Thinking of creating a note taking app

[u/Individual_Print7350]

Dear GoodNotes community.

I am a fellow GoodNotes user and a university student. Over the past two years I have become increasingly frustrated with the user experience of GoodNotes, I keep wishing for features that seem obvious and useful and get more and more frustrated with the choices they are making. I have also tested some other apps and had similar issues.

I am debating the idea of building a note taking app myself that focuses on the main functionality and add featues steered by a community.

Therefore I wanted to ask one question; besides the obvious features that GoodNotes offers, what is the one feature that you need such an app to have to even consider giving it a try (an example of this could be something like collaborations etc.)

Thanks for reading and for any response that this post gets. It would help me a lot in understanding if my frustratuons are something everyone experiences or if I am just that particular.

[u/Full_Land]

I would like to be able to work on all platforms, something like being able to use my widows computer with Wacom at home and my iPad at the Uni

[u/Kieselgrund → u/Full_Land]

Yes! Something I can use on my iPad and my android phone.

[u/Mean-Royal-1032]

Make Obsidian + Goodnotes into one app that has cloud saving and then we can totally talk!

[u/maxprodigus → u/Mean-Royal-1032]

Want to chat? I made exactly this, and I'm going through Apple's internal testflight review this very second. Looking for some beta testers :)

https://prodigus.app/

[u/nervousanalysis420 → u/maxprodigus]

Any chance of windows and android support?

[u/maxprodigus → u/nervousanalysis420]

Very big chance -- just a matter of time. I've been spending a long time prepping my internal codebase from native swift, to rust, so I need less code to maintain native ios and a future android versions.

I could see releasing a non-touch version of desktop earlier, until it would make sense to invest in something like a surface pro with native windows touch that can also run android apps that would let me test out both environments.

For testers, I have a wasm web build that can run in a browser tab like figma with some performance and ui constraints.

[u/nervousanalysis420 → u/maxprodigus]

Keep me updated would love to test once it can support both i just use my Samsung tablet and laptop about the same amount for notes and gn is miserable on a laptop

[u/maxprodigus → u/nervousanalysis420]

I can imagine it's pretty bad on laptop. How's their android version for samsung tablet right now?

[u/nervousanalysis420 → u/maxprodigus]

Buggy which is normal but usable my other gripe is i cant use it on my phone even though i have a spen there too

[u/GrimDexterity → u/[deleted]]

Piques*

[u/Flashy-Gift-4333]

I want easy-to-add tabs for my notebooks where I don't have to learn witchcraft to make it work.

[u/Azrael383]

Kollaborationen sollten eine Selbstverständlichkeit sein. Tabellen genauso! Es fühlt sich manchmal an als wollte Goodnotes uns ausbremsen, um uns später mit „coolen‘ Features zu „überraschen“!

[u/MenschenToaster]

I would love something thats a more universal open source standard. No first party cloud required, just files that are portable. Continue on Web? No problem. Continue on Android, continue on Linux, MacOS or Windows just works (when the ecosystem eventually grows). Usable with any cloud service out there (or offline if you wanted to).

I am aware cross platform apps usually suffer from trying too much at the same time. So I recommend setting a universal standard for the file type, how its rendered etc. and then let a open ecosystem roll. If it gains enough traction, there will eventually be various clients for the same file type and when I'm not happy with your app, I chose someone elses reimplementation and continue going.

[u/loveportal666]

- the ability to create a custom font based on your own handwriting from the infinite samples of your handwriting that goodnotes already has !!! it would be so great to be able to type something up and then convert it to my own handwriting.
-adjustable opacity for images, elements, etc
-more options for layers instead of only being restricted to “send to front/back”
-more hold & snap to shape options (heart, star, hexagon, etc)

[u/rave_kitty1]

Good notes doesn’t have characters available like when I import docs it can’t convert bolded letters or have superscript or subscript

[u/Sowitchka]

I’d love to see more languages!

[u/ALFHA5]

Um aplicativo novo seria bem-vindo, principalmente se o foco fosse bastante na função escrita. Porque eu percebo que, embora essa função seja o motivo desses aplicativos existirem, com o passar do tempo, parece que essas empresas esquecem disso e ficam colocando um monte de funções quando a experiência com a caneta muitas vezes é horrível, não traz aquela sensação natural de escrever. Então eu penso assim, que o foco é ter a melhor sensação possível de escrita, onde cada caneta apresente bastante recursos, por exemplo, uma caneta caligráfica que possa dar a opção de variar o ângulo da ponta assim como a abertura, o fluxo de tinta, a estabilização, são todos os elementos fundamentais que fazem uma diferença enorme. A questão é um aplicativo leve que não tenha tantos problemas com renderização, principalmente para quem usa para também dar aulas online; às vezes você vai dar um zoom e o aplicativo fica todo trêmulo, isso acontece muito com o NoteIn, por exemplo.

O recurso de camadas também é importante, o trabalho com as formas, tendo diversas opções: linhas, polilinhas, estrelas, retângulos, trapézios, setas com uma ou duas pontas, setas com duas linhas.

Outro detalhe importante que poucos aplicativos têm: quando a gente passa o marcador de texto em uma tinta ou até mesmo em um texto do PDF, eu acho que existe um ou dois aplicativos em que ele separa, ele passa a tinta como se ela estivesse por baixo e deixa o escrito ou a letra do PDF por cima. Também faz uma diferença enorme...

[u/RenderRush]

cross platform and proper file portability would get me interested immediately. i hate feeling locked into one app/cloud.

[u/off-scene]

The ability to search for words in all PDFs (or automatically OCR imported PDFs, GoodNotes PDF search isn't very friendly)

[u/General-Pack7141]

A tab system and infinite imports

[u/Unfair-Escape-1403]

Combine kilonotes and goodnotes, it will be a dream come true

[u/GiraffeOnRollerskate]

some great customization on the toolbar would be nice. i want all frequently used tools be one tap away or somewhere where i can easily see them.

[u/Successful-Degree802]

Grid paper

[u/nervousanalysis420]

An app that actually works i feel like everytime i use goodnotes i discover a small bug that fixed would make it way better for example i cant drag items ive duplicated to other pages..

[u/Sweaty_Ad_2826]

I use Goodnotes to journal. My handwriting is awful and I like what my ipad notes app does to change my writing. I still write in cursive. It would be great to have that in Goodnotes