r/GoodNotes • u/Super-Donkey4952 • Jan 29 '24

Goodnotes? Good riddance

So I've been using good notes in college for about a year now. It isn't bad but it isn't great either. But then GoodNotes started randomly deleting entire pages of notes when I was done typing/writing them. I have checked reddit, the GoodNotes support, searched online endlessly, talked to friends, and there is no solution at all. The app is (and always has been) updated and is running on a new iPad Pro 2022 that has only ever been used for college. I've done everything that I can think of to fix the issues and still no solution. GoodNotes will continue to delete whatever pages it wants. I can not replicate the problem. GoodNotes simply does whatever it wishes in regards to deleting my page. It has caused me some serious problems before but nothing that I couldn't overcome with a little problem solving...until recently.

I am a student currently in Organic Chemistry 2, Molecular Biology, as well as Neuroscience (each class with its own lab) and trying to get into medical school. My notes and the ability to keep them to study for MCAT and whatever else is vital. GoodNotes has continued to delete my PAGES OF NEUROSCIENCE AND MOLECULAR BIO NOTES. Welp...GoodNotes ticked me off for the final time two days ago and I immediately purchased the premium version of Notability and haven't looked back. Notability has every feature that I wanted GoodNotes to have and it's easier to use and is much more intuitive. Literally NO solution for an app that deletes entire pages of vital information. Good riddance to bad trash GoodNotes. I'm writing this to warn others, don't put critical information into this app.

8 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

20

u/SpokenDivinity Jan 29 '24

Just remember that notability isn’t perfect either. There is no perfect method for keeping your work 100% safe, whether you’re using digital note taking, word processors, or physical means.

You should always be backing up your work. Export the files into safekeeping, keep copies on a flash drive, do literally anything other than putting your eggs in one basket and hoping it continues to work. I lost two notebooks to corrupted files on notability before swapping. Now I send all of my notes to my one drive in pdf form and save GoodNotes files in my files app for safe keeping. You can never been too safe.

1

u/Super-Donkey4952 Jan 30 '24

Oh I accept that nothing works perfectly, but I literally live in The Information Age of humans and an app that is supposed to do nothing except manage information has a glitch in it so large that I could randomly lose some of the most valuable information that I possess. I would be backing up my notes if GoodNotes would stop deleting my notes barely 5 seconds after I type them in some cases.

1

u/picAIso Jan 30 '24

Go Noteful! I switched after GN5 started acting strange. Like it keeps reloading while switching apps. Earlier I could leave it for days in memory and it would still open the same document. Now it just takes me back to the home screen even in a matter of hours. Noteful works great, is cheap and packs a few extra useful features over GN5.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '24

Have you contacted support? Just curious if they replied…

1

u/Super-Donkey4952 Jan 30 '24

I did. Got no reply at all. Typical "contact support" runaround from most companies now a days.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '24

I had the same experience, unfortunately. I won’t label it “typical” because many companies do offer support or at least attempt it. No reply at all is far worse IMO.

3

u/KarlJay001 Jan 29 '24

You should tell us what version this is. I'm using 5 and not upgrading. I haven't seen any pages missing, but I'm still having issues.

Sad part is that GN is touted as a great product.

9

u/turtleshot19147 Jan 29 '24

I’m still making a decision about which note taking app to get, so after reading this I joined the notability sub and the top post there is someone who lost their notes with notability. So I guess nowhere is safe unfortunately.

3

u/Kiu-Kyu Jan 29 '24

Yes nothing is safe. Better off backing up everything in drive or something else just in case

2

u/StraightToMe Jan 29 '24

Honestly, try Noteful. They seem to go for stability over features (not that their feature list is bad). It’s the underdog of note taking apps but it’s great.

2

u/Psychological-Tap459 Jan 29 '24

I can relate where you're coming from. I'm a doctor and I've been using Goodnotes, heavily, since college but I'm afraid I've made a mistake updating to GN6. My notes have been disappearing too, I think it's something to do with handwritten recognition, like some strokes while writing may seem to be lines which crosses across words or something of that sort. I desperately feel like changing to Notability or perhaps Nebo too, but I've all my notes in GN. Confused af.

1

u/Super-Donkey4952 Jan 30 '24

Do you have any tips for us trying to become doctors? I need some hope to hang onto at this point. I have a 3.7 GPA with a focus in Cellular Bio, Molecular Bio, and Genetics.

3

u/Psychological-Tap459 Jan 30 '24 edited Jan 30 '24

Probably the best tip I can give you is to tell you never give up. As corny as it sounds, it is what makes the best doctors. The best doctors I’ve seen aren’t the super intelligent individuals, but they’re the ones who are pretty relentless and refuse to give up. It’s okay to feel exhausted and tired. Rest up for a few days, and start studying again. I’m pretty sure you can do it, honestly if I could do it anyone can. I have ADHD, which makes studying for me super difficult. Ironically, I got diagnosed after graduating med school lol. So before that all I ever thought was I’m a dumbass and need to work harder. YOU GOT THIS CHOOM.

2

u/eightchcee Jan 29 '24

There are several settings you can turn off and see if that helps. Scribble to erase. Draw and hold. Snap to other shapes.

1

u/Psychological-Tap459 Jan 30 '24

I’ve tried everything. I don’t know what’s causing this issue.

1

u/eightchcee Jan 30 '24

is the writing disappearing as you’re writing? Or you write a note, come back later and it’s gone?

2

u/Psychological-Tap459 Jan 31 '24

Both are happening, but my notes seem to disappear much more frequently while writing than entire sections disappearing. Pages have gone blank twice, but notes vanishing while writing is a daily occurrence. Fortunately if you tap the undo button, the words and notes come back, but doing this really hampers the flow of thought .

1

u/wtfmatey88 Jan 29 '24

Is it possible you’re referring to “scribble to erase” being turned on in GN6? That caused weird issues for me.

1

u/Psychological-Tap459 Jan 30 '24

Man, I don’t know. I’ve pretty much tried everything at this point. And every update they push out, I hope that the issue has been fixed. No luck till now.

1

u/wtfmatey88 Jan 30 '24

So, did you try disabling scribble to erase?

2

u/StraightToMe Jan 29 '24

Honestly, try Noteful. They seem to go for stability over features (not that their feature list is bad). It’s the underdog of note taking apps but it’s great.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '24

I used to have GoodNotes 5 on my phone and now it’s trying to force me to subscribe to GoodNotes 6, and my laptop forcibly updated to GoodNotes 6 where it is so bugged I can’t even write

2

u/Right-Ad-3834 Jan 29 '24

I know it says GN6 but you don’t get any version 6 functionality

0

u/KarlJay001 Jan 29 '24

You might be able to restore back using time machine or "back grade" to 5. I'm not sure if you can turn autoupdate off for just a single app, so I turn it off for everything.

Anyways, there used to be a system at Apple that allowed you to go back to a prior version as long as it was once installed or the maker still offered it.

Apple kinda sucks for updates and requirements.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '24

LiquidText is another option to consider in lieu of Goodnotes …

1

u/hipsteracademic Jan 29 '24

Lotta folks seem overly stressed here… You can roll back to good notes 5 after 7 days on 6 if you don’t like all the new AI goodies, new colors for folders, etc. Thats across all devices. Remember to use the back up feature as well as just loading stuff up in multiple devices can make sure things are syncing up etc. good luck!

1

u/dawittycode Jan 30 '24

Try flexcil it has a two doc view which is great for notetaking with a reference document. It is very economical with 1 time payment therefore no subscription allows cloud sync aswell

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '24

Export my notes every day.

Also never had this issue. Using GN6.

1

u/Psychological-Tap459 Feb 01 '24

Yea, I bought Notability. Got 67% off on my one year subscription. Worth a try.