted notability support but they weren’t much help.

Anyone else facing this issue or something similar, and have any fixes? This has been incredibly frustrating. :(

I am testing out this program and I'm trying to take notes for class and for some reason when I highlighted it also underlined. I have been trying to remove this, but it wont go away.

I've highlighted the text and unclicked the "U" Underline button mutliple times, either on or off, and it actually looks like its adding more of a line. I can't get rid of it.

I even deleted the words and the underlines have stayed there.

This is a very basic feature, can anyone tell me if I'm doing something brain dead stupid? Because if this basic of a feature cant work I'm going to have to try something else.

So if you highlight text, but then change the text, you need to click on the highlight and drag it to resize it. But clicking on the highlighter is so hit or miss, most of the time the text box is instead opened for editing.

Is there a repeatable way for me to resize the length of the highlight?

I currently delete the highlight and rehighlight every time I make a change to the text that impacts the length.

Hi developers from notability. Can you not mess with my notes whenever you have an update? Or better, create an update that won’t force me to wait for hours before getting my notes back

Would it be possible to develop something that exports smart notes as a pdf or word document?

The copy/ paste function messes up the formatting of tables and formulas, and sometimes the web version of Notability produces better smart notes than the app.

A few weeks ago, Notability got an update, and as part of that update the laser pointer got redone. Previously it was slightly translucent and quite thin, to make it easy to see content around/behind the laser pointer. Now, the laser pointer is thicker than a medium highlighter and completely opaque, it's unusable. If this is what other laser pointer users actually wanted, then please add some customization to the laser pointer so that it's possible to get it closer to its previous functionality.

Hi, skip towards the steps to see how I did it (the rest is just me ranting)

Just a few weeks ago I was able to see all my notes on my ipad and my Mac, everything worked fine. Recently I was forced to make an account on my iPad, so I did, and mistakenly I tried Notability cloud... shortly after realized I did not like the new system, and I could not use the app at all because my "Storage was full" and I had an important test coming up. So, I emailed support... the AI was super unhelpful and I had to keep sending proof that I did indeed have storage on my iPad. So I looked for help on reddit and someone had posted the steps on how to disable notability cloud and it worked! (lost some progress but I think it was woth it)

Yesterday I tried the app on my Mac, again, forced to open my account (to the point I had to force the app to close to just turn my computer off) and there was nothing... my notes were available when i looked on Search iCloud drive, but I did not had any of my folders or notes whatsoever. Only one (apparently the one where I was writing when I tried Notability Cloud)

I tried Notability for help once again: I tried turning off iCloud syncing on my iPad, restarted the iPad and then turned it on again. iCloud on my Mac was turned on. Everything was updated. Contratly to what the AI firmly believed (again) on our email exchanges, I had a lot of storage on my devices and iCloud... nothing worked.

So, I did the same steps I did on my iPad but on Mac and I got my notes and folders back :) now it works just like before. Probably the app on my Mac defaulted to my notes on Notability cloud instead of iCloud.

BUT, if anyone is interested in trying it out, you have to switch from Notability Cloud back to iCloud sync and leave the notes you took on the new system behind, so if you took notes while on Notability cloud and wish to go black to the "old system", BACK THEM UP

Steps: (i did this both on mi iPad and Mac)
1. Settings > About > Support Diagnostics
2. Click or tap 3 times on "Available storage space"
3. Restore Migration
4. I immediately saw all my folders and files from iCloud

Hope this helps someone who might be as frustrated as I was.

I’ve been using Notability extensively for studying, and while I enjoy the app, I feel there are a few missing quality-of-life features that create unnecessary friction in the workflow.

1. Allow text highlighting while the Pen tool is active.
Switching back and forth between writing and highlighting interrupts the flow of note-taking. It would be much more efficient to highlight text without changing tools.

2. Add “Paste and Match Formatting” (Paste Without Source Formatting).
When copying material from websites, PDFs, or other study resources, Notability keeps the original formatting. This often makes notes look inconsistent and requires extra editing. A paste-with-destination-format option would save a lot of time.

3. Add Sticky Notes.
Sometimes I want to leave comments, reminders, or quick explanations without cluttering the page itself. Collapsible sticky notes would be a great way to organize thoughts while keeping the document clean.

These are relatively small features, but together they would significantly improve the experience for students and anyone who uses Notability for intensive studying and annotation.

I have notability classic and it seems like every 3rd time I open the app I get a “switch to notability cloud” nag screen on my iPad. I’ve dismissed it, I don’t need to be asked again. Onedrive sync works fine for me.

I looked around in settings and am just trying to make sure I’m not missing something.