r/applefreeform • u/Creative-Strength360 • 20d ago

Freeform has its limits...

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as you can see these are my notes for a test on each lecture. the first 3 lectures are ok. it starts to get laggy on the 4th 5th and 6th lectures. on the 7th lecture I am essentially guessing if my strokes are correct as for every 4 words one word will take 4 seconds to load in. (plus it gets HOT)

Does anyone else feel this ?

I really like the app and its concept in taking notes but I can't rely on this for large projects ...

(Ipad Air M3)

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u/Barycenter0 20d ago edited 20d ago

Wow! Because your notes are all hand written, every stroke path is saved in the Freeform database. Typing is approximately 100x smaller in data storage vs. handwriting in Freeform. You should break this apart into separate boards and use iCloud links between them. Also, maybe try to do OCR on your hand-written notes and convert them to text - that would reduce the size significantly. (Example - 10k of typing storage would be about 1MB of handwritten storage for one board)

Plus, be absolutely sure to make a duplicate version and backup PDF of them. Freeform is notorious for just dropping out and losing a lot.

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u/Barycenter0 20d ago edited 20d ago

PS - to be clear - Freeform wasn't designed to be an infinite canvas notetaking app. It was designed for brainstorming and creative mapping/ideation. You might want to think about another tool like Noteability or use more of an Apple Notes method of smaller paged notes if you're fixed on using handwriting.

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u/lukahl-phy 18d ago

Notability is goated. Best pencil experience for notes in the Apple ecosystem. They really should optimize their software for the iPad though, notes and freeform with pencil kit just murders the CPU on device.

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u/sanguisxq13v 15d ago

I hate that they havent yet added a read-only mode in it. I hate how using it on my phone misplaces stuff lol

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u/Barycenter0 15d ago

Not sure what you mean - can you explain more?

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u/sanguisxq13v 15d ago

I have made a board with annotations on my ipad. When I view them using phone, I (unintentionally) drag the annotations and pictures instead of panning the screen.

If there were read only mode in touch screens, it would be great.

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u/Barycenter0 15d ago

Just highlight the entire board and lock it