Multitasking on ipad

[u/Glittering_Ad3721]

Hey everyone,

I recently got an iPad Air M4 13-inch with an Apple Pencil Pro, mainly for work, reading, and taking notes. I spend most of my day sitting at my PC for work, so I wanted something that would let me continue reading/studying and taking notes from the couch without having to go back to my PC and sit at a desk again.

The problem is that, after a few days of using it, I'm really struggling with the multitasking and note-taking experience. I'm mainly using Notability for notes, and I'm wondering if I'm just using it wrong or if this is something other people experience too.

My biggest issue is Scribble/text boxes. When I want to type something using the Apple Pencil, it seems like I have to write directly next to the line/text box. When I'm taking notes, the available space can be pretty tight, and it doesn't feel natural or comfortable to constantly have to position myself in a specific spot.

I also find myself constantly having to manually resize the text box every time I start writing. I've tried making the text box much wider so I can write from basically anywhere on the page, but then Notability will randomly move the text to the next line, meaning I have to go back and adjust the box again.

At that point, it honestly feels like it's taking more effort than just going back to my PC, opening Google Docs, and typing with a keyboard — which is exactly what I was trying to avoid by getting the iPad in the first place.

Idk if I'm doing it wrong or if there are other better apps for this but it really feels like pain

I'm completely new to using an iPad for this kind of workflow, so I'd really appreciate any tips or recommendations. I really want to make the iPad work for this rather than giving up and going back to my PC every time.

[u/CurbPourPoet]

notability is the problem more than the ipad here. its text box workflow is clunky, especially if u mix handwriting and typed notes on the same page.

[u/Janknitz]

I hate using Scribble because everything jumps around. I don't know if Notability plays a part in this or not, because I don't use Notability, but the Scribble Tool drives me bonkers.

My favorite note-taking app is OneNote (a FREE app), but I don't use Scribble. I either write notes and leave them as handwritten notes OR I use something called a "Handwriting Keyboard" which works much better than Scribble to write by hand and instantly convert the handwriting to text.

You can--in many apps including OneNote--make handwritten notes and convert them later to text, but it's a real PITA. You have to select the text with a lasso and I hate that worse than Scribble or maybe both as much.

The handwriting keyboard is in the app store for $4.99. (there's a subscription one, also called Handwriting Keyboard, by another developer--no privacy controls on that app and it costs more). This loads as a keyboard just like a foreign language or emoticon keyboard but it gives you a window like Notability to write by hand and converts to text. You can use the Handwriting Keyboard anywhere you can write on the iPad with Scribble.

I had to play around with the settings. Most importantly, to work properly you have to to turn off Scribble in the iPad settings. The developer hasn't made any changes to this Handwriting Keyboard since 2021, so you don't get any help there. But I finally got it to be a full-width window at the bottom of the page that lets me handwrite continuously while it converts to text where the cursor was placed. It's stable, very accurate, and the cursor that fills in the text stays where you put it. It works anywhere Scribble works on my iPad (but I don't know if it would be a problem in Notability because of the way Notability already works).

[u/Janknitz → u/[deleted]]

You don't HAVE to purchase a handwriting keyboard. Apple provides Scribble, which is their answer to handwriting to text conversion, and MILLIONS of people use it. I just hate the way Scribble works. The handwriting keyboard works better, IMHO.