Goodnotes

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] 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. [R3] 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. [R6] 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. [R7] 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. [R17] 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
6. [R37] 1/5 · US Low number of Ai credits: I ran out of Ai credits after only one meeting.
7. [R285] 3/5 · GB Good app, but Goodnotes AI credits?????: Goodnotes is a great app, don’t get me wrong, but there is one annoying thing about it. It’s that you only get 10 Ai credits per month for Goodnotes ai which I think is certainly not enough for A FULL MONTH. To me this is a pretty big letdown as I mostly use it for homework and I use the Goodnotes ai for it but now that I have run out, it’s pretty much usel
8. [R11] 1/5 · US 1 star: Have to pay to do anything
9. [R47] 5/5 · US 💖💖Love but one thing!💖💖: Please read! I love ALL the stuff that GoodNotes has. but i started my 7 day free trial and I don’t like that you have to pay for using this app and i have searched everwhere for this kind of App and I found one. Sadly it cost money and I don’t want to pay for something that I would use only on school days and writing essays. but if you are willing to pay I would DEFINIT
10. [R20] 2/5 · US Constant reverification: The app is fine when I can actually access it but I am constantly (literally every time i open it) asked to reverify my purchase, which is a huge nuisance at best. There have been no updates to fix said issue either
11. [R41] 1/5 · US Paid for subscription and it has said no subscription since!: It may have been a great app once but I have not had a useful experience with it at all which sucks. Waste of money for the yearly subscription and waste of time to download. I paid on June 18th and it has not showed my subscription yet!. I do not recommend at all.
12. [R8] 5/5 · US Free: Definitely recommend this app I love using it for planning school project dates and when they are due also very smooth with Apple Pencil and ipad
13. [R12] 5/5 · US Don’t Know What I’d Do Without You: My entire life is organized in this app. Journal, medical records, vet records, shopping lists, creative writing, self-learning, flow charts, PDFs I need to edit, anything you can think of. I used to use OneNote for my work life. But I like the user interface here more. It’s simplified. It does all the things I want it to flawlessly. It’s wonderful to have any d
14. [R21] 5/5 · US Law school worthy: Graduated law school used this app for the second half of that journey instead of spiral bound notebooks and pens.
15. [R24] 5/5 · US Wonderful Tool: I spent a significant amount of time reviewing all the different note taking tools out there, and I decided to go with this for its longevity as the standard. As an approx 50 yr old exec, I was worried about it focusing on other software/cloud data/stuff I don’t want to learn/etc…but it strikes the right balance of new vs old. I didn’t find the available templates perfect for my ne
16. [R80] 5/5 · US Love the new update: I’ve been using this app for about six months now. I’ve been using it to study, journal, and explore new hobbies. It’s been so helpful to have all of my study content in a digital form where I can write using my iPad and Apple Pencil, but then review my notes on my phone when I’m on the go. I know that my brain works better at remembering when I can write, but I hate carrying
17. [R81] 5/5 · US Best writing app!: I’ve been using this app for several years, and it is the best, most intuitive and wonderful note app I’ve ever had. I love it. Recently upgraded my iPad, and I decided to get the paid version. $12 a year is more than worth it. Love everything about this app. I use it daily.
18. [R35] 5/5 · US Good app!: Super useful and helps to keep a lot of thoughts and teachings organized and safe. I would 100% recommend for school,church,journalism and even drawing! Very helpful and easy to use. And it even gives you 3 free notebooks to start with and a good deal to get more afterwards which I guarantee that you won’t regret. ☺️
19. [R73] 1/5 · US SO LAGGY: app has some good features like customizing notebook cover and pages, customizing toolbar, and considering palm rejection in the ways you hold your pen. BUT the program is so laggy where you write lines and it becomes dots attaching together. This happens in unlimited whiteboard AND regular notebooks when you near a "max" in how much content you put into the tab. Laggy especially neari
20. [R36] 5/5 · US Must have: has really helped transform my notes\ Assignments for classes over the past three years
21. [R99] 5/5 · US Fantastic App for Electrical Design: This is a great app for laying your own designs over blue prints and floor plans. You can create your own symbol stamps lighting fast. Very user friendly. Cannot recommend enough.
22. [R19] 1/5 · US Lifetime isn’t lifetime: I purchased lifetime subscription but they don’t honor that. They force updates that require paid subscriptions or the app limits you to 3 notebooks.
23. [R42] 1/5 · US Disappointed with subscription model: I was disappointed to login to my account to discover that I have to repay for notebooks that I already had access to, due to whatever new subscription model you all have decided to change to. I paid a one time fee which means I should still have access to all of my notebooks that I originally had access to, not just 3. I will NOT be paying to upgrade and will
24. [R2] 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
25. [R44] 2/5 · US Doesn’t Sync Well: I’ve had to redownload the app on my MacBook multiple times just to log in and get my stuff synced between the laptop and my iPad
26. [R46] 2/5 · US Great on MAC but..: A very significant limitation is the poor compatibility with MS Windows. I bought this expecting a seamless connection on my windows and Mac computers, but it didn’t happen. Can’t recommend it to users who plan to use it on these two systems.
27. [R70] 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.
28. [R4] 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
29. [R15] 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.
30. [R18] 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.
31. [R22] 2/5 · US Deletes my notes as i write: Every time I write down notes and then I go down to the next line to write more notes. It’s deleting the notes above what I’m writing and it’s getting very frustrating for me because I am trying to make progress in schoolwork and I’m losing the notes I’m writing.. please help. iPad a16!