MarginNote 3 Reviews

by BBA_NY

There are many reasons this application should be your go to document reader. The solution for reading, note taking and possibly having mind maps or flash cards across many documents and connecting them all into one document is good. The reason I did not give MarginNote3 five star: iCloud sync is problematic. I have multiple devices and sometimes certain documents just wont sync across devices, they just get deleted on the iCloud folder but remain locally on one device (the one that tries to sync it to iCloud.) Sync across devices is critical. Best practices for highlighting as a way for note taking, mind mapping and connecting document notes and ultimately sharing is too difficult to figure out.

by Davenukem

Fantastic app… but if you value progress and control of your data I suggesting looking elsewhere.

Export options are limited, your mind maps will just be PDFs and there’s effectively no way to get your “outline” out of MarginNote3 in a useful format (the entire app is basically you creating an outline with nested information… so unclear why it’s difficult to export).

MarginNote3 seems to have a very small development team and features that have been indicated as being “worked on” for years on their forums are still not present. Toss in the fact that some great updates to MarginNote3 exist as hacked together “extensions” by the developers instead of being baked in and you have an app that will amaze you up front, begin to frustrate you as you seriously use it, and eventually make you regret your decision as the lock in grows.

With all that said, it’s likely the most feature rich option in the space. If the notes you’re making are something you intend to utilize the rest of your life…. Run. Run away now. This is a black box with seemingly no real intention of changing or improving anytime soon.

by Al Zal

This is an evolved version of the software with nicer GUI, better user experience, and new organization and editing tools. The desktop version is not released yet so it remains to be seen if the sync issues are fixed with the new release. I wanted to give a few pointers for migrating data from version 2, as the software provides no details. You need to backup version 2 notebooks (see under settings) and save the backup file on iCloud. Then go to finder and open the file in MarginNote version 3. It will delete anything already there and import the notebooks including tags, but the attached files will be missing. So you must copy these files manually from the MarginNote directory on iCloud to the new MarginNote 3 directory that you will find created there. Done.

Update Dec 2021
MarginNote3 has not changed much and there are sync issues with the osx counterpart. I migrated to LiquidText which is much more intuitive and has persistent development effort. There are standards for UI functionality that MarginNote is yet to figure out.

by Dkac

For my purpose the flash cards are my main use however I adapted them to my own use. Instead of mind map or perhaps added to the mind map I would like something similar to the flash cards simply to organize my information( that's what I'm doing now). It should be easier to make cards and add things to them, to switch from back to front of card. Instead of just cards for study why not have cards just to find important information. I find that more intuitive then the mind map. I love adding pictures and notes directly to the cards. Then i click on the headers and the information is there simply by scrolling down. If they had a button to bring up the cards, And quickly switch to the main text or mind map and back it would be an improvement. All of these things are probably there already but the learning curve makes it hard to use. Overall not bad but needs to be more intuitive. If it was I would give 5 stars.

by Hardworker112358

I use this app to organize papers most of the time. It is really convenient for me to use MarginNote3 to summarize each of them into a mind map, and it saves me tons of time when I want to review them later. Because of my research area, I sometimes need to write relatively long annotations using Apple Pencil. However, when I open the card and begin to write, some of my preciously written notes associated with this card will disappear. It would disappear again even after I try to rewrite these lost notes. The undo command and eraser also need improvement, they sometimes remove more information than what I intended to do, especially the eraser, it'd be better if the eraser can work continuously instead of remove a chunk together. Overall, it is a very promising app and I would recommend it if these bugs can be fixed in the future updates.

by Toneman182

I’ve been using MarginNote2 for years now and I’ve upgraded to MN3, though I didn’t really want to. I am a professor teaching engineering. And for years now, I have mentioned Margin Note in class and would like to do some demos for the students; However we often deal with PDFs full of landscape images of circuit schematics; this is the norm, and not the exception for the types of schematics I deal with. On Chrome in my laptop, it is simple to rotate the page for my students to see in class. On this app (and 2Pro) this is still impossible. Why is page rotation of PDF imports so problematic? Please LMK if I’m missing something, and this is now possible. I had hoped this would be a new feature, but of the cool features you added don’t mean anything when your pages are all rotated by 90 degrees and the text is vertical, sometimes reading upwards. Again, I’d love to be wrong and this feature does exist.

by OMGAppleNicknameSoDifficult

Exactly as per the title. I discovered it because I was searching for something cheaper than their competitor and where I could use inking in a free trial first. I will now buy! Only a couple of issues. i don’t think there is any way right now to show the reference on exports (e.g. page 2 etc). Marginnote does add a click link but that requires you to have MarginNote3 installed so is only useful for the original notetaker. If I want to refer to notes and page numbers later outside of ipad or share with others, I can’t share the reference page and would really value that (competitor can :)). Also had a couple of issue with highlighting...doesn’t highlight exactly what I want and have to try again. Otherwise, really useful and at a reasonable price. Will use it a lot.

by Jules-----

First of all, don’t be fooled by the free app—to actually use it, you have to purchase it for $13. I’ve been looking for a good mindmap notetaking app for my iPad and to be honest, I was very close to deleting MarginNote3 right when I downloaded when I realized you had to buy it, but I got the free trial and really liked it. I could do a lot of freehand annotations on pdfs and books as well as organize research projects really well. It is by far, the best program I have ever used for research.

I’ve used this to take notes during class, research my own personal interests, plan out essays, etc. MarginNote3 is suprisingly flexible.

I don’t really have a lot of big critiques of MarginNote3, but I don’t think I can give it 5 stars since there are a lot of little things I really wish were able to do in MarginNote3 . However, these things are annoying, but they don’t hurt the quality of MarginNote3 like crazy.

I guess my biggest critique is that I don’t think the tutorials are very detailed which is very frustrating when trying to figure out how to do something. Whatever team writes the tutorials and how to use guides I wish was almost overly detailed.

Overall, fantastic app. If you are a big researcher, this is your app.

by JoyXiao4

As a law student preparing Bar exam, I found MarginNote3 extremely helpful on reading through pdfs, turning mistakes Questions into flashcards and inserting rules SIMONTENOUSLY.

It is a little bit hard to learn how to use MarginNote3, it is powerful but the user experience is annoying, the functions are too complicated, but once you master how to use it, it is a boost to your study. Switching between documents and mindmapping notes and flashcards can triple boost ones' learning.

Highly recommend to law and medical students, as well as professionals who read and recite through a lot.

by JimK

I had used another app ‘fluid’ for reading research articles, underlining and extracting text for summary and study until they crippled this in the free version and increased price for the paid. MarginNote3 is far beyond that with a superb design for reading, study, organizing spaces, excellent pdf to text extraction and linear or mind mapping ways to relate to the text extractions and your notes both within and between documents. There is a learning curve for use but much is accessible playing around as well. I will be watching videos to learn better use. I have a lot of PDFs stored in Evernote and MarginNote3 can access and load from within MarginNote3 . I have used on my my iPhone when my iPad was not available and it’s workable but it is much more useful on a bigger screen. I like it so much that purchased the paid version and might even cough up the larger additional fee for the MacBook version. One of the few apps that is worth the purchase price and more. Excellent!

by Mobile Virgin

MarginNote3 is AMAZING! I am working on my PhD and MarginNote3 is invaluable. It has single handily changed the way that I read and take notes. If you are a student and want to neatly organize your notes and highlights than this is MarginNote3 that you want. MarginNote3 is what iBooks should have been but I get that we cant have it all. MarginNote3 is so good I ended up buying the MAC version too. I not only use it for school but also personal study I can’t stress how MarginNote3 really organizes your bookmarks in a way that you can prioritize and categorize them as individual notebooks. Thank you to the DEV for an AMAZING app.

by RustVel

Bit of a learning curve but once you get the hang of it it’ll be hard imagining a better tool for the process of creating cards and questions from your reading material to study. It’s worth learning how to use this thing and getting used to how it works!

I almost gave up on MarginNote3 because the process of making flashcards was so different from others I’m familiar with. And because of the clunky and ugly mindmap space (tip: use “framework” view instead of “mindmap” view for the cards).

The internal Flashcard app is good once you get going but I also love how I can export it to Anki where I prefer to review my cards.

by Pmkary

There is only one competitor app to be MarginNote's alternative and that's the Liquid Text. While their UI is much prettier and cleaner. They have just a really poor mind map experience. What I like about MarginNote in contrast with LiquidText is just how much more organized it is. In LiquidText almost any accidental touch on the mindmap ruins it. Also it's a web of what you put where ever you wish to. In MarginNote however, you have an app that organizes the mindmap into a chart with direct branches that you do not decide how to be put. It organizes the look and keeps it which is just so amazing. It just makes me more and more relaxed to be in MarginNote3 vs LiquidText. And also in the LiquidText you cannot have book-free studies to just have bookmarks.

But the research tool is horribly made. There is no link to the OS dictionary. Or any good offline dictionary. The UI seems horrible and has so many problems. It is just the worst part of any app I've seen. Hope that gets fixed someday.

And as far as the price comes, I think it's much cheaper than LiquidText which is awesome.

by Kdunchained

I own MarginNote and LiquidText and Flexcil and several other pdf annotation apps.

So far MarginNote has the most complete functionality. Compared to the other mentioned:

* it syncs your PDFs and notes to iCloud so it is immediately available on all your I-devices. This feature is not available in any other pdf apps.

* it provides multiple ways to represent the notes: excerpts,
Mindmaps and cards.

However I’m often quite frustrated with MarginNote3 because of all these bugs it has. I hope developers take a hard look and really fix them.

* Sorting notes by page order doesn’t always work. I have notes somehow in weird order and can’t fix them. It is super annoying.

* Syncing is also not reliable especially if you own several devices such one MacBook and several iPads. I would sometimes lose categories or notes or even lose books.

* there is no way to adjust the size of the eraser and it is very easy to erase the wrong thing because the default size of the eraser is quite large.

by CookieElle

I spend a lot of time doing literature research for my graduate degree program and I’ve been searching for ways to effectively and efficiently review the scientific literature while also compiling and mapping my notes at the same time. While there is a bit of a learning curve to using MarginNote3, this is exactly what I have been hoping to find for my research needs. I am still learning the full features and functionality of MarginNote3 but it has improved much since the previous version and it has been exceedingly helpful.

Also, I struggle with reading and writing anxiety because the scientific literature is so technical and dense that it’s so overwhelming to take in even in small doses; MarginNote3 has allowed me to overcome personal anxiety barriers. It is easy to become so actively engaged in the reading/writing process through using MarginNote3.

by NeedChase

As a medical student, I wish I had found this sooner. It is transformative for anyone consulting multiple documents and easily allows you to build a mind map to make the connections between sources that are vital for serious learning. Then export everything to Anki to build permanent recall.

There are so many functions that it is a bit unwieldy and difficult to use as some have noted. So start with a test that isn't tomorrow and give yourself some time to learn the best way to use it. Also, if you are building massive mind maps you’ll need a computer with some power. What works for me are taking excerpts from lectures and books and then building each card as a question around that (question in the title), then exporting to anki.

I think this would also be incredible for writing research papers and especially review articles.

by HappyCatMachine

I’ve tried most annotation research software. The thing that I prefer with MarginNote are it’s ability to handle absolutely huge volumes of notes and documents. It has an efficiency in its mind mapping that isn’t present in other tools. It isn’t really a mind map that it creates but a hierarchical and visual organization and this suits research well.

With the latest update it has pen support and with the new child mind maps the scale of research possibilities is nearly endless.

I miss the free form of traditional mind mapping but I realize that with large texts a free form mind map gets crowded very quickly. MarginNote keeps things organized very well.

A couple of things that I would like that MarginNote is a bit weak with are: better referencing to the source document on export of notes. Even if I had to fill out that source info manually for each document I’d be happy. Bonus if it could export the citation in any of the usual formats.

The links are hard to see and to keep track of. It’d be nice to be able to color them and make them thicker.

Finally I’d like a way to link my own notes to a document location rather than having to make an excerpt to do that.

These are minor issues and I use MarginNote3 obsessively as it is.

The company seems responsive on their forums and almost every feature request is listened to even if we have to wait for it.

by Mpoweru

Not often I take time to write a review, but often times dev’s get hit with issues that are minor (meaning they do not take into account ones full scope of the product). One issue affects a person, and therefore the whole product is junk - No.

This product is refined and beautifully thought out. It absolutely helps me to absorb all the reading that must be done. It does this in a VERY enjoyable way. The overall beauty of this software is around ingesting large amounts of reading and pulling out the viable information in order to move on to the next reading. Top notch, worth the cost!

NOW, let it be known that manuals and help is far from available. You have to do a lot of experiential experimentation to get to know this software. I have day by day been finding new features that are exciting, because days prior I would be thinking to myself I need this or that feature... then it appeared. Hahaha, an experience indeed.

by JuanCandelario

Excellent concept If MarginNote3 were to work a little more, the tool would be perfect. Unfortunately, it has some deficiencies that, although they could be corrected, can easily cloud the performance of MarginNote3 and cause a lot of inconvenience to the user. For example, synchronization between devices, iPhone and iPad, is quite problematic. Most of the time it does not synchronize properly, but days after use, and even weeks. Sometimes synchronization never occurs. There are other important faults. TAGS There is no way to create new Tags for the documents (not the notes) in MarginNote 3. ORDER OF THE NOTES. This feature sometimes works, sometimes not, especially, sorting by page order. MOVE. Something as basic as moving a file from one folder to another is torture. Most of the time it is not possible. IMPORT A WEB PAGE This is another torture. Sometimes you can, sometimes not. In short, the developer should work harder.

by LAFontFan

Unlike most pdf apps that allow you to mark up the pdf, MarginNote provides a very good way to export the highlighted text and user notes. The automatic outline and mind map created by the highlighting work just the way one would want them to work (a change in one is automatically a change in the other). Of particular value is the ability to change the outline level (and correspondingly the mind map level) of a particular highlighted section so that the outline and mind map show appropriate indents. The outline can then be exported to an outlining app or to Word (and other destinations). This makes it really easy to send comments on a document in a way that is user friendly for the recipient. The upgrade makes all of this more intuitive and has a very pleasant UI.

by Jwendolo2

Since I wrote this a while ago I still can’t get replies. The latest problem on the Mac - the program links in personal data, including Desktop, Keychain, Photos, Music folders - things that MarginNote should have no access to without security prompts.
And of course, they didn’t reply when I asked them about this problem.

I’m giving this iPad version a 1 because they don’t reply to problems about the Mac version, and thinking maybe this might motivate them to respond.
The new Mac version only has a fraction of my books from the old marginnoteX, with no way to manually import (I’ve tried several like exporting the database and re-importing it.) how can anyone trust their data in a program that cant import data to new versions? Or respond to problems?

by IvanLasston

I have to go through a lot of technical manuals for my job. This is a great app for collecting everything related into one place. I love mind maps and it is pretty intuitive to get the notes part working. If you have to deal with a lot of different PDFS, ebooks, etc - this is a great way to get all the top ideas organized into a mind map.

The missing star is because there is no user manual. You can figure out how to use it with the tutorial videos and browsing the info that is on the web but if you go to the website - there is a link for a user manual but no manual available.

by Mbarton98

I use MarginNote3 when I need to provide feedback for a document or am reading a technical article or book. Being able to highlight and have those appear in the margin with my comments and added to a mind map make this a one of a kind app for the ipad. I usually annotate and read on the ipad, but leverage using MarginNote links in my task manager on both ios and macos. The iCloud sync works well and when I'm done reading, I export everything as a pdf to DEVONthink so it can be indexed with my other related data.

by Chaseagle

I came across MarginNote3 as I was looking for a research tool as an undergrad. I’ve tried many apps that serve this function, but none have succeeded quite like MarginNote3 has. I absolutely love the fact that my highlights can automatically enter a mindmap of my research topic. It even has built in study tools via flashcards. The options for reading preferences are plentiful, and I really don’t know how this could be improved on much more. Definitely would recommend.