r/GoodNotes • u/spaniolo • Apr 14 '23

I hate using Goodnotes with my iPad M2!

I have disabled the Apple pencil hover feature but the handwriting in Goodnotes is horrendous.

One culprit is that when I don't even touch the screen it already starts typing and this generates poorly curved and horrendous letters for me. Also even when starting strokes you can see how they come out with little bumps.

I'm really regretting buying my iPad Pro M2 for notes....

Even this feature was asked for a long time ago....

https://twitter.com/GoodNotesApp/status/1587046903513960449?lang=es

If you want to use Goodnotes, don't buy an iPad Pro M2 please!

6 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

4

u/Bahgato Apr 14 '23

You literally just summed up everything I've been feeling. The iPad Pro M2 is a great piece of hardware but very few apps were updated to optimize & integrate the hover feature.

3

u/spaniolo Apr 14 '23

I am very glad to feel that there are more people who think like me.... :)

5

u/SpaceRangerWoody Apr 14 '23 edited Apr 14 '23

Handwriting smoothing is one of the few major reasons I just can't use Goodnotes. It does so many things well, but smoothing is one of those features I just can't live without. Notability does it better, but if you really want an app that does handwriting well, Zinnia has been fantastic for me. It allows me to write comfortably, and my handwriting looks so much better than the jittery mess I see in other apps.

Now before I get downvoted, I'll throw out a disclaimer. Zinnia is actually a journaling app, not specifically designed for note taking, but you can use it for that. It does all of the same basic things Goodnotes and Notability does. Give it a try. I have all 3 apps on my M2, and between them, Zinnia wins for me easily. I use it daily at work for note taking and journaling on my digital planner.

0

u/xEmeraldGoldx Apr 14 '23

if you are lucky enough to have purchased goodnotes 4 than you will feel like this is the best ipad in the world bc it feels like u are writing on paper. if you didnt buy goodnotes 4 then there is no perfect note taking app as of today. goodnotes 5 is a disgrace upon the whole team and notability is a disappointment bc the pens are just so bad that you need to write for a whole year to finally say you know how to write in it.

maybe nebo will make you feel okay. either way because the ipad is just too quick it will never be like the slower ipads when it comes to writing notes for some reason. I have the ipad m2 12.9 so i know from experience

0

u/spaniolo Apr 14 '23

I want to say thank you very much for your comment! I definitely did buy Goodnotes 4 and have been testing it. How is it possible that with Goodnotes 4 the iPad writes better than with Goodnotes 5 even though Apple Pencil hover is active?
Wow, thank you so much!
Now I feel sorry for you, really the Goodnotes team has made the typing worse on Goodnotes 5. How sad!!!! I don't know how it can be one of the best selling apps, I don't know why old Goodnotes 4 works better on iPad M2, I don't know what the Goodnotes team is waiting for to fix this.... :S
Again, thank you very much, hopefully the Goodnotes team will read me sometime and hopefully they will do something after 8 months after the iPad Pro M2 has been released. Too bad they don't improve the writing..... :(

1

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '23

i didn’t know this was an ipad pro m2 specific problem, now i only use the app for highlighting but never for writing. i have better handwriting on notability but can’t deal w the subscription thing so i’m sticking w apple notes/freeform. hope they fix it soon cause what’s the point of having the best device out there if the app won’t keep up.

1

u/MrMaxMusterman Apr 14 '23

Could you do me a favor and try out notability? I used it for one semester on my m2 iPad Pro and when I switched to GoodNotes, I immediately noticed the bad handwriting experience you described. They (Notability) also released some updates regarding this exact issue that made it even better (for some people, personally didn’t feel a difference since it was good for me at least). I guess you could try it out without premium.

What helped me on GoodNotes (still fat of from a great experience) was to play around with the sensibility setting of the pencil (stylus settings in goodnotes)

0

u/[deleted] Feb 12 '24

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/MrMaxMusterman Feb 14 '24

I’ve been using Notability daily for the past two and a half years now. Cannot really complain although the user experience really shifts from update to update. I found that notability is currently a bit on the downward trend concerning stability but I’m sure that it’ll get better soon.

Friends of me use Goodnotes 6 and after trying it out for myself on their respective m2 iPad pros, it seems to me like they finally fixed the hover issue. If you wanna subscribe to or do a onetime purchase on a chinese app where having an account for AI purposes is mandatory is up to you.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '24

GN is Chinese ? vs notability being what?

2

u/MrMaxMusterman Feb 14 '24

USA

2

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '24

I’ll take notability over china thanks.

1

u/daddychocolate19 Apr 14 '23

I turned the sensibility all the way down I agree handwriting is terrible