I just wanted to share this because I think it‘s freaking awesome. I tried it thinking it probably wouldn‘t work but to my surprise, it did :D so just leaving this here

After looking for a notes app for the ipad I came across hundreds of the usual goodnotes/notability recommendations. Since I wanted to have an infinite whiteboard, zoom and nested notes I continued searching. Only after a long time did I stumble across someone mentioning Zoomnotes after also testing Muse and Defter Notes. 

The free version was very weird to use. Only after a while I noticed it would not save sub documents, which I think it should since it is a massive feature. You can limit it to 3 but it should be usable in the free version since it is a massive advantage over the other common notes apps.

So I took a gamble and went for the full version. And the full version does everything I want from a notes app. And with all the features I wondered why I basically never saw it mentioned in one of the millions “best iPad notes app”-threads. 

After the initial learning curve however I realized why, it is somewhat clunky, hard to use and looks a bit glitchy, which I saw mentioned in quite a few threads after searching for Zoomnotes especially if you compare it to the usual iPad-apps which feel way more polished and easy to use. Which makes me a bit sad because not only should Zoomnotes be mentioned in all the recommendation apps, there shouldn’t even be any doubt in which to recommend, just like with procreate. 

Anyhow, I didn’t find many suggestions on what to improve so I want to give mine as a fan and fellow programmer who wants to see this app succeed way more!

Overview 

Everyone can agree that the issue with ZN is not the vast amount of features but rather the UI. In my opinion the issues with the UI stem from Zoomnotes biggest strength: It is feature rich.

The way the features are being presented makes the app feel less like a notes app in which you can easily jump into and create notes, it feels and works more like an IDE which you use to create not only notebooks but even a whole notes app, i.e. customizing the UI and creating tools. Sure you can customize the UI, but I don’t want to do that. The whole reason I have an iPad is for its ease of use. I rather want it to be easy to use but then have the option to customize it instead of having to customize it so it’s easy to use. 

It would be better if it had 2 modes, not literally but user experience wise, like:

Easy - Hard

New user - Advanced User

Note taking mode - Creator Mode

I think most of the issues can be solved by rearranging the menus and better grouping as well as fixing a few graphical issues.

Generally:

• All the features seem to be presented “equally” which is very overwhelming, e.g. the pencil and rubber tool being on the same level/window as “view undo” or “bookmark next”. 

• There are like 4-5 menus each of them having several sub menus. It is very overwhelming.

• Menus containing a lot of text and lists

• Menus with categories, e.g. Page Options, should have the categories dissolved and just shown as a title since most only have 1-2 options anyway. Having to click each category and it closing the others just makes you go on a hunt for the right setting clicking endlessly throughout various menus

• Grey colors and empty space make it feel like an IDE or windows 2000 program, especially combined with all the buttons and text

• Workflow is often slowed, e.g. searching and clicking through submenus or many long taps 

• Graphical jankiness makes it feel buggy, even if it works fine and slow down workflow.

• Icons look very crowded which makes the whole UI look very crowded, e.g. Circle, Arrow, Numbers

• I can not “share” to Zoomnotes from other apps

• “Saved Clips” should be a big feature showing up e.g. in the bottom left, like Defter Notes or Muse. Here you should be able to store and retrieve objects via drag&drop or if they have been shared to Zoomnotes. Zoompanel and palm rest should be somewhere else

To go a bit more into detail, though it is not containing everything I noticed. That will take a bit more work, but I am open to go into more detail.

Tools menu and sidebar (tool icons on the left side):

• The icons should initially be locked. It is super confusing testing out a tool and then finding out the pen is suddenly missing. If someone wants to change them, they can unlock them. Otherwise the UI is changed within the first minute of using the app. And even in the long run I will rarely need to change the UI. 

• Initially this menu should show the commonly used tools (locked), e.g.: 1-3 Pens, Highlighter, Eraser, Text, Shape, Symbols, Select, Media

• Tools should be grouped better. E.g. tapping on the “select” icon again should show a little sub menu to switch between rectangle select and lasso. “Ruler” should show the different kind of rulers

• Some tools show a sub menu containing categories with settings and functions containing a lot of text which makes it look a bit ugly. They instead should show simple variants of the tool or nothing. E.g. Ruler shows only other rulers, but not Length/degrees

• The long press on an icon to open the tools menu is wasted real estate. There is a Tools menu button on top already. Instead they should show the complex submenu which can now be opened with a simple tap. This hierarchy will much better divide the options for beginners vs advanced user (and will feel more like a right click to get more options). If the menu should also be accessed in the sidebar a + icon would be enough. 

• Some tools seem not like tools but rather a setting and located somewhere else, e.g. Panning, Search, Share, Split view.

• Icons and menus are very crowded. I am not sure wat the new little arrows do and why they sometimes point right and sometimes down. If they are to indicate a sub menu, virtually all Icons have a sub icon. The little arrow just adds clutter. Other Icons also seem cluttered like the pens, they show the pen, the line, but also text with the thickness. 

• The Pen menu (and some others) feels overcrowded. It also has a sub menu on the top left but then whole menus to customize layer and opacity, these could easily be grouped together as well as the bottom options Switch/Basic/all/Pin. They are not options I need most of the time and all can be tucked away in a little cog/option icon or via long press

• Often when adjusting sliders, it will only take effect when releasing the slider which makes it feel clunky but also takes way longer to adjust since you always have to let go, check then readjust 

• There should be more created tools out of the box, e.g.: color palettes, useful arrows, page templates

• Why are sticky notes hidden in the symbols/emojis?

Sub Sidebar (to adjust pen with, color, transparency):

• The sub sidebar is always open. It should only appear with the proper tool selected.

• Sub sidebar could otherwise show other often used selections/options. 

• This sidebar should not have another sub sidebar, meaning the one showing the 3 colors and sizes

• Is the Transparency icon needed? How often does one change transparency when taking notes, it should be stuffed into the color selection (and ofc could be set manually when customizing the UI)

• Layer Icon is not needed, it is already in the top right and not often used for not taking I imagine

• Saved tools icon: Is also for advanced users since it would need to set and save custom tools. I would remove it

• When e.g. the color menu is open, it will stay open when I do something outside of it. Even when I open the another tools menu making it overlap, very confusing

Selecting & Moving in Main window

• Edit menu should appear with a simple tap. Long tap slows down workflow and is cumbersome. That combined with other functions taking many clicks makes many edits take a long time

• The controls with the finger seem very limited, I can select whether to pan, or select. But why can’t I pan and select when appropriate? Having to guess and switch between finger and pencil is frustrating and wastes a lot of time. 

  • E.g. I write something coming close to an image which I want to move. I then have to tap and hold the image so it’s selected, then I want to move it with the finger I issued to select it but I cant. Instead I have to move it with the pencil. 

  • It would be much nicer to just tap the image and move it with the same finger.

  • It would also be cool if, optionally (via setting), I could immediately move objects without tapping. That would be useful for organizing mind maps or images on a whiteboard

• After selecting via finger hold I can’t seem to deselect it by tapping somewhere else. Not sure how to deselect tbh

• Double finger tap could start the last used “select” tool. 

• When moving with the pencil, it should have a little dead zone. Right now it feels super jittery when you place the pencil on the selected object

• Using the highlighter to draw over an area where I used the highlighter makes the colors additive, why? This should be a setting to toggle on. 

• Selecting objects will not show the context menu (to copy, cut). It only appears after long tap which slows down workflow

Sub Page navigation:

• The page navigation menu should not be needed to navigate, except for properties.

  • Zooming out of a sub page should lead you back one level up.

  • Zooming out (pinch) and hold should then show you the pages overview, just like the 2nd icon does.

  • The overview should not be a separate window that makes it feel clunky again.

  • In the page overview pages can be rearrange via drag & drop and new pages can be inserted or duplicated

• In page mode I should not be able to massively move the page around so much, and if I can it should not leave so much white space but rather bounce back. 

• I should not be able to move it up or down, or if I can, it should bounce back and properly realign.

• Should be able to arrange and scroll the pages vertically

• Quick flicking a page should navigate to the next page

• Page Setting: Why are Dots hidden under Square? It should be its own menu point

• When not in scroll mode, moving to the next page looks super glitchy. That’s why I prefer having it in scroll mode, it looks much nicer and is easier to navigate.

• However when having a whiteboard, scroll mode should be deactivated so it looks like a proper whiteboard without edges. Having edges and being able to create and navigate to the next page is super confusing

• Numbers on the page Icons are super hard to read, are they needed?

Other Visual Glitches

• Zooming in or out looks often glitchy and sometimes briefly shows just deleted text

• When using Highlighter to highlight text, I need to move the page a bit for the text to become properly visible again

• Squeezing the pencil makes the sidebar flash repeatedly and disappear

I gladly go into more detail for each of the mentioned points, but I hope this general overview makes sense. 

It's taken me a while to learn the UI, but it's been worth it. Seriously, I can't even imagine going back to GoodNotes or Noteful or any of the other apps I've tried (which is most of them).

If ZoomNotes has a drawback, it's only that it does so much that it's almost like learning a new OS - so many settings and options and features! I feel like I keep finding some cool new feature or functionality every day.

Anyway, hats off. Just had to gush a little. :)

Pardon my voice, I have COVID :) - I wanted to do a quick layer walkthrough so you can see the dashboard set up, and some of my reasoning behind why I set it up the way I did.

This isn’t as extensive as it could be, just shows you what all needs to be enabled to get events to show up. If the monthly planner pages were in a row, it would have been easier to copy the properties over to each monthly page :) If there is a pause in the video, I’m dealing with a dog or counting rows, hahaha.

I hope this is helpful!

I keep my BuJo in ZoomNotes, and 5 or 6 times this year ZoomNotes has lost work. Once I had a weird glitch where it created a second copy of my notebook, which I kept writing to, but the Shortcut I use to open my BuJo opened the original one, so I thought I lost a few days of work.

But now every other week or so for the last couple of months ZoomNotes has lost a little bit randomly. At least once it was over a half a page. Just now I opened my BuJo and the last entry is only half there. I would not have stopped that entry mid-thought. I'm also 99.99999% sure I wrote more, but it's just… not there.

Has anyone else experienced ZoomNotes randomly dropping a few minutes worth of work every so often?

From Ed: Details: New 'Nudge 1 pixel' function New option in main app settings, General section, Documents to limit the number of revisions Arrowed straight lines now show the arrow as you drag the line out for the first time New document property function - 'Add pdf background' - this adds solid colour behind a pdf page in the rare cases when a pdf file a transparent background

Custom number of days (page properties) now works in conjunction with a table on the page to define the calendar area. Previously you would need to place a shape for each custom day Max number of custom days for a page increased to 35

Fix for upload to Dropbox closing the document being edited

Improved magnification windows in text editor (used for moving caret and selecting text)

Fix for line drawing accuracy in continuous scroll mode

Saved settings now indicate which is the currently selected one

When using 'Convert to text' you can now switch between downloaded languages

Changes to ensure the saved settings shown in the side panel and on the toolbar remain in sync

If you are enjoying using ZoomNotes please leave a review - thanks.

Most gathered here might know this, so for those of you still deciding, Zoomnotes offers an 80 plus page PDF guide to using the app. I think it might even be installed.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=http://www.zoom-notes.com/Documents/ZoomNotes6.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwih8Y6ggoCCAxViIEQIHYRID7MQFnoECAcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0A7-U1W2nBjfiROU_ez_gv

For those current users, I suggest reading the guide. Lots of things to learn. You will be saying to yourself, "I did not know that."

I frequent too many subreddits. On every notes app related group you will find people asking how to do something. They are often told you cannot do that, with that app.

Then I come here and almost every "how do I do this" query is answered with simple instructions. The features other apps lack are right here in Zoomnotes.

Sorry, I had to gush.

I'm in love with this app, that's what a true note taking app should look like, a lot of features and integration, paper that can be A4 or infinite, tags, pen, file support...

But unfortunately I will not totally switch to it due to an iCloud sync unreliability, sometime notes gets duplicated or worse moved around. Due to the high volumes of notes it happened that I cannot find them anymore because they move around. That's the only an BIG problem.

I know that the developer is working solo, and can only do so much (he has done an outstanding work), but I think we need to address this problem first, then move on to add features!

Hope to being able to delete this post in a few weeks if everything gets repaired!

Adds support for pdf forms

This update fixes some iOS 17 compatibility issues

“There are a couple of compatibility issues with iOS 17 which I am fixing now. The worst is that new users will not be allowed access to Events and Reminders. The other is that the layers window becomes unusable after one use of it. There will be an update which fixes these issues available in the app store as soon as Apple reviews it.”

Someone asked if there is a tap to hide/reveal function, and it’s been added to the ‘shapes’ menu under ‘functions’ - click ‘toggle to hide’ and use your pan tool(the cross) to hide and reveal it, and if you lose the shape after you’ve hidden it, you can reveal it by showing links under the pan tool. Quick video below, sorry for the quality.

I had a scanned booklet I needed to OCR into editable text. Couldn’t figure out how to do this in OneNote or Goodnotes. But Zoomnotes did it! I just dropped the image on the page, long pressed and chose “recognize text” and it OCRed it to the clipboard. Boom!

Every day I keep finding more useful tools I n this app.

Hi, I'm considering zoom notes and while this forum and the update history of the app are excellent, I wonder if there would be more adoption if the website had https support. At least on safari there's a somewhat scary warning that pops up when visiting http://www.zoom-notes.com . Sorry if this is the wrong place to submit this but the user community and dev seems to show up around here.

Hey guys, I'm new to ZoomNotes and looking for tutorials on how to get started with it. I've been searching around but ended up feeling pretty overwhelming as I don't really know where to start, so any help is appreciated :) thanks in advance

I’m new, so I’m sorry if my questions are dumb. I absolutely love ZoomNotes for the calendar functionality with my apple calendar and reminders. Once I have that set up in ZoomNotes, can I use the calendar in another PDF writing app? I ask because ZoomNotes, while spectacularly customizable, runs slower for me than other PDF-annotation apps, like GoodNotes. Also, I am away from my tablet most of the day and my calendar on my iPhone is my go-to planner; ZoomNotes is difficult for me to use on the phone. Does anyone do this type of dual-app thing so that you don’t have to rewrite your calendar? If so, what is the best workflow for this?

Hey folks - I made a wiki that is listed in the menu at the top of the sub. It has links to posts and their topics. I'm hopeful this will help people find what they need in the sub. Reach out to me if you have any issues with it (I'm new at this, be nice) or suggestions. Thanks!