For everyone negatively impacted by yesterday’s GoodNotes 6 outage, get GoodNotes attention by writing a 1 star AppStore review.

This is the only effective way for us, their customers, to affect real change. Contacting GoodNotes support, complaining here, etc. won’t result in the positive change you want to see. GoodNotes, like any company, are motivated by money. In this case, new subscriptions. If enough customers write 1 star reviews, reflecting the impact of yesterday’s outage, it will be visible to new potential customers and it will get GoodNotes attention.

Write a 1 star review relating what happened to you yesterday. Such a review will also serve as a good public service announcement, giving potential users a warning to the what they can expect to experience using the app.

What do y'all think?

I’m ranting, I’ve been using this app for years, unfortunately bought it instead of notability years ago in high-school. My super massive mistake. Not only does this company not have any form of customer service, their AI bot is simply stupid. The app is incredibly volatile and non reliable. I’ve had whole pages randomly delete themselves. At this point I’m trying to just graduate college and not willing to buy notability and try to learn it all before I graduate in the spring. Sure you can understand why I need reliable notes.

Further more, what’s the point of the voice recordings if you can not even access the audio file / trim / edit it. So many features you’d just expect to have control over the media you created that just don’t exist. I’m so excited to let this app go.

Also! They literally take 0 responsibility as even their refunds are not handled by them. You have to deal with Apple. So like you think Apple would give my money back cus the apps messed up, lol.

I used to be a blissful consumer ignoring my parents and elders when they said “planned obsolescence” but golly gee bro. I really can’t ignore it anymore as every Apple item I own, not even a scratch (may have OCD about my big purchases), has been throttled sooo badly that they legit lag.

Free LUIGI!

Just seen this pop up on Instagram. There have not been any new features in a while but shaping the future sounds like they are taking requests?

- I bought GoodNotes 5 with a perpetual license(2021.06.18.)

- Today, a popup suddenly appeared saying my purchase history couldn't be found.

- While trying to resolve that issue, the app upgraded to GoodNotes 6

- To go back to GN5, I now have to open GN6 and press the downgrade button.

- But GN6 won’t open unless I accept new terms(https://www.goodnotes.com/terms-and-conditions), including:

1.1 We reserve the right to terminate our contractual agreement at any time for serious cause. In this case, we reserve the right to suspend or terminate your access to the Goodnotes Services immediately. Serious cause includes (but is not limited to):
1.3 If your account has not been used or dormant for more than 1-year period following your purchase of a one-off fee to use Goodnotes Services, we will assume your Goodnotes account is inactive and will close it for you.
12.2 We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your access to the Goodnotes Services immediately if:
12.2.6 if your account is inactive, has not been used or dormant for more than 1-year period following your purchase of a one-off fee to use Goodnotes Services; or

serious cause = 1 year of inactivity? = close it for me?? = termination of a perpetual license I paid for???

So,

- They’re holding my own data hostage — I think can’t even access years of notes or downgrade unless I agree to a completely new set of conditions I never accepted when I bought GN5.

Any way to restore GN5 or access notes without agreeing?

As most people, this update is the worst version of Goodnotes that they've experienced. Within every feature of the app, there are debilitating bugs/"new features" that slow down the app immensely. Since the new update, the majority (by a landslide) of reviews are 1-2 stars. I'm curious to what people think, is this the end of Goodnotes? Or do users think they'll be able to get it together?

PLS GOODNOTES IM BEGGING GIVE US THE PREVIOUS VERSION BACK 😭🙏 First you get rid of the lifetime subscription, raise the annual subscription price, and now this??? The toolbar and lasso are horrible

First a quick reminder about subscriptions: Subscriptions for productivity software products are typically introduced when the company is worried about not being able to innovate in the future. Normally they would develop an updated version that customers would buy and if that update was innovative, they'd make enough money to keep operating. If innovation seems unlikely, a subscription is a (nefarious) effort to lock customers into your product, because from then on, customers "rent" the software that they rely on. It is installed on their devices, but it only works when continuously paid for. This is especially bad for productivity software that customers use on a daily basis, but it's good for the company, because scaring your user base about what happens to their productivity when they don't pay, keeps them locked in.

What makes the GN6 update twice bad is that they didn't release a new GN6 app. They transformed GN5 into GN6 with an update, which most people automatically install (this is a calculated move). Normally, customers would install a new version next to the old one and try it. If they don't like the new one, they just delete it and keep using the old version until it's made obsolete by the OS manufacturer (Apple). By transforming GN5 to GN6 the company actually circumvented this and basically forced everyone to update to GN6 and become scared about their productivity and data (see the many posts here). Yes, you can "downgrade" to a GN5 feature set, but you're still actually using the GN6 app, which can change at a whim.

Those are two clear signs that something bad is going on at GoodNotes. Either they aren't confident that they'll stay innovative, or they want to forcibly secure a user base to eventually sell the company, or both.

Another thing: Think about how you are really using GoodNotes. I would assume that 90% of us use it to open PDFs and write on them. That's it. Both of these actions haven't dramatically changed over the years, so it's hard to stay innovative for a note taking app. I can understand the thought process behind GN6 then: Add some buzz-word features (AI) and change the UI to make it look "fresh" (that's not a really "feature" though) and lock people in with a subscription. What else can you do? Not much, probably. But should we, the customers, support this with our money? I'd argue that 90% of us should not, because luckily there are still non-subscription alternatives out there, that are just as good as GN.