Notability vs Microsoft OneNote

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. [R2] 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.
2. [R12] Notability 3/5 · US bad update: reverse the apple pencil update PLEASE or give a option to change it back. it’s not more convenient it’s actually quite annoying
3. [R15] Notability 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
4. [R22] Notability 1/5 · US Fix squeeze gesture!: Recent update ruined the squeeze gesture by forcing you to interact with a palette to switch to the eraser tool instead of allowing you to auto-switch to eraser. This makes you do an odd movement with your wrist to reach and select the eraser tool, which SIGNIFICANTLY slows down your work progress. I’m seriously questioning why the palette was introduced as a mandatory featur
5. [R8] Notability 5/5 · US Excellent: I’ve been using it for years, and I love it. Much easier to study.
6. [R26] Notability 5/5 · US Perhaps the best note taking app out there!: I have loved and used Notability for about a year now. I have tried a few other apps and none compare to how easy and slick Notability is. I am especially grateful for the PDF highlight function, saves me so much time. I have two suggestions for improvement in future updates: 1) please make it possible to remove the tool bar. I love how easy it is to
7. [R1] Notability 1/5 · US Lost all my notes: Literally lost everything and all my notes r blank
8. [R3] 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…
9. [R5] Notability 5/5 · US Always reliable: I have been using Notability since its creation. I love using this app.
10. [R6] Notability 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
11. [R10] Notability 1/5 · US Cloud Service Not Working: As of Tuesday, July 7 2026 at about 12:30pm Atlantic Standard Time, the web version of the app has stopped working. This is not only affecting myself, but it's affected the rest of the users at my school. It is not a connectivity issue because it has persisted even when peers have gone home and tried accessing the service (it is now 5:42pm at the time of writing). On to
12. [R19] Notability 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
13. [R25] Notability 1/5 · US Uploading and Saving Notes: I would love to to rate this 5 stars, but until now, I have never experienced the lack of having to reupload my notes, and having to figure out each one. I made the mistake of syncing the app to my iCloud. I normally use Google Drive, and so when I went to open my Notability app, the notes were gone. I figured, I can reupload them, but lo and behold: you have to upload
14. [R31] Notability 1/5 · US FIX ASAP: Please fix the app I am debating switching apps as my notes never load. Sometimes they are there sometimes they are not. I am paying for the highest subscription therefore I am thinking should be the best. Please fix it asap before I finally give up and get a new app.
15. [R7] 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
16. [R13] 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!!!!!!!!!
17. [R24] Notability 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.
18. [R36] Notability 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!
19. [R54] Notability 3/5 · GB Useless if you don’t pay: Notability is a good app, however, very quickly you cannot make anymore edits to your notes. This app would be a lot better if they allowed unlimited note making for free as otherwise it’s useless very quickly.
20. [R28] Notability 1/5 · US Update hate it: They changed the Apple Pencil connection so when you squeeze it instead of it ONLY being the eraser now you have to choose. That’s a Good Notes feature that I hate and a a reason I use note ability. Switch it back, this is so inefficient.
21. [R29] Notability 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
22. [R9] 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. [R76] Microsoft OneNote 1/5 · US Overheating: I was using OneNote on a 2020 iPad and within minutes of using the app. I thought the it was because my iPad was old. Just bought a new iPad M4 and Microsoft OneNote is the only app, and it STILL overheats within minutes.
24. [R111] Microsoft OneNote 3/5 · GB Missing Fountain Pen Feature & Battery Drainage: Overall I am happy with the performance of the OneNote in iPad OS. I am missing the fountain pen feature which is available in windows platform. Also when ever I use OneNote in my iPad the battery drains very fast and the screen becomes hot. Microsoft needs to fix these issues ASAP as this is open for very long time.