FreeNote -Taking: Notes Writer Reviews

by Guinan1987

Finally got a new tablet with way more space. This was one of the apps that needed an update, so I updated it (had to because it won’t stop prompting me to every couple of seconds) and started copying and pasting my documents. I was super excited about the new features, so I had 8 documents on it, all under 3 pages. Upon attempting to open a 9th, a was informed via pop-up that I had already reached the maximum number of documents for FreeNote and pointed me to the Pro version I think it was for $15. The old version I had was free, like the update and I probably have around 30 documents on it, most at least 20 pages. I’ve got to say, I am totally disappointed in the new version and am now looking for something else to use.

by Bee01131988

This is the slowest note taking app, with multiple glitches and crashes. Even with their newest version, I find myself daily frustrated while using FreeNote . I’m in medical school, and we have very large PDFs and I wrote my own notes as well (full of pictures and colors). So perhaps FreeNote could work with smaller documents. But I assume that this is the purpose of FreeNote . I am in awe as to how many 5-star ratings there are. I have emailed the developers multiple times and have had no reply or solution yet. Whatever you do-save yourself the headache! The worst part is that now that I’ve started my library on FreeNote , it wouldn’t be the best idea to switch to a better app such as Notability.

by Johnny5321

So the free app comes with about 36 pre-made notes and 6-7 folders. When you try to make your own folders or notes, it tells you that you’ve reached the limit of the free version and you must upgrade to have unlimited notes. Thinking those sample notes and folders were causing the problem, I deleted them all. I tried to make a new note. No good. I emptied the trash. I was able to make a test note. I deleted it and emptied the trash again. I made 3 folders, one with a relatively nice in-app folder cover-design, two with cover photos uploaded from photos on my iPad. I put two 1-page each pdf notes in one folder and got the message that I had reached the limit of the free trial. Deceptive description and advertising by FreeNote developer is on display here. You cannot try anything important in FreeNote free. You have to purchase the premium version immediately.

by Julien Rulien

Never had I been so mislead and disappointed in a journaling app before. I was trying to create a few folders (no more than 5) but after creating the third I couldn't create anymore. I was like oh okay whatever and went into a folder to write some notes to test FreeNote out. but NOPE. Once again I couldn't create anything else. So i deleted the pre-made folder +notes and tried again. STILL NO. THIS IS THE WORST NOTES APP EVER! All the other journaling/notes apps AT LEAST allow you to create infinite notes although limiting the folders in THE FREE VERSION. All I wanted was to test it out before I considered buying it. but NOPE. If I could give negative reviews or a half star I would. Money hungry developers. FreeNote itself looked terrible, but "hey it's free and has the features I want". Bull. Freaking Bull!!

by Christian Grenier1130

I am in college, and I wanted to start taking notes on my iPad in physics class. At the beginning of class, I downloaded FreeNote to see if it would work as an alternative to paying 9 dollars for notability, and all was well while taking notes. The interface was easy to use and made for some good note taking. I had the 4 pages of notes I took in the section called “on my iPad”, and I wanted to transfer it to files in my physics folder. When i tried to do this, it removed it from FreeNote and when i checked the files app, It was nowhere to be found. I returned to this notes app to try to find the notes, but I cannot find them there either. They seem to have disappeared. I think I lost 4 pages of physics notes.

by #1 Truth Reviews

I thought FreeNote was really good and useful because you can write notes and upload pdf documents. Although after using FreeNote for about a week or so I came across an issue that makes FreeNote almost unusable for note taking in school. The issue is that once you add another page to your notes document you run the risk of FreeNote deciding to delete the page you just added and took a bunch of notes on! The first time it happened I was doing math homework, solved the problem, left the notes page to input and it came back to all of the pages I added to the document being deleted. Thought it wouldn’t happen again so I kept using FreeNote and after 3 more times I decided to write this to maybe have the creators see and solve this? I would like to use FreeNote again so please fix this issue it isn’t a small one.

by Ellismjones

I’ve been using FreeNote along with Scrivener to write my book. At first it was great, while I couldn’t add more documents — which i was fine with — FreeNote did what it said it did. Everything was fantastic, until the syncing. For starters, it takes awfully long to sync between the two devices (using Dropbox), which I told myself I could deal with. Until Notes Writer started overwriting files with contents from another file. A recent example: it overwrote a file that had my project notes with the text from my outline. This also happened with several scenes I had written, and some notes on world building — which, in this case, was overwritten with an opener for a chapter I had written recently.
If this had happened once, I would have let it go, maybe I’d made a mistake. But this has been happening ever since I installed FreeNote . I can’t just keep losing my content because the developers didn’t work on this feature well enough.

by Mickey306911

I had really liked FreeNote, as it was one of the best note writing apps I'd used. it lets you import PDFs and take notes on them, which had been super useful for school. However, after a while, it started lagging and my apple pencil's notes took a few seconds to show. Not only that, but it stopped letting me create new documents, with the message " Oops! You've reached the maximum number of documents in this version. Upgrade to the Pro full version free some space here.” I didn't want to upgrade so I decided to delete some of my documents. However, this did nothing and it still didn't let me create any new documents. Very disappointed in this.

by User03938290

Split View — only 2 docs horizontal, but not side by side. Should be possible to do both in either orientation of the ipad.

Settings for split view 2nd doc — not available unless you add a Document Editor. Then you change the view settings but the pages are now all in Document Editor mode where you can’t zoom in and out.

Pen — inking is not bad, feels pretty good. But no support for pressure sensitivity

Overall the UI and menus are done ‘average’ and need more polish — for example, why are all the different types of Highlight tools hidden in 1 button ? There is no thought given to the fact that Highlighter tools are often used all at once in combo? They should be able to be broken out so they are all on display and available in a single tap.

Double-tap to edit pens and text highlighter tools, however, is a great UI touch. More apps need this.

No zoom out possible on vertical scroll mode — Notability recently add this. Most PDF reader apps have this. It should be do-able.

by Appleitunesstorereview

I like FreeNote overall but after using it for a while I have a few bugs that NEED to be fixed
1) Erasing!!! I take my notes on the dark paper, and when you write in white pen, your notes disappear for some reason. I have to just guess where my handwriting is and it’s super frustrating.
2) Cutting function! Selecting multiple pen marks is not useful at all because FreeNote automatically groups all of the things you drew into seemingly random groups. If I want to move two words out of a sentence I wrote, I can’t because notes writer groups the whole sentence together and there’s no way to select only those words. The cutting function needs to be able to select the exact pen marks you are selecting and nothing more.
3) adding pages ! I’ve recently noticed that when I add pages it takes forever to load. If I am taking notes during class I can’t wait an extra 30 seconds for a new page to load I will miss many notes

by 4tun8 1

I’ve been using FreeNote for about 2 years and find it pretty good - I like the features and pen colors, text boxes, shapes, etc. I mostly use it for note taking for classes, or preparing lecture notes.

That being said, FreeNote has crashed a non-trivial amount of times, causing me to lose parts of my notes. I don’t know how often FreeNote saves, but I have found this to be very frustrating.

I’ve also found that FreeNote is very slow to respond when the notes reach ~20 fully handwritten pages, and crashes more often. At about 40 pages, FreeNote crashes if you try to add any more pages, so I have to put my notes for one class in two separate files.

by Ahtakeanicknamealready!!

When I add a link to jump to a page within the document it works well! EXCEPT that once its on there THATS IT!!! You can’t delete it, edit it, copy, NOTHING! As soon as you touch it, it obviously will take you to the linked page... but when held down it won’t let you select any options because when you lift your finger to click, let’s say ‘Edit’, it immediately follows the link before you can do ANYTHING! Driving me batty. So, you should fix that... just saying. Otherwise, I find it to be a great and useful app! Once that’s fixed, I’d say it’d be easy to give 5 stars!

by RealShahroOz

This is a great app for PDF reading. There is a bug in FreeNote , however. If the programmer could resolve that, it will be the best app in FreeNote Store for PDF reading. The problem is that when you are reading a PDF, sometimes the page that you were reading after scrolling to another page and get back to that page, will get blank. For example, when you are reading page 2 and then you decide to go to page 1 to just check a sentence, and then when you get back to page two, it gets blank, and you have to reopen the PDF to bring it back.

by Flyfisherholms

So far this is a handy app. As I was preparing for my classes, FreeNote produced a paywall for me to create additional files. Nowhere have I seen the number of files the free version allows so FreeNote is on the chopping block. I will delete FreeNote , reduce my rating and update my comments if I get partway into my semester and must produce $15 or delete my old work.

A note for the reader, I am tempted to report this to apple as an “in app purchases” application due to the fact that I must purchase additional files, much like candy crush makes you pay for additional plays.

by SMARTYUSER

Omg, I just got my iPad Air 4 and I needed an app for note taking since I’m going to have a test soon. I searched some apps, but they all had money involved and it wasn’t my style. Then, I found FreeNote and downloaded it immediately, and it turned out great. It has lots of template options and you can draw on the papers, or you can write. It has so many techniques, which I absolutely LOVE. It’s so handy and everyone should download it NOW. 😃😂😍😚

by Daszee09

Hello Everybody,

I am a college student, the user can do so much with this free version. I downloaded FreeNote for simple annotation. It was easy to use and learn. It reached beyond what I expected, I am truly satisfied. For example, I have sensitive eyes and the capability to adjust the color of the page is great. Theres a convenient option to adjust the brightness. Having open tabs is great for multi tasking and studying. It leaves off where you left off. Small details truly count. Highly recommend, worth downloading. Great job team!

by Sports Girl Lorelei

The reason why the title is called cutoffs is because when I wright supper zoomed in it cuts off the edge of the letters when I write them. So it makes my handwriting look messy when it really isn’t. But when I write zoomed out then it looks very messy. I think this is miner because it is a little bit my styluses fault but it also happens with my finger. They are minor but one day it will get in the way a
lot. There is one more minor thing I have to point out really quickly though. Can you make black templates because I want to use black graph paper but you don’t have it which is a bummer. Other than those three things FreeNote is soooooooooooooooooooooooo good.

by Jsidoiidid

I really like FreeNote and how easy it is to use. I often take notes in class and my hands get tired pretty fast so I tried finding solutions by using FreeNote. I am a really fast typer on my iPad so I would take notes here during zoom.(temporary thing since eventually we will all return to school in person) I am planning to use this during class and I have only tried doing some samples to make sure this works and it does! I am happy it’s free unlike some apps, and I really recommend this. The only con would be that I wish there were more fonts. Other than that it’s really great.

by Mojicamc

The free version is exactly like the paid version except if you want to upload more files then you have to get the paid version. In the free version you will have to delete the current file or share it before you can add another document. User friendly, too! It’s a great app to try out with all the capabilities of the full version. Unless, like I said before, you need to upload more files. There is no trial period!

by Satisfied Professional

I have been evaluating FreeNote and one other to see which works better for the way I want to work. It is currently neck and neck as to which is stronger.
However, recently, Notes Writer + started giving me a warning about needing to upgrade since the version I purchased wasn’t correct for iOS 12. It had worked fine, but with the latest app update, I was getting this error. I contacted support to ask how to disable the message and they told me their recommendation was to upgrade. They then gave me the new version which installed perfectly. No more error message. That’s what I call top level customer service.

by King Ife

I used FreeNote to take notes in class. When I first opened FreeNote it was ugly and basic dispute that I used it with my Apple Pencil in my accounting class. The next day I went on FreeNote to review my notes and there is nothing on the page. The text will randomly flash when i try to use different writing styles and show what was written on the page. I do not want to delete in hope of getting my notes back. I would rather eat jean jacket before I use or recommend this sorry excuse of a note taking app. FreeNote is buggy and ugly and needs be fixed or removed from FreeNote Store.

by Guthrien

Notes Pro offers a lot of great features, it felt very powerful with the ability to create nearly any kind of note. I'm not sure other apps offer quite as much to edit or add to your page. However, there were 2 issues that kept me from reading it above it's competition for the price. 1) the inking is occasionally over corrected which can make it feel less connected to the page. 2) and a deal breaker for me, it offers no OCR or ability to search text. For the price I think that's a gigantic omission.

by Schoolisdrainingme

I like FreeNote a lot but there’s just 3 problems. I just got the new iPad Pro so I’m assuming nothing is wrong with it.. 1)as I’m writing my notes for school weird lines appear 2) sometimes my whole pages of notes gets blurry and it takes awhile for it to go back to normal I didn’t mind at first but it gets annoying... 3) the eraser lags... besides that i really like FreeNote tho! But it may need an update ?

by Leelpatt

I’m annoyed. When you search note taking apps you normally see Notability, GoodNotes and then maybe either the native Notes app or OneNote. You don’t hear about Notes Writer and it has just about everything those others do. I can’t compare to Notability, because I’m not paying $12 for an app I might not like.

This one has all of the fonts. It works very well with the pencil. It can read your notes to you.

by New York Girl!

Wow! Where should I begin? This is the best note taking app ive ever had! You can do everything on it! It’s works with the Apple Pencil perfectly. It’s the most best ever! For anyone that is reading this and have not downloaded it yet, well you really need to get it. I went to school and wrote down my notes (also yes we are allowed to take our iPads with Apple Pencil to school and write down notes instead of using a note book) on my iPad and my teacher goes “oh what app is that I’ve been looking at your iPad all day and wondering what app the is cause I really need it!” And told her and she went to her desk got her iPad and downloaded it! (Everyone in my class has FreeNote on there iPad to use it and take down notes) this is just the best app ever! I love it❤️😘💜💕🖤

by CPA Colored Pencil Artist

I can highly recommend FreeNote. It works very reliably for me. It is packed with useful features but the one thing I need is the ability for automatic page numbering. I type documents with thirty or more pages and it is extra work to number them one by one. Then if I change the font from 18 to 10, for printing the page numbers are wrong.