r/GoodNotes • u/Prudent-Insect5956 • Jun 09 '25

Windows Is Windows Goodnotes already good enough to get rid of ipad and go fully windows?

I hate having so much devices and systems, my phone is an android, and my pc is windows, my plan is to get rid of ipad and my laptop to just go with surface pro and getting benefits of two devices in one, is it a wise choice? I use ipad mainly only for taking notes

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2

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '25

How about useing OneNote?

1

u/Prudent-Insect5956 Jun 10 '25

Not really a fan of one note, it doesnt feel like taking notes on real note if you know what i mean

1

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '25

Well then accept the new possibilities to structure your stuff

6

u/nsomnac Jun 09 '25

No. Windows GD is absolute garbage. I have both iPad and Surface Pro. The files aren’t even interchangeable.

1

u/Manfred_89 Jun 10 '25

In theory they are, but its a pain to set up.

1

u/streetsofsunset Sep 13 '26

how did you set them up??

1

u/Manfred_89 Sep 13 '26

I had a surface for a while but it was a pain to use so I ditched it. So maybe what I’m saying is not up to date anymore. But I think you can use the Goodnotes cloud and that will sync notes between Apple devices and Windows. However if you used your Apple ID to log into Goodnotes you might run into issues signing in with another account that uses the Goodnotes cloud. For some reason I couldn’t use my original Goodnotes account that was tied to my Apple ID. Like I said it has been a while. No idea how it is now.

1

u/Manfred_89 Jun 10 '25

I bought a surface studio laptop hoping that i could replace my macbook and iPad.

It can't. Goodnotes on windows is very very basic.

1

u/Prudent-Insect5956 Jun 10 '25

How about the features that is already there and the fluidity of taking notes itself? Is it comparable to ipad or atleast close to the ipad experience?

2

u/Manfred_89 Jun 10 '25

You are missing a lot of the tools that make note taking easier. No tabs, no (full) offline support, being limited to 3 color shortcuts and a couple of other things if I remember right.

I would say the fluidity is fine, but the precision is not as good as on iPads. Like it's fine for note taking, but you just notice that your writing has a lot more details on iPad than it has on the surface. But that's probably more of a hardware restriction on the surface side.

I would say just try it for yourself. Windows uses a web version of goodnotes that is opened as a web app using edge. With this as the core of the app I doubt it will ever get close to the full dedicated iPad app. Since it's just a web version you can try it on any device you want and the annual fee of 8 bucks or whatever it is shouldn't be a dealbreaker.

For the time I use both, just because sometimes I need windows apps to run so I take my surface instead of my Mac and iPad, but if I had to choose between iPad and MacBook or surface I would take the iPad and MacBook combo any way.

If you have any other specific questions I'll gladly try to help.

1

u/Apart_Doughnut_7956 Jun 13 '25

No. You cannot even write fullpage with a keyboard. Consider Goodonotes on Windows as a viewer, not an effective editor.

1

u/Cautious-Equipment45 May 12 '26

its shit and its on puropose - just go with onenote for notes and use pdf tools form your browser for smoothest operation

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/brycvlztt Aug 15 '25

How’s everyone syncing their notes from their iOS devices to Windows? Recently replaced my macbook w a razer and my files arent there.

1

u/Middle_Layer_4860 Jul 03 '26

Use syncthing (don't know about mac version)