HyNote
HyNote is a powerful AI-powered note-taking and summarization app that users find highly beneficial for academic and professional use, but it faces significant criticism regarding its pricing, hidden costs, and technical issues like syncing and stability.
HyNote is an AI-powered note-taking application designed to transcribe, summarize, and organize information from meetings, lectures, and other audio sources. While many users praise its effectiveness in generating summaries, to-do lists, and study materials, a substantial number of recent reviews highlight issues with its pricing model, unexpected charges, and various technical glitches.
What users like
- Effectively transcribes, summarizes, and organizes notes from various sources, including audio and YouTube videos.R1R2R13R20
- Generates study aids like quizzes and flashcards, which are highly valued by students.R29R30R31R35
- User-friendly interface and ease of use for capturing and managing notes.R1R6R11R14
- Helpful for medical coding, billing, and other professional tasks.R1R83
What users complain about
- Pricing model is confusing, expensive, and includes hidden fees or limitations, leading to unexpected charges and frustration.R9R17R39R40
- Frequent technical issues including crashes, syncing difficulties, and a recurring "temporary issue" error.R24R28R34R88
- Transcription accuracy and quality have declined for some users, with grammar issues and cut-off content.R27R147R252R260
- Recording can be interrupted or fail if other apps are opened, or calls/notifications are received.R51R182
- Customer support is unresponsive or unhelpful, particularly regarding refund requests.R99R117R210R275
- Slow processing times for generating notes and summaries.R75R242
Latest update · v18.1
What the developer says changed (the verdict above weighs this against what reviewers report):
UX improvements and bug fixes.
Recurring themes
Who it's for
HyNote is for students, professionals, and anyone needing to efficiently capture, transcribe, and summarize spoken information from meetings, lectures, or online videos R1R2R13R20. It is particularly useful for those who benefit from AI-generated study guides, quizzes, and flashcards R29R30R31R35. However, users who are budget-conscious, rely heavily on cross-device syncing, or require uninterrupted recording should be cautious R9R17R24R34.
Evidence note: The recent reviews skew negative, primarily due to pricing issues and technical glitches, which contrasts with the high lifetime rating. Many positive reviews are short and generic, while negative reviews are detailed and specific, suggesting a recent decline in user satisfaction or a change in business model.
Frequently asked
Is HyNote free to use?
Does HyNote accurately transcribe and summarize?
Are there any known technical issues with HyNote?
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.
- [R1] Awesome!!!: This app is much better for my note taking..I’m doing medical coding and billing myself and it’s helped out a lot..I tried Tikonote but you have to pay to download a pdf file but with HyNote I can do so much more..amazing app!!
- [R2] Awesome app: Makes it so easy to capture meetings, studying or basic talk point notes.
- [R13] Love this app: I love this app so much I can pay attention to my classes and not have to worry about taking notes
- [R20] An excellent edition to note taking: This app is a life saver! Especially if you have instructors who tend to get off course during lectures. It allows you to navigate through key concepts and information.
- [R29] I'm happy I downloaded this app: Well I started back in college after graduating 14yrs ago. I decided to change my degree and start on a new path. I started off writing notes in my class but realized it isn't the early 2000's anymore. So I looked up this app, downloaded it and it has worked wonders with my assignments and study guide for my exams as well as flashcards.
- [R30] The rating: This app helped me last minute. I had a test yesterday and I downloaded this app to give me a brief summary of my notes and I got a 100 on my test thanks to this app
- [R31] Study: I love this app! It’s been a life saver as I’ve been studying to pass my license exam!
- [R35] 5 stars: It helped me with summarizing, quizzing, and giving me flash cards so I can study for tests
- [R6] Easy: I have a A+
- [R11] Really cool: Nice easy to access and clear
- [R14] Perfect!: Love this app - very easy to use and accuracy is excellent! I use my IPhone but you can connect it to your Apple Watch too
- [R83] Great App: So worth the money spent. I attend lots of meetings where I have to concisely deliver the information to my staff. This allows me to do this quick and efficiently.
- [R9] Credit card REQIRED: They make you create an account and sign up and then show you their very expensive plans. The minimum is $15 per month. There are a ton of good notetaking apps out there not to mention apples free notes.
- [R17] Expensive: This app is good for studying but it’s so expensive for a subscription
- [R39] Maddi: This app is terrible because you literally have to pay for it just to record 5 minutes downloading this app was just a waste of storage.
- [R40] No free trial: If you're going to offer a three day trial, then you need to allow access to the app… I was really frustrated because I want to try to see if your app works for my needs and yet you don't allow any access to the app without forcing your customer to end the free trial and to be immediately charged ! What's the point of offering a free trial if you don't give access to your entire app
- [R24] SYNC DIFFICULT: As mentioned by last review it’s so hard barely syncs
- [R28] Revising this downward as of 2.7.26: On 11.8.25. I stated “soon to be best in class”… Unfortunately, I was wrong and I say this primarily for a few disturbing reasons: 1) this app is advertised as being available on iOS, macOS, and web, but realistically, it is not available at all on Web if you have any level of privacy protections toggled on in your browser, whether by default or by your own d
- [R34] Crashed: I just missed recording a very important meeting, there is some issue and I couldn’t get it to work. Odd this thing crashes after my free test days. I’d like to cancel and get my money back please. Also went to the help area and that was crashed as well. Please refund and delete this app from my phone.
- [R88] TEMPORARY ISSUE!!!: i’ve had this less than a day and paid for a subscription of almost $18 a month to use this for college and it won’t let me log in.. this is a scam. it deleted my first day of schools lecture recordings the day i recorded them. SCAM!!!
- [R27] Was great - now lacking: When I first downloaded the app, everything worked perfectly. A few mistakes here and there, but easy to correct. Now? SO MANY MISTAKES! Major grammar issues, missing punctuation, no capitalization of letters. This app has gone to trash in the last month!
- [R147] Read the one star reviews!!: I’m so disappointed in this.. there’s a monthly limit for time regardless of the package you purchase. You read that right.. You just spent over $120 to get to use this like a trial run.. On a software note, it’s pretty good .. the translation could use a little work along with the transcript but all in all pretty good. But the hidden fees to actually be able to us
- [R252] Some youtube transcript has been cut too short: I think it is a great app by the way and love it so far. But today I did few youtube videos that I want a full transcript for each video. I added a special Instructions to tell it to write word by word transcript and it did. But it does not understand when I saw a very long paragraph so I asked it to spilt into new paragraph when it is over 4 lines a
- [R260] It has changed. Not for the better: When I first purchased this app it was amazing. Not sure what has changed but the notes and meeting minutes that are generated can’t even be used. A huge waste of money. I immediately cancelled my subscription
- [R51] Enjoy it: I do enjoy the application. The only concern I have is that it stops working if I open up a different application or if a phone call comes in I have to restart it but other than that I do enjoy it.
- [R182] Beware - Don’t get: If you receive a phone call, text, or notification from any other application it will not record and keep the rest of the meeting. I reached out to the apps tech services and all they said was to make sure while recording not to be disturbed by any other application. That’s just not going to work for most people. Also this was the paid version. I cancelled my $19.99 a month imm
- [R99] Has never worked for any IPAD based lectures: Update : 6 months still no refund , multiple emails, app is useless for IPAD based lessons. Company will not refund. BUYERS AVOID. Much better solutions elsewhere. Let my pain be your warning. Update: Still no refund despite numerous attempts beginning day 1 of purchase. Do not trust this vendor. Simply unable to transcribe or note take on any lesso
- [R117] Scam: Bought the annual subscription and the app wasn’t able to pick up sound from my professor talking. Asked for a refund and they said I was out of luck.
- [R210] Rip-off: These guys roped me off for a full year worth of subscription even though I cancelled the very next day! Totally useless and I do not recommend it!
- [R275] Scam: I put my card number in for the free trial, but when I went to cancel there was no way for me to cancel my subscription so after my free trial they charged me 112$ when I didn’t even want to renew my membership. I still don’t know how to cancel my account and I can’t find anyway of contacting the support! I’m so upset I’m a broke college student with barely enough money for food. Let alone
- [R75] Slow: Very slow, had the best plan for 5 minutes, payed $200.00. Used voice to talk and said would answer right away. Indeed did not and not worth $200.00.
- [R242] Slow conversion: Sometimes it takes over a day to create notes for 30 min conversation. It does a good job at creating to-do, summary etc. I reinstalled the app hoping that it will fix the issue. Due to slowness, I feel I wasted annual subscription money
- [R15] New here: Using this help understand understood build stuff become more smarter person
- [R57] Scam company: I was charged for a year and I don't even know what this app is
Synthesized from 120 recent App Store reviews · updated July 2026 · View on the App Store