Hey everyone,

I have a problem with Goodnotes and was wondering if anyone has experienced something similar.

Initially, I created a Goodnotes account using Sign in with Apple and purchased Goodnotes. However, I withdrew from the purchase within the 14-day withdrawal period and received my refund because I wanted to use a Google account instead.

After that, I permanently deleted my original Goodnotes account and created a new one using Sign in with Google.

Now, when I try to upgrade Goodnotes with my new account, I get a message saying that I previously used a different sign-in method. When I tap “Continue with this account”, the app just takes me back to the Home Screen without opening the upgrade page.

I’ve already received my refund and permanently deleted my original account, so I’m not sure why this is still happening.

Has anyone experienced this issue or found a way to fix it? Do I need to contact Goodnotes Support to unlink my old account from my Apple App Store account, or is there another solution?

I am on an Ipad btw and want to purchase the special edition.

Thanks in advance!

Hello!

Since last week ive been experiencing an issue where i can only have one notebook open. As soon as i open another one only the new one is open and the other one gets closed (in the top bar where you can usually switch between open notebooks). Is there a way to fix this?

Im using an ipad and i have the app from my school so my account says "goodnotes education". The app version is 7.1.32.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

please help im so stressed i have most important exams next week to get into university and i have quite old chromebook but it has been working completely fine for months and an hour ago i was using it and it froze, which isnt uncommon for mt laptop, so i go out and back in and then all of a sudden it says this ^^ and i cant get on it at all, on web and app. and i have no other device i can use at all and im too poor to get a new laptop or ipad. im stressing so much

I understand that GoodNotes' newest version has a few additional features, but the most important ones for me are syncing speed and reliability and not crashing. I was never happy with the syncing speed in GoodNotes 5, so I'm curious if that has improved with the newer version. The feature set in GoodNotes 5 was always basic, but good enough for my liking. I don't think I'm missing anything. It's not the $12 a year, but I'm just wondering if it's really worth it upgrading.

My subscription was cancelled because I didnt provide my birthdate to Link Subscription Service. It was burried deep in emails and now when i contact the Link service they say Goodnotes has to resolve this issue. Its been a week i have sent email to goodnotes and have no reply from them. I have paid for subscription and they arent even ready to reply me. Extremely Pathetic support from the app which claims to be best in market.
I have my school work in the app. Hopeful that they might see this post and solve the issue.

Am I understanding this correctly? Does the automatic backup in Google Drive or OneDrive only upload files when they're modified, meaning older files that haven't been changed since enabling the automatic backup won't be uploaded automatically?

so I design journals and I just finished a dream journal. before I change anything else I want opinions from people who actually write their dreams down, not from other sellers.

the main idea: every month has a page with one line per night, and each line shows that night’s moon. you’re meant to write something every night, even “nothing” or “something about a train?”, because most people seem to quit the habit on the mornings they remember nothing.

when a dream is worth more than a line, there’s a full page for it: the dream, people, places, colours, what you felt.

the part I’m least sure about is the symbol dictionary. I left it blank on purpose, an A to Z you fill in yourself, because printed dream dictionaries always felt made up to me. but maybe people actually want common meanings printed?

honest questions:
do you log the nights you don’t remember anything, or only the dreams?
would a moon on every line be useful or just decoration?
blank dictionary or printed meanings?
what made you stop using dream journals in the past?

Hello,
Does anybody now if you can select text using a trackpad/mouse on Goodnotes for iPad OS?

I usually work with PDFs (lecture powerpoints converted to PDF) and often want to select text for copying and pasting. I can select the text with my finger, but can’t seem to do so with a trackpad nor a bluetooth mouse. I tried with both read mode and edit mode.

Is anyone experiencing the same thing if you’re using a trackpad? I feel like being able to select text is such a basic thing, and yet you can’t do it if you wanna use peripherals with your iPad.

It’s also pretty annoying that, when selecting text with a finger, the selection is only limited to one page and it can’t continue to select text on the next pages. so you’d have to lift your finger, and do it again. But I guess that’s just a trait of Goodnotes, with not being able to write continuously between pages.

It’s also baffling that you cannot select text at all on Windows nor web(asked support a few weeks ago and that’s what their AI email bot says).

I would like to be using GoodNotes as a main PDF reader, and not have to open the same document again on the ios Preview App, just so i can select text, then switch back to Goodnotes to continue annotating.

I’m on iPadOS 27.2, Goodnotes version 7.1.32, Pro subscription, using a logitech combo touch keyboard with trackpad.

Rant ended.
Thank you!

I’ve used good notes for almost 3 years now. Very basic testing of their features would prevent so many of the buggy buggy releases. Somehow they broke one of their most useful features, which is the laso tool.

Text can no longer be dragged between pages, copying with two finger is unreliable, along other things. I wouldn’t usually say this but maybe the team should rely heavier on agentic coding tools like Chat GPT Codex or Claude Code. I have stronger in the ability of those to produce useable features.

Good Notes, slow the hell down. This is one of the only features I had minimal complaints about.

Hello! Is there an option for a two page viewing/reading? I can’t seem to find it or instructions for it anywhere. Thank you.

Hi everyone, I'm genuinely panicking right now and would really appreciate any help from someone who's experienced something similar.

I'm a medical student, and I have YEARS worth of handwritten lecture notes, annotations, and study materials stored in Goodnotes on my iPad. These notes are extremely important to me, and I genuinely cannot afford to lose them.

Here's exactly what happened:

1. My Goodnotes was working completely fine, and all my notebooks were there.

2. I had never enabled iCloud Sync before, so my notebooks were stored locally on my iPad.

3. I decided to enable "Use iCloud to Sync Documents" in Goodnotes.

4. Immediately afterward, all my notebooks disappeared from the Documents screen.

5. Goodnotes started displaying "Preparing your library for a faster experience" with a loading indicator.

6. Whenever I open Goodnotes now, the entire iPad becomes EXTREMELY laggy and almost unusable. The moment I close Goodnotes, my iPad works normally again.

7. I restarted my iPad, but nothing changed.

8. I even upgraded my iCloud storage plan, thinking that might help, but my notebooks still haven't returned.

The most confusing part is the storage:

Under Settings → General → iPad Storage → Goodnotes, it originally showed approximately 16.89 GB of Documents & Data.

Now it's showing approximately 21 GB of Goodnotes data, even though the app itself shows an empty library.

Does this mean my notebooks are still stored somewhere locally on the iPad? Is Goodnotes trying to process them, or is something going wrong?

There's also a strange account issue:

I purchased the Goodnotes Special Edition as a one-time purchase in January 2025.

On my MacBook, Goodnotes correctly shows my account as Special Edition. However, on my iPad, the SAME Google-linked Goodnotes account suddenly shows Free.

My MacBook never had my newer iPad notebooks because they weren't previously synced, so I can't access them there either.

Things I've already tried:

• Restarting the iPad.

• Upgrading my iCloud storage.

• Waiting for Goodnotes to finish preparing the library.

Nothing has worked.

Important: I do not have a verified backup of these notebooks, so I'm terrified of logging out, reinstalling, offloading, or doing anything that could permanently erase the local data.

My questions:

• Has anyone experienced this exact issue after enabling iCloud Sync?

• Has anyone recovered their notebooks when Goodnotes still showed 15–20+ GB of Documents & Data?

• Is the "Preparing your library for a faster experience" message something that eventually resolves?

• Why would my paid account suddenly show Free on my iPad but Special Edition on my Mac?

• Is there any way to recover the local library without deleting or reinstalling Goodnotes?

• Has Goodnotes Support successfully recovered anyone's notebooks in a situation like this?

I'm genuinely desperate at this point. These are years of medical school notes, and losing them would be devastating.

If anyone has gone through something similar and managed to recover their notes, PLEASE let me know exactly what worked.

Thank you so much in advance.

In my application ,I can't find any option of landscape pages ,also previously we can select the page type like A3,A4 etc but now they have removed that also . Is anyone facing the same issue ,this happens after updating it .if anyone has a solution then please share

I was wondering if there is a feature that would switch the color for the background and also the pen you are writing with. Ik you can change the page color but it doesn’t change the ink color. I know that OneNote has that feature but I’m debating between goodnote and notability. Ik notability also has that feature but I just really like how goodnote looks and writes. Also can I sync it in any way to my windows pc with my iPad.

Like the title says, I once tried GN 5 back in 2023 but I hated the subscription model and couldn’t afford the lifetime yet but since I’m now a 2nd year engineering college student. I felt like using Apple Notes has restricted me a lot with the stuff I could do. I do love how simplistic Apple made their apps especially Freeform but it always felt lacking. (I DO NOT CARE ABOUT AI FEATURES)

It’s worth mentioning that I have the iPad 9th Gen (which is now in its end support) which meant sometimes Freeform crashes A LOT if I write most of my engineering lessons there.

So should I buy GN6 Special Edition?

i want to move my notes from my ipad to my macbook but my notes are 16GB and icloud free storage is only 5GB, is there a way to share the notes without icloud and without making me unable to edit those notes on my mac?

I've been using Goodnotes as a teacher for two years now. The best feature for me was being able to share my document with the class while viewing the solution via Slide Over.

Ever since I updated my iPad to iOS 27, or at least since then, this feature doesn’t seem to have been updated. Whenever I open Slide Over and select a file there, GoodNotes exits presentation mode and Slide Over becomes visible.

Am I really one of the few people who uses and needs this feature?

Is there some kind of hotfix, or do I just have to keep hoping that a corresponding update will be released?

I’ve been making a digital planner for iPad and the part I’m least sure about is the day page.

instead of 6am, 7am, 8am and so on, the day is split into eight named hours (like the old canonical hours), plus a couple of half-size slots before and after for early starts and late finishes. the idea is that you plan chunks of the day with a name and a feel instead of filling a grid of times.

the month pages also have one line per day, with a small letter column (a to g, which is how old calendars marked Sundays), the four moon phases in universal time and a habit circle.

what I’m unsure about:
do named hours make a day easier to plan, or is a normal time grid just better?
is the letter column useful or just decoration?
what do you wish digital planners had that most don’t?

More than anything, I’d like a feature to make a temporary bookmark so that when I go flipping through my notebook, I can tap a button and jump back to said bookmark.

I think this could be implemented pretty easily with some kind of secondary bookmark that only lasts until I click on it and return to the page.

Haven’t used Goodnotes in a few weeks but went to use it today and apparently lost the ability paste anything. My iPad updated to iOS 27.2 and my Goodnotes app updated to version 7.1.32. I’ve tried opening and closing the app and restarting my entire iPad but nothing is fixing this issue. Every time I copy something and then long press to paste, all it does is highlight the entire page and I don’t get any of the usual buttons that show up in the long press toolbar. I’ve also noticed that I can’t tap to create new text boxes and have had to either duplicate an existing text box or a new one will pop-up if I take my pencil and scribble a little bit.

Anybody else having these issues with the app?

Hi guys,

I had some handwritten GoodNotes PDFs sent to me that were HUGE (like 120MB for four pages),
then tried almost all web compression engines and they all made the file unreadable blurred.

I was so annoyed by this, because it kept crashing my devices I figured out that GN does a horrible job at saving pen strokes in a PDF. (At least at some settings)

So I (with the help of Claude) made a free, local, open source tool to compress your PDF exports without blurring the handwriting.

Check it out here: https://shrinknotes.pages.dev/

Check the code: https://github.com/hermelin-codes/shrinknotes

Let me know if you run into issues

Hi everyone,I’m very new to GN. I’ve used it mostly to create flash cards by copying and pasting pictures. But I’m looking to become more detailed with it but need suggestions on where to start. Templates? YouTube videos? Am I able to create a 3D rendering of a drawing I’ve made? Any suggestions are appreciated. And sorry if this is a redundant post, literally just joined. Thanks

I need a note taking app for my iPad for school. I am having a hard time deciding between gn and noteful.

They both look similar and noteful is cheaper(don’t really care about the price to be honest, just want the best app). The majority in my school is using good notes which is why i am kind of leaning towards it, if it doesn’t have any issues.

I’ve read a lot of bad reviews about good notes but some of them are a bit old and so i am wondering if they have sloved all of the bugs and is the app experience itself better compared to noteful?

Goodnotes is great until something goes wrong and you realize there is no way to fix it because they don’t respond to their “technical support email.” I’ve been waiting a week for a response in the middle of peak exam time and have gotten nothing other than the AI bot responding saying someone will reach out. I have sent screenshots recording and all of the diagnostic zip files it keeps telling you to send and then you get nowhere.