Nebo Reviews

I am writing this to caution others that while Nebo offers some solid features and a clean interface, it clearly needs some refinement and glitches out. I was using their “Notes” page feature, which is a larger open space layout, to take handwritten notes in addition to drawing diagrams, charts, and images, hoping to create a more comprehensive document to refer to as I study. It was going great until all my individual handwritten notes, diagrams, and graphic elements became all tangled into one large overlapped mess! This happened twice, first time was small an easy thing to fix, but this second time was watching days of notes getting mashed into one another as I simply zoomed out to move to a different area of the page.

The undo arrow was greyed out and nothing but the highlighter tool was selected. I tried for a long time to salvage things — surgically selecting the individual elements and notes from one another, and moving them apart, but the selection tool can’t tell the difference its all mashed together. I was really enjoying Nebo, but now at a complete loss. Might be fine for some light journaling or quick notes, but if you’re using for school or something comprehensive — please tread carefully.

This has been one of my favorite apps until recently- I love that I can keep a personal journal, one for podcast ideas, one for work purposes, etc. The integration with Google Drive and the ease of syncing all journals as well as saving and sharing specific pages is fantastic, and the conversion to text from writing is pretty accurate.

However, in the past month I have struggled massively with extreme lagginess, app crashing or having to force restart Nebo , disconnection from google drive sync, and lack of responsiveness from customer service outreach which leaves me disappointed and seeking other apps. It’s taking upwards of 10 plus minutes to be able to finish writing a sentence or for Nebo to move to the next line, and whenever it does read the text it’s choppy and illegible most of the time. I’ve tried in multiple places with different WiFi connections, I’ve restarted Nebo , I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled, and even got a second Apple Pencil thinking that was the issue. I’ve tried other pencil-compatible apps and even did a hard reset on my iPad, all to no avail. I know it’s Nebo , and I really hope changes are made soon so I don’t have to switch everything over to another service. I’m hoping google comes out with something similar soon, or that there will be an update to fix all of this. this app started out really strongly for me and has been almost unusable the last several weeks.

I am a high school student and I take digital notes because my handwriting is so bad I can’t even read it, I mainly use notability but I read about the handwriting to txt function on Nebo and was intrigued I was amazed to find it could understand my writing! I can’t even understand my writing sometimes, it’s not perfect but it is miles better then even notiblity’s is. The only reason I am not going to use Nebo is because for one there is no different papers for the documents witch is what I would use for note taking, and I need graph paper sometimes for math. I also use a planner I made myself and I would like to be able to save that as a template. I would also like to not have to create a math section every time I want to use the math function although that is not a deal breaker. But the other big thing I would like is to be able to use different fonts for the text, the only font it has is pretty boring and I wish there were other options. If there is more customization available I will switch to Nebo in a heartbeat but until then I will probably continue to use notability.

The handwriting recognition works as well as any app I’ve tried on an iPad Pro. But the lack of iCloud sync is a big inconvenience. If you have your other Apple devices set up to use iCloud sync, then this app's separate “cloud sync”is a cumbersome set of extra steps, requiring additional user IDs/accounts, and external services that would all be seamless if Nebo just supported iCloud. Disappointing for an otherwise well-designed app.

The other SERIOUS gap in Nebo’s capabilities is that it does not seem to be compatible with any Bluetooth keyboard. This prevents this app from being a single app for all note-taking needs. With the way I use my iPad Pro, I take notes BOTH with the Apple Pencil, and sometimes with the IOS on-screen keyboard and sometimes with a separate Bluetooth keyboard, depending on the setting I am in at the time. Nebo does not support anything other than handwriting input. So you will still need another vendor’s note-taking app (like Evernote, OneNote, or Apple’s IOS Notes to make your iPad a true notebook replacement. Too bad, because if this app simply added these other input options, it would be all many people would need for note taking (other than perhaps a dedicated sketching app if artistic drawing is a requirement)

I’m gonna start this off by saying I love Nebo. I use it for my notes for most of my classes, as a lot of professors post PDF’s and this app makes it easy to download and edit on them. However, after this new update I have been having issues. I zoom in on my pdf’s a lot to highlight and write on them, but now, any time I zoom in and write or highlight something Nebo is auto scrolling to the top of the page. It’s severely impacting my note taking abilities, as the moment I stop highlighting a word or stop underlining something I’m having to scroll down again for it to happen five seconds later and it’s very frustrating. The issue doesn’t happen if I am zoomed out of the page, but because of the size of the words I have to zoom in to be able to read it. If this issue is not resolved my opinion of Nebo is definitely going to decline and I will be switching apps as this is mostly what I use it for. Hopefully it is just a bug with the new update that needs to be resolved.

Hi I love Nebo so much I bought the full version. However, I only rated 3 stars, because I have a couple comments on how to improve Nebo . I would appreciate it if I could change the view from white screen to black screen / white text, just like the rest of my apps will if I turn on the dark mode. I like to write at night, and don’t like the blinding white light glaring at me before bed. Also it would be FANTASTIC if you would allow the read text aloud feature. Right now, I’m having to copy and paste everything into a separate app that will read text aloud for me, it’s really time consuming and frustrating. Thanks!

Ok, so awesome that it does dark mode now. However, I really hate the clear all button being next to the convert all button. Why is there a clear all button in the first place? Could you hide it or at least give the option to hide it? I almost deleted my work on accident. Thankfully, it does have that pop up screen, to remind you of what you might do, but please just get rid of the button!!!

I’m a general dentist of 20 years who used to write details of procedure notes in patients’ paper charts. Now with everything being computerized, that option is gone...until “this app.” I can write, erase mistakes, add space, remove words and extra space
with one stroke. There’s an eraser option, but I don’t even need it. There’s different color ink. The best part is when I’m done with the final draft, I can copy and paste it into patients’ electronic charts, and everyone else can read it in neatly typed-up pages. Nebo was the reason I bought iPad 2018 and Apple Pencil.
I wish Nebo can recognize the percent signs and numbers better. It will be nice to be able to add custom vocabularies because Nebo does not recognize certain words and will translate it into what maybe the closest it knows. That was the only reason I gave four stars out of five. For instance, 1 carpule of Lidocaine will get translated as i carpale or 1 But I found a way around it and wrote one carp.😃
You’re a genius and thank you for thinking of a very useful app to help those who miss writing by hands, who think and remember better by writing, not typing.

I tried out Nebo and GoodNotes, and ultimately this one won out because it works so much better for the way I want to write. I didn’t have to adapt very much to get Nebo to work for me. I take tons of lecture notes and I needed something searchable that allowed me to write as quickly as I hear it and have Nebo recognize what I’m writing. The handwriting recognition is pretty remarkable, especially taking into account just how bad my handwriting is.

That said, Nebo isn’t GREAT. It is missing two pretty key and important and basic tools that may shorten the amount of time I use it. One: there is no copy/paste feature, either of what I’ve written or what I found elsewhere to add to my notes. I have to write in everything from URLs to text from web pages to bits of other notes. That’s really annoying. Two: I can’t type in Nebo. I would like to be able to add a text box and type in it sometimes.

The addition of those two tools would make Nebo one of the better app experiences you’ll find *period*. But as is, it’s still darn good and well worth the money.

I’m old and my entire adult life I’ve been a writer: books, poetry, journals. And I always wrote longhand with pen on paper, which is nothing short of magical, or spiritual depending on your sensibilities. Nothing can replace the power of writing with a comfortable pen and a clean sheet of ruled paper. The problem is my cursive handwriting is brutal to read, and after writing the first draft of a novel out by hand and having to try to read and decipher it to type it up on a computer… well, it’s tedious and dispiriting to say the least, and the laboriousness of the task extends the process out longer than it should be, or, with this app, need be. While I will most likely always have regrets no longer writing with pen and paper, I will also always thank the gods of writing for Nebo . It can read my chicken scratch way better than I. And as for the transcription process from cursive to computer ready, ha ha, it’s now literally done at the speed of light instead of taking me long, brutal months filled with strained eyes and headaches. The only reason I give the blessing of an app 4 stars instead of 5 is because, like I said, I’m old and my vision isn’t the greatest, which makes the ruled lines mighty hard for me to see. So, once there is an option to darken, or lighten, the lines, then yeah, consider this a 5-star review… and then some.

The best handwriting to text conversion I’ve used yet, I have to hand write notes to remember but need to stay organized and have ability to search without looking though massive paper notebooks. Few key missing features that would make this the best hands down 1) ability to tag notes so can search by tag or in folders or indicate when action items still need follow-up, 2) sub-folders within collections, 3) ability to favorite a document and even better have ability to create collection of favorites, 4) ability to have tasks/ dates that can either populate an ongoing to-do list or push a reminder to you ( like Quip does), 5) ability to underline, italicize, or quickly all cap / increase font for emphasis, 6) actually sync to google drive so you can view documents in your drive and easily share (no brainer here that doesn’t make sense that listing indicates sync to drive, but the sync doesn’t actually put the documents in your drive

I really enjoy working with this app. It has replaced all of my paper notebook use personally and professionally. It’s awesome and I would make the decision to use it again if I had it to do all over again.

There are some shortcomings that I’m hoping to see improved. The cloud sync is critical, but it’s clunky and can result in loss of notes. I’d like to see more emphasis on making sure that’s enabled in Nebo and see it made a lot more seamless. It requires me to press the “sync” button to ensure that my notes are synced - that should be something that just happens, especially if I’m using iCloud. I can’t use iCloud on a device for work because of silly security policy issues. Apparently I neglected to setup the sync on either Google Drive or Dropbox. Nebo was deleted and I lost all of my notes for months. This is a big problem for someone without cloud sync enabled who loses or has their device stolen, or otherwise is unable to get to Nebo on the device.

When you delete Nebo from the device, nothing is left on the device. All notes are removed with Nebo . Cloud sync is critical. I’d like to see OneDrive added as an option for cloud sync also.

There is only a few tiny things that would make Nebo perfect and first would be to have multiple styles of paper to choose from with different paper rules... college versus wide for example and changing paper colors. I am using Nebo more than any other since it has the best features and most natural intuitive functions but the rule of the line height is a bit too wide on a 12.9 iPad for long hand writing and to narrow for wanting to take fast notes. I would love to have the ability to have more than one small note pad or two on one sheet. Second would be to able to turn off or lock the keyboard and eraser button from changing. My hand naturally hits the screen and finger sometimes double taps when readjusting my hand causing me to pause multiple times while writing in order to switch back, while just a few split seconds, it messes with your focus while writing. But regardless... this will be my go to app forever. I have tried several note apps and this ones is by far one of the very best out there and I really do love it and well thought out app, I hope these developers create even more awesome products with same attention to detail and user experience as they have with this product.

I am an attorney, and this app has revolutionized the portability of my case files. I have always had a strong preference for hand-writing my notes, and Nebo now gives me the best of all worlds: I can still take notes by hand, convert them to typed/searchable text that I can share with team members by email and/or Word or PDF, AND I am no longer bogged down by multiple legal pads when I travel.

My only frustration (and the reason for only four stars) is with the page limits. Part of what I love about this app is that I can keep a single running document that contains both my chronological notes as well as research findings related to an individual client issue, but I often hit the limit of what a single document can hold and see the ever-dreaded message that “you are approaching the content limit for this document - create a new document to avoid performance issues” (or something to that effect). In addition to frustrating the benefits of having a consolidated file for all of my relevant data, it is incredibly disruptive when that pops up in the middle of a client call while I am already scrambling to take notes of the discussion. Please, PLEASE find a way to increase the available document content!

Wonderful app that's very stable and works well. I've enjoyed using it and I use it all the time. Its been tremendously beneficial to my productivity.

If I could make a few suggestions: some of the gestures can be awkward (for example, the forward slash is the gesture for line return so if you try to write b/c the software will either line break the b and the c or it will correct to bk), some abbreviations don't work (for example, vs. almost always converts to us and abbreviations such as hx for history will convert to his, cont. for continue doesn’t work either), double tapping to convert writing to text doesn't always work (it’s more like quadruple tapping). I have also noticed it lagging some recently but I’m not sure why. I have a pretty new iPad.

Overall this is a great app and the above issues are very mild annoyances that are very tolerable. I love how accurate the conversations are overall and the ability to upload pdf files and mark them up is amazing. If you’re considering Nebo, go for it. I highly recommend.

Nebo has made steady improvement. It is no longer handwriting-only as you can choose to use the screen keyboard or, presumably, an external keyboard. You can also import text from external sources which you couldn’t previously. This is handy for copying URLs or whatever other text you want. You can import images and have them in the same document as everything else.

New features such as the ability to import pptx, docx, PDFs, etc as PDFs is handy for jotting notes on someone’s powerpoint or PDF or whatever. I said in a previous review that Nebo was one-dimensional because handwriting recognition was all it did well. But handwriting is only a single part of what people need in a broad notes app. Indeed, as of version 2.x, it was one dimensional. But this version, 3.x is significantly improved. this app now looks like a pretty formidable multimedia note-taking app. Upgrading my rating to 4 stars as all my previous complaints are now fixed. I’ll give 5 stars for an improved and more intuitive UI. Good job so far.

I've been experimenting with handwriting recognition since my Apple Newton and it has been generally a disappointing experience. This isn't perfect but it is really impressive because it not only uses my handwriting which even I can't even always read but seems to use contextual cues (or maybe some Bayesian algorithms) to repair what I've written so, in other words, l wrote something incorrectly and the transcribed word was correct. l can write without having to continuously stop and correct thing so the fluid experience of writing in Nebo is similar to writing on a notepad!

So what is the downside? It works on the iPad but you have to transfer the document to another app if you want to edit it on another device. Transfer isn't hard but necessary. And, Nebo really only works with an Apple Pencil of course. It doesn't have the functionality of a word processor but its good enough for most writing tasks not requiring extensive styles and formatting.

I’ve been looking for a replacement for apple’s notes app and google docs that wasn’t word, and luckily, I came upon this beautiful, easy to use app. This is, hands down, the best app to use if you want to convert your handwriting into typed format. It works very well with my handwriting and is easy to edit and learn different shortcuts for your writing. I’m also glad it has an option to create a free form note, where I use it to brainstorm ideas, writing floating where ever I want it to be.
You can organize your notes in collections and notebooks, which is very handy and a feature I needed.

Even though this will become my main writing app, 😉 there’s only one small thing that would make it even better... a night/dark theme. Maybe I just haven’t found it yet, or it’s not there, but I would love to write in whatever color I like on whatever colored paper I like. So far it has the option to change writing color, just not paper. If you had the option to change the color of paper, there wouldn’t even be a need to have color themes- the writer could just change their paper and pen to whatever color they needed and voilà! Thanks :)

Finally I’ve found a note-taking app that I actually feel like improves upon just using paper! Nebo has so many little touches and flourishes that really set it apart. Being able to take notes on an infinite plane that expands as I need just works! It was an easy upgrade to the full version for me.

One suggestion for possible future development: I’d love it if you brought the equation-mode from the document mode into the notes mode. I love the free-form nature of the notes mode, it’s why I’m using Nebo . I’d love to be able to highlight equations I’ve written and convert them to typed text to clean up my bad handwriting. Considering you’ve already got the algorithm for converting handwriting to equations down, I’d be awesome to see this extended!

Regardless, still a fantastic note-talking app. I don’t understand why it’s not recommended more, personally I think it’s way better than the more often recommended ones.

I’ve downloaded several notetaking apps, with Notability being my favorite. The coversion to text for most apps leaves a bit to be desired. However, that didn’t bother me since I really didn’t see the need. I type well, and just figured it’s easier to type. Most apps do an ok job identifying my poor writing. Turns out, I was wrong! It’s NOT easier to type! This things has changed how I take notes, write emails and other tasks.

this app comes real close to identifying everything I write, and even gets right when I want all caps. It makes a few mistakes, but not many. Matter of fact, it’s more accurate than my typing accuracy. I’m using it now not so much for my actual note taking, but I’m using it for writing emails, and long text messages. Some notes I need to forward or add to documents, I also use Nebo. If you’re sitting on the fense about this one, stop and just get it. It’s slowly replacing my keyboard (I don’t use a keyboard case with my iPad Pro 12.9 - Zugu case).

Not sure if anyone in the fields of math/physical sciences who uses Nebo has already suggested this, but it would be GREATLY appreciated if this app was able to provide a mode where the entire handwritten text could be converted to Latex, so that it would be functional for writing proofs, derivations, theorems, laws, etc. As of now there is no app with this capability, which is why it is so crucial for math/physical sciences students to learn Latex typesetting in order to write research papers and longer works that include both natural spoken language and mathematical symbols. However, I feel that this app has the potential to fill this space, seeing how powerful the "Math" section that can be added to regular pages already is. While it is very useful and well made, it is limited since ordinary languages like English cannot be recognized in the same section. If this app were able to develop a way to recognize and convert hand written mathematical proofs and other similar types of text to Latex, it would absolutely be the primary notes app of choice for EVERY individual studying higher level math, physics, or chemistry. Suggestions aside, this app is an amazing app with all of its other features!!