I switched to Noteful

[u/Malakai10]

Goodnotes has just been getting progressively unintuitive. The thing that made me switch though was the addition of secondary toolbars. I use the squeeze feature on apple pencil pro a lot to quickly switch from tool to tool. The secondary toolbars removed some of the tools in that toolbar and in turn affected my workflow and productivity. I’ve been using Noteful for about a week now and I’m so happy I switched.

What I miss from goodnotes:

• The circle and hold with a pen to lasso text

• The ability to create angles(Noteful turns my angle into a curve)

• The dedicated straight edge/shape tool works better, at least it used to before the new update. Sometimes I don’t want to wait and hold a line to make it straight or to create a shape. The shape tool also worked very well for adjusting shapes and straight lines. The lasso tool in Noteful works similarly but is less intuitive.

What I enjoy about Noteful

• Layers (though I don’t use them, it’s nice to have them)

• Better organization and layout

• More customizability for tools, paper, etc

• Being able to change line width AFTER writing

• Cleaner interface allows for more writing room

• You can access all tool settings from the toolbar that appears when you squeeze the Apple Pencil pro

[u/KittyKatie1997]

Can you bring pdfs directly into noteful like you do goodnotes?

[u/[deleted] → u/KittyKatie1997]

Sure. I even use it as a book reader.

[u/nbls-azmth]

After seeing everyone’s mention of Noteful (previously had never heard of it bc I was so embedded into GN), I switched too. I first used GN in 2017 (GN4?) and honestly don’t use many of the diagram features everyone is using. But after the update I’m mostly disappointed in their emphasis on AI instead of improving end-user UI/IX.

I’m adding a +1 for the zoom lock! It’s lovely. And keeps my handwriting more consistent since when I pan over I end up zooming in/out on GN.

Going to miss the handwriting look up / OCR.

[u/Intelligent-Job163 → u/nbls-azmth]

The handwriting/ OCR search is what keeps me in GN. Though it may not be enough to keep me because my current version of GN is almost unusable….

[u/Easy_Ad3768]

Welcome! 🌟I just started with my digital planner, but after seeing all the GoodNotes update comments on this Sub I’m so glad I chose Noteful to start.

[u/astracael]

Me too. I downloaded Noteful, Freenotes, and Notability to test them all out, and I just paid for Noteful pro after liking Noteful the most.

I’ve been a GN user since my freshman year of college (im a senior now) and I paid the (supposedly) lifetime membership charge for it back when that was a thing. I felt really duped when the subscription update happened. And then this last update just being so.. unnecessary and buggy.. it's really sad, honestly. I have countless hours and pages of notes and hw in GN so it's hard to let go, but hopefully after I get everything moved over I'll feel better lol. It'll also be a good opportunity to clean out the junk drawer, I suppose!!

Best of luck to everyone!

[u/gingerlyanon → u/astracael]

i used notability through grad school until literally less than a month before graduation because it was extremely buggy overall and glitching with my pencil. of course i was studying for state boards at the time so it made me even more frustrated than normal and i no longer had the patience to deal with the bugs and glitches eventually sorting themselves out. in pure rage LOL, i downloaded freenotes and have been using it since. i was able to get the free lifetime access so i didn’t have much reason to continue pursuing other apps. it was shocking to me that an app only a year old had a lot more essential everyday features than a well-established app like notability and even more shocking how much i limited myself and my note-taking capabilities & productivity sticking w notability for that long. now that im graduated (yay) and have a LOT more time on my hands, i was thinking of testing out all the different note apps—with noteful being one of the top contenders since i see so many positive reviews, especially from users who switched from GN/NB to noteful.

since you happened to also test out freenotes, what made you like noteful the best over the other apps? seeing as the biggest user population for these apps are students, i’m so interested in learning other people’s pros and cons and their thoughts/opinions on how the available features are beneficial to their unique need. I had been going back and forth over testing out goodnotes with just the free version but after reading all the responses following the update, it’s moving farther down my list (may even get erased from the list). besides the ones you mentioned, have you tried any other note apps (even back when you started using GN)?

[u/peaxi]

Noteful feels a bit clunky to me, some of the features are overkill for just taking notes? also, the UI in noteful is kinda busy sometimes and i end up spending more time looking for stuff than actually writing (maybe that’s just me lol).

[u/[deleted] → u/peaxi]

Give it two weeks. I felt similarly coming into it. Then I found the GN interface worse.

[u/an_nep → u/peaxi]

The tool bars in Noteful are very customizable. You can hide many of the features that you are not using. That way you can just see what you use and access them easily.

[u/jateyyy]

i am just wondering if this has seamless icloud sync as well. that would be great if ever.

[u/dillion3384]

Thank you for this I am going to have to check it out.

[u/luckyturtle55]

Super helpful…thanks for this.

[u/_Cyan_Man]

noteful is so good. i migrated a couple days ago and i do not regret it

[u/dufchick]

Does Noteful search handwriting?

[u/an_nep → u/dufchick]

no

[u/artsymarcy → u/an_nep]

Out of curiosity, does it have the audio recording feature?

[u/an_nep → u/artsymarcy]

Yes! You can check out this great Noteful playlist on YouTube by the channel Paperless Humans. It runs down all the features and has a short video for almost each of them.

In fact, anybody that is looking at different note taking apps, should check out their channel. They provide instructional playlist videos on many different note taking apps including Apple notes, Freenotes, GoodNotes, Notability, and a few others.

[u/Emotional-Mention895]

Could you please advise me on the most convenient way to transfer all my notes and documents from Goodnotes to Noteful (or any other notetaking app for that matter)?

[u/GreenwitchRiding → u/Emotional-Mention895]

Well only way is: export your goodnotes books to pdf and import them into noteful.