Notability

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. [R3] 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
2. [R30] 1/5 · US Ugh: I’m so upset. It’s not free. I was looking for an app that was free but apparently this isn’t it.
3. [R91] 3/5 · US It’s alright: It’s nice but only with the paid features. My school uses it with subscriptions but at home I use it without subscription and it’s pretty bad without paying for subscription. With subscriptions it’s pretty good tho. Unless you’re planning to pay for an app, I would just use the basic Apple notes app.
4. [R261] 3/5 · GB Good: I just really would like the pages not to be limited. I love the app but I had to uninstall because I had not enough pages and I don’t have the money for pro version!
5. [R8] 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!!!!!!!!!
6. [R37] 1/5 · US Not good.: I paid premium and not even using a full ‘learning’ they said I used maxed. And if I wanna talk with customers service it’s AI just telling me to update my membership. Which $99 no way. Something wrong with system :( terrible !!
7. [R59] 4/5 · US Great, but…: I use this app all the time and love it. I bought it back when it was a one-time purchase, and when they moved to a subscription model I was grandfathered in with the ‘classic’ license. That’s excellent. However, the app continually tries to upsell me on the subscription, which I refuse to buy as I’ve already got too many media and storage subscriptions. I wish I could turn off that a
8. [R159] 3/5 · US Obnoxious Upgrade Reminders / Frequent Crashes: Im a medical scientist who writes and reviews medical journals. I used to use iAnnotate until iOS updates made it obsolete. I purchased a subscription to Notability, was satisfied with its annotation capabilities but the frequent reminders to upgrade to a higher tier subscription, reminders to use their cloud service and frequent crashes despite usin
9. [R183] 3/5 · US This used to be a 5 star App: I’ve waited months before writing this review because I was such of a fan of this app. Since the beginning of the year, Notability has become so aggressive about pushing Notability Pro. I’m already a paying Notability Plus user. The most recent frustration occurred when they introduced Notability Cloud promising enhancements. I discovered my 1200 written documents wer
10. [R308] 3/5 · GB Used to be good: Unfortunately in recent years this app has become quite frustrating to use. There are constant messages about their subscription which I’m not interested in. My notes regularly de-sync and I have to wait 20 minutes for them to re-download again, and sometimes my notes have inexplicably disappeared only to re appear days later with no rhyme or reason to it. I think the only correla
11. [R241] 3/5 · US Great for study and exam prep… but costly: Love this app and have been using it for a longgg time, I remember when I first got it, they were only charging like $5.99 or something for the upfront purchase. When they started to integrate AI, they started charging users to pay an astronomical amount for their AI integrations. If you want to turn your notes into a reliable note taking, exam prep, and
12. [R49] 1/5 · US Used to be my favorite Note Taking app: This app was my ride or die and I swore by it. I recommended it to all my classmates and it has been great. Unfortunately this latest update has ruined the experience of the app. Now that I have to pay $99 for one of the best features of Smart Notes I am now seeking other options. This feature enhanced my experience as a student as it allowed me to have an o
13. [R327] 3/5 · GB Does not support family sharing: Good app, but at time of writing the App Store states it supports family sharing. This does not extend to subscriptions. Buyer beware.
14. [R4] 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.
15. [R14] 5/5 · US Excellent: I’ve been using it for years, and I love it. Much easier to study.
16. [R15] 5/5 · US Nursing School: This has been the best thing ever for note taking and lectures
17. [R21] 5/5 · US Love this app: this has been so helpful in my school work.
18. [R35] 5/5 · US Use it if you’re in school!: This is one of the coolest apps if you’re in undergrad or graduate school. I’m able to download professors slides right into the app, mark it up, take notes that AI will use to create a quiz, etc. just a very cool app that bridges the traditional note taking for me-pen to paper, which is how I retain information-but also adds really cool technology features in a mindfu
19. [R69] 5/5 · US ADHD Adult & Kid friendly: For transparency, I did not use the free version long before I saw the value in. The app itself is extremely easy to navigate. I love how easy it is to access across multiple devices. My daughter can use it on the iPad, while I am looking over my notes on the phone. The smart note transcription has helped my daughter to breakdown the content in videos teachers give her a
20. [R88] 4/5 · US MAKE AI QUIZ FONT BIGGER: I love using the AI quiz generator on both my laptop and iPad but omgggg my eyes burn from the small font off my Mac. I cannot find a way to make it bigger and it is so annoying because I want to continue using the feature but have to take frequent breaks. If i could blow up the text, I would use it for hours. PLEASE FIX THIS
21. [R124] 5/5 · US Science heavy program, AI model thrives: As a student in a medicine program (anesthesia), that is obviously heavy in science material, I find Notability to be perfect. The study tools it has built in are the best of the apps I have tried during my education. 10/10 would study again.
22. [R54] 5/5 · US A great note taking app: I was looking for something that functioned like the native Notes app and OneNote from Microsoft for my math and engineering classes, Notability did the trick. It has near zero latency for the Apple Pencil, big fan of the math conversions, and allows pretty great customization. One thing I wish Notability had is “digital notebooks” that I can section off, similar to OneNo
23. [R57] 3/5 · US Great for writing notes; but terrible for typing: I love and hate this app at the same time. I love using this app when taking notes with my apple pencil. However, to use it like Microsoft Word, it is absolutely buggy and frustrating. There are just way too many bugs to type with this app. (on the MacBook Pro and on the iPad both have many bugs for typing. If you want the best handwriting app, the
24. [R105] 5/5 · US Noteability Web is the best upgrade. Please keep it available forever.: I’ve been using this app to study for career milestone exams for years. Compared to the other apps out there this is the most functional, versatile, easy to use, and aesthetic. Over the years, this app has had glitches and functions removed or changed. 2026 is the first year that Noteability Web became available (trust me I’ve
25. [R120] 5/5 · US BEST NOTETAKING APP IVE USED: I’m in college, and desperate for a good notetaking app, and frankly, this is the best one I’ve ever used, both aesthetically and practically. It’s so much cuter than any app I’ve seen and used, and it’s also easy to upload documents or images. The sync feature across devices is extremely quick. If I’m scribbling on my iPad, I can see it doodling on my Mac notability
26. [R1] 1/5 · US Lost all my notes: Literally lost everything and all my notes r blank
27. [R6] 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…
28. [R7] 3/5 · US App always freezing and M4 iPad overheating: I used to love this app and used it through my masters program with every class. Now, after the update, it is completely nonfunctional on both of my iPads. The app freezes almost instantly and will not let me do anything until I close and reopen it. Even then, it freezes again within seconds. I can’t work on new notes and all my old notes are inaccessib
29. [R10] 1/5 · US Stealing our notes for their cloud service: They're now forcing us to move to their garbage cloud service that has carve outs in their privacy policy allowing them access to notes and use for ai training. There's no opt out. Previously you could use encrypted storage on iCloud for cloud storage. Notability didn't like that. Now they're forcing everyone over to their own cloud to steal our document
30. [R2] 1/5 · US DO NOT USE THIS APP: I do not understand why I need a notability account to use this app. If you do care the personal information, not using this app. I just want an app to write the notes and keep my notes only on my device.
31. [R22] 1/5 · US For over a Decade: I have been using Notability forever. I paid for the full version and then I started subscribing. As a subscriber I decided to use Notability Cloud syncing. I was surprised that I could not also use Apple iCloud sync and backup. This is a deal breaker. And now, I cannot revert back to Apple iCloud sync and backup. WHY? Please allow me to do both or at least allow me to go back t
32. [R28] 1/5 · US Terrible update: Long time user of this app for at least 5 years. Now they force me to use their cloud services and must log-in. I’ll switch to using Goodnotes instead.