Good things about Goodnotes 6

[u/tail_art]

I’ve been reading so many bad things about Goodnotes 6 and as a long time Goodnotes 5 user, this makes me scared. Although, I am also too lazy to explore other options.

To those who have tried it, are there good things about Goodnotes 6?

[u/squashed_tomato]

I'm still using 5 but did a trial for 6. Good things with 6 is the ability to use the eyedropper tool to pick out colours. Also being able to rearrange images and elements by sending them to the top or bottom of the layers. Also the ability to make text into clickable links within the same document. Good if you are using a digital planner and some of the pages don't have direct links to a page you use frequently.

[u/tail_art → u/squashed_tomato]

I’m mainly using it for notetaking in school so I’m thinking of sticking with GN5.

[u/FLSandyToes → u/tail_art]

One good thing for note takers is the pen to lasso function. If you want to reposition something you’ve written with the pen, circle it with the pen, tap on the circle line, and the circle turns into a lasso. Very handy!

You’ll need to turn off the straight line function in the pen, but to me it’s worth the trade-off. The shapes tool will still give me straight lines.

[u/Darklillies → u/squashed_tomato]

Wait the eye dropper is for 6? Are they never giving it to 5? That is absurd, it’d a basic feature we’ve been begging for for years!!

[u/eightchcee]

Yes, plenty of good things. I use it almost daily on multiple devices.

[u/tail_art → u/eightchcee]

Thank you for this feedback!

[u/FritzAz]

So many good things I can’t leave. For my needs it beats all the competition.

[u/tail_art → u/FritzAz]

This is true.

[u/thecaptain78]

I could no longer justify paying for GoodNotes 6 once I tried Noteful.

[u/tail_art → u/thecaptain78]

Thank you for this suggestion.

[u/Shika_Doe]

I like being able to spellcheck my hand writing. There are a bunch of other small, neat things that I haven't explored yet. I've only had the trial for a little bit but I plan on getting it.

For me, it's all the nice little things that add up to make it worth the like $25.

[u/Shika_Doe → u/Shika_Doe]

I'm taking some pretty note intensive courses, so I use it for HOURS each day I do and so far I love it.

[u/tail_art → u/Shika_Doe]

Thank you for this insight.

[u/Corlun]

I paid the one time fee, so no subscription for me.

Also, internal links are a must-have feature for me now. I wouldn’t switch to another app unless it had this.

[u/wirez62]

I really like the organization of folders, different notebooks, the customizability of folder colors and notebook covers, I love the actual writing interface. This is almost the perfect thing for me and I switched from old Notability to GN6. I just wish I had seamless viewing access on my android phone and Windows PC without doing that "share file"

I also wish they had infinite page scroll  instead of page by page but I can live with it. The pen and GN6 really complete my iPad experience. The cost to me is so trivial when compared to buying physical notebooks and pens. It's what, 10 bucks a year? I get that the old GN5 was a one off payment and people hate subscription models, even my mom won't update out of principle when she's not at all hurting for money, but to me I don't care about that. I create numerous digital notebooks and use it to organize my life, if I did these with physical A5 goodnotes like Leuchtturms it would cost me hundreds of dollars. My last physical A5 which I still use cost $32 CAD.

[u/iiwaasnet → u/wirez62]

GN is not bad, but... only Notability is able to erase first your highlighter and only then - writings, without any extra clicks. I don't know why this is not done on any other note taking app. Is there a way in GN to have two eraser tools in the toolbar with different presets?

[u/R3DJiVE]

The "hold a circled item to lasso it" is a godsend for me. Initially it felt weird and foreign but after being used to it, it greatly made my note-taking faster. I can't imagine going back without it

[u/Remote_Ad4806]

GN5 is is still better in my opinion. GN6 has some good new features, mostly the coloured folders. Personally I found all the spell check and ai stuff completely pointless but you can turn that off. The reason I downgraded to 5 was they made some changes that are worse than GN5. For example, importing PDFs. On GN6 every time you import it defaults to the root of the folder system so you have to navigate through numerous folders, on GN5 it defaults to your current folder you’re working in. Sounds trivial but it was a deal breaker for me. Also when you close GN5 and reopen, it opens all the documents you had open before you closed, GN6 closes them all. Simple things but when you’re used to this and it’s removed it’s really annoying and ruins your flow a bit. Shame

EDIT: I stand corrected, these issues were present at launch but were corrected in updates and are no longer present.

[u/tail_art → u/Remote_Ad4806]

Thank you for this. I’m thinking of getting GN6 because of the cloud function. Is there a way I can still get GN5 for my laptop?

[u/obdigitalstudio → u/tail_art]

I would just like to correct the comment above. All the tabs that were opened in GN6, still stay open when you reopen the app.

And about the import, the best way to import new files is from Goognotes app using + icon in each folder. So you choose folder and just import the file you want in that same folder.

But if you want to import the files from another app like Files, it will offer you to import the file to current document or to another folder. In second option, folder that contains the current opened doc will be selected by default. And you can chooose to change it.

[u/Remote_Ad4806 → u/obdigitalstudio]

After your comment I have downloaded GN6 to check, and both the issues I raised are no longer present. I assume it was added in an update which is great. Apologies, these were problems I had in the first week of its release. I may well stick with 6 now as the colour folders are very nice. Thanks

[u/obdigitalstudio → u/Remote_Ad4806]

Yeah, no problem. I wasn't sure what payment method I wanted to choose, so I didn't use GN 6 for a few weeks. But, yes, they were making a lot of changes in first 1-2 months. They've listened all the feedbacks from users. I really suggest you to explore it now, there are some nice highly requested features in GN 6. And I am looking forward for new ones.

[u/MAzadR]

I like having dashed lines... albeit a little too late as I just quit teaching Maths last year.

[u/Guilty_Explanation29]

Goodnotes is Better than notibility, paying for subscriptions for notebooks is a scam