Goodnotes alternatives

What reviewers actually said

Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.

1. [R1] Goodnotes 1/5 · US USED to be good, now it’s absolute garbage!: I remember buying this app because they specifically said no subscriptions. That was like 5 years ago and now of course, like everyone else they want more money. I tested version 6 and the only thing I could get to work was the purchase screen. Without paying more money, and your previous purchase not meaning anything, you can’t do anything with this. D
2. [R7] Goodnotes 1/5 · US GoodNotes 5: Crazy how you pay for something and then a company just decides to remove features you paid for and try to force you into a subscription to get the features back. Should be illegal actually. Must pay to use internal links suddenly, when it’s always done it. I would never pay you a dime more for this reason. I’d rather pay a more honest developer.
3. [R13] Goodnotes 1/5 · US Very Sleazy Business: Changed Rules After Purchase. Because I would not pay again to upgrade they reduced the features and limited imports to pressure me. I switched to another app.
4. [R16] Goodnotes 1/5 · US Locked Out Even With Payment: This app used to be great, I loved it for keeping a recipe book and a budget planner as well as other random things. I paid several years ago the $10 or whatever it was to have full access to everything and now I’m locked out of the unlimited notebooks simply because they want to scam me into paying the monthly subscription? No thank you. I feel like those of us who p
5. [R2] Goodnotes 4/5 · US Pretty solid :): I really like to make notes fun and this is perfect but if you want to draw for any reason it sometimes deletes stuff randomly
6. [R6] Goodnotes 3/5 · US Good most of the time.: For the most part it’s great! I do experience some bugs sometimes where it will start deleting stuff that I have written as I continue my notes then it will continue to give me an error message if I try restarting the app and I have to restart my IPad to get it to work properly again. These are recent bugs for me as I used to not experience them.
7. [R15] Goodnotes 3/5 · US It won’t let me upload photos: Every time I try to upload a photo it kicks me out of the app! Wish it was fixed, I love this app!
8. [R36] Goodnotes 3/5 · GB do NOT get this app: The stars was just so i could reach people, please don’t put trust into this app. I have had an issue of notes going blank before exams which is frustrating. They will literally just make your notes disappear. My note books are all blank. They don’t have a phone number for the purpose of ignoring you when you email them. The customer service is genuinely terrible. They will gi
9. [R4] Goodnotes 1/5 · US if you’re looking for cross platform compatibility, look elsewhere: though allegedly i might be able to share my notebooks when i get my invite to use their cloud service, i cannot share notebooks between ios and windows/web as the not so helpful tech support rep suggested, i cannot import pdfs of my windows/web notebooks into the ios client. this is fairly frustrating
10. [R24] Goodnotes 3/5 · US Sync function sucks: I do work on my iPad and laptop and there is always an error message when it comes to syncing my laptop. Please update the app because this is very frustrating.
11. [R42] Goodnotes 3/5 · GB Mac version: Doesnt work well, deletes half of my work all the time and is not possible to bring it back especially when typing, iPad version is much better but its pretty bad on Mac, only helpful to see what I did on iPad but not to actually use on Mac
12. [R3] Goodnotes 3/5 · US Updates: So many updates but the copy via drag and drop still doesn’t work. It takes so much time copying an entire sticker book. If I lasso multiple stickers, I they aren’t individual stickers after pasting to a new document. I hope the feature is fixed.
13. [R9] Goodnotes 3/5 · US Slow launch time: When I need to make a note, I need to make it now. Fraught iCloud sync and periodic updates make it so there is a lag between opening the app and when I can start working. I’m not sure if Apple prompts the review pop up or if the app developer controls that, but whenever I get that pop up I am compelled to leave a negative review as it prohibits me from getting to work. Goodnotes
14. [R10] Goodnotes 1/5 · US Please change the angle of flat edge in tip flatness.: Please change the angle of flat edge in tip flatness. It’s exactly the opposite to a fountain pen settings in apples markup. In Apple Markup, the flat-tipped pen mimics a real fountain pen, where the angle leads to horizontal thinness and vertical thickness. In Goodnotes, it seems pen engine uses a different angle orientation, making strokes
15. [R12] Goodnotes 3/5 · US Been A Supporter From Day One!: I have been with Goodnotes a long time. Have been a strong supporter. Rarely any issues, well complaints. Other issues seem to be corrected with update Kudos! However, the dropdown to access the toolbar to get started is not accessible unless you’re in Full screen mode (window). The red, yellow, green buttons cover the tool bar. It’s safe to say most of us probabl
16. [R31] Goodnotes 1/5 · US Fails badly: I bought it to record audio and transcribe a 12-hour meeting. Turns out the transcription uses tokens. When my token allotment ran out 2 hours into the meeting, the recording stopped too. The next day, I go back to review the transcript, or at least the audio: nothing past hour 2. And no warning that the recording had stopped, nothing about tokens being used or needed to keep going, jus
17. [R55] Google Docs 5/5 · US Handy: GDocs is always handy.
18. [R63] Google Docs 5/5 · US Great Asset!: Wow! So Helpful! I don’t have a computer and needed to make signs for our picnic. Google Docs came through!!
19. [R66] Notability 4/5 · US Please develop a way to hide the control bar (tools like pencil, scissors, etc.)!!!: I absolutely love Notability, it is very useful for me as a college music student. I take a lot of notes there, and I load music into it as pdfs to read and play off of. So far the experience has been wonderful, EXCEPT that there is no way to hide the controls at the top, which sometimes blocks some of the music.
20. [R67] Notability 3/5 · US This app crashes all the time: This app makes annotating very easy and has a great interface but I’ve been using it regularly for over a year and it crashes A LOT, especially when inserting a text box. It happens several times in an hour sometimes and is very frustrating because it is a paid subscription service…
21. [R71] Notability 1/5 · US AWFUL: I used to use this often during school and I decided to get it on my iPad just because I wanted to use it, but I can’t even use the text box. I have to do random stuff you can only make like six or five notes before you have to pay like $15 which I wasted so much time trying to curate notes when I literally didn’t even realize I had to pay so that sucks you guys are literally just money dea
22. [R73] Notability 3/5 · US Handwriting leaves something to be desired: Has a lot of great tools for handwriting, but a couple of very painful issues are deal breakers for me. 1. Exporting your handwritten notes as a PDF do NOT retain the OCR data (aka you can't search for words any more). So they try and trap you into keeping your subscription forever. 2. Notability's automatic backups and OCR handwriting recognition is
23. [R80] Notion 5/5 · US Appreciation: Game changer app, especially with tech background and base AI knowledge
24. [R83] Notion 5/5 · US my notion is amazing: this is the best platform for planning and building your projects that you will ever use. it can be so structured but also has incredible flexibility, and sharing workspaces with others is fast and easy. I have been using this tool for years and will continue to do so. the only thing I wish there was is a mind map feature within pages to allow users a visual representation fo
25. [R86] Notion 5/5 · US Journaling: Notion has always been a great place to jot down and plan my life out.
26. [R90] Notion 3/5 · US I love Notion, Not AI…: I use Notion everyday to help me stick to a schedule and plan my life. I despise AI, and the fact it’s even in the title name is repulsive. It’s painful to love this app due to them feeding into this.
27. [R97] Otter Transcribe Voice Notes 5/5 · US The best app ever!: Love using otter to transcribe any audio files I need transcription for. I’ve tried everything and it’s been the most accurate.
28. [R98] Otter Transcribe Voice Notes 3/5 · US Best Assistant Ever: This application is the best and most helpful tool to capture notes and deliverables in my meetings. It’s always accurate and detailed.
29. [R100] Otter Transcribe Voice Notes 5/5 · US Excellent Voice Notes: We’ve been using the software for almost 7 years now. It works fantastic for us. Otter keeps improving; their AI summaries and QA are super useful!
30. [R102] Otter Transcribe Voice Notes 5/5 · US Great!: I primarily use Otter during interviews, always with the candidate’s permission. It has been incredibly helpful because it transcribes the conversation, making it easier to review and summarize the candidate’s experience while maintaining accurate documentation. Additionally, Otter’s AI Chat helps analyze the interview and provides insights into whether the candidate appears to be qualifie
31. [R108] Freenotes® 5/5 · US College student approved: I’m a senior in college and I can honestly say this app got me through last semester! I write notes with an Apple Pencil. The documents you create are easily downloadable to devices as high quality .pdf files.
32. [R109] Freenotes® 3/5 · US Oh man it's no longer free free: It used to be awesome. But now it's no longer free free. Ppl say if you used to own it then you can get a lifetime membership, but I thought I have it and it's still not working? Man I pained 1.99 for this year, not too sure about 9.99 next year tho. Sadddd
33. [R111] Freenotes® 5/5 · US Grateful for note taking: Has a lot of features I really like the ink to text feature
34. [R114] Freenotes® 4/5 · US Good variety, minor tools missing.: I grew up using notability, so originally i was hesitant to make the switch. However it’s been about 7 months and ive been very happy with it! I do miss some things like the notability templates or the zoom box for writing. But Freenotes keeps it very easy to stay organized and I like its variability in writing tools.
35. [R110] Freenotes® 2/5 · US Not satisfied: The name is free note but I need to pay seriously not satisfied with this app poor application
36. [R113] Freenotes® 1/5 · US Free notes more like Greed notes: Change your name to paid notes or something. At least we could add notes by watching ads now you changed that too
37. [R117] Freenotes® 2/5 · US Disappointing: I’ve used this app for years now and at first it was free. Then they added ads, however it end still useable and very nice. Now, they have added a limit on how many notebooks you can have unless u pay 9 dollars a month. I’m personally disappointed and will be uninstalling.
38. [R84] Notion 3/5 · US SLOOWWWW: Please fix the app, it lags about and the writing is bad, we dont need AI so relax with it because its slowing up the app, please dont ruin the appppppp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
39. [R85] Notion 1/5 · US Issue Mobile View when Typing: Great software, great usages for all sorts of people, BUT the mobile app just struggles with one critical bug that makes the whole thing unusable. When I’m typing, the screen auto-adjusts the view so that where I’m currently typing is just out of view. When this happens, I cannot see what I am typing, hence why the app becomes unusable. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FIX THIS!
40. [R87] Notion 3/5 · US AI chatbot feature is very buggy: Takes long to load, especially on long threads, to the point where i have to quit the app and download again.
41. [R91] Notion 1/5 · US Latest updates are a problem: Notion has always been fantastic until it wasn’t. The last couple of releases it seems like it has gone downhill considerably. The screens seem to have a mind of their own now and it crashes more frequently than it ever has.
42. [R77] Notability 1/5 · US Free trial charges $100 immediately- no warning !!!!: Wanted to try the new feature to see if it was worth upgrading - instead of getting to try it I was changed immediately and I have no idea if I can get it refunded. DO NOT TRUST THIS APP!!!!!!!!!
43. [R94] Otter Transcribe Voice Notes 4/5 · US Too expensive: I like the AI service but I find it expensive because some months I don’t use it at all but lose all the minutes and some months I use it heavily and run out of minutes. So would be great if our minutes could be rolled over.
44. [R99] Otter Transcribe Voice Notes 2/5 · US Frightened!: After reading reviews and seeing $106 and realizing how many people have been jerked around for the so-called “free trial”… also, seeing the less than stellar performance that delivers when my subscription to AI already provides me as much discernment in as many options as I really (thank you ChatGPT) I decided to close from my phone for the time being. If I become aware of improvemen