Notes Plus Reviews

by Bmorris337

It’s really sad that NotesPlus isn’t currently operating at its true potential. Things will just frantically erase on another part of the page while I’m mid writing and then the complete opposite will happen. Something like a dot at the top of an “i” or a period even a small line will permanently stay there on the page and disappears when I click on the eraser, not allowing the mark to be erased. Both of these inconveniences are particularly rather annoying to say the least. I like how the pen on NotesPlus writes and that’s probably about it.

I’d like to say that NotesPlus is just too complex for simplistic note taking, but that would give it undeserving praise. The amount of buttons needed to be pushed in order to produce just a straight line, a simple shape or anything else seemingly uncomplicated is made so bothersome!!! Consequently I could, without a doubt, never use NotesPlus during an actual lecture. I’d be too afraid that my important class notes would be erased or that I’d get too behind in note taking from trying to do something so simple as underline a word. THIS IS NOT NotesPlus TO BE USED IN CLASS!!!

Some major changes need to be made before NotesPlus can even reach 3 stars let alone deserve a full 5. Once GoodNotes makes some minor changes there won’t be any use of other note taking apps, if Notes Plus could even be considered as a note taking app.

by Muskego Dave

This used to be my favorite handwriting app. In fact, I still believe it has one of the best fountain pen algorithms available on any platform. But over time, it has become unusable. Many times when I am writing, the “ink” will simply stop following my Apple Pencil. At first, I thought it was my pencil’s fault. But my pencil works fine on other handwriting apps. Also, when scrolling with my finger down the page, it now leaves marks or smudges from time to time. Also, there are many times when I try to erase something, it won’t erase! I hit the undo button sever times and text BEFORE the text I want to delete disappears, but not the most recent text. But sometimes, I can then scroll the screen, and the text will then vanish, which tells me there is a screen buffering problem. My iPad hasn’t changed over the last three years. The only thing that has changed is the updates I have done to NotesPlus. I cannot even write simple notes without having to go back afterward and spend tons of time fixing all the problems caused by all of the bugs. I’m sorry and saddened to say that NotesPlus no longer works. 😢

by Debactor

I got NotesPlus purely because I wanted to convert my handwritten notes to text so that it’s easier to read because my handwriting is terrible. Well I read a review from an engineer who was raving about it, and engineers are also known for having bad handwriting. Well I’m a math and geophysics major and so handwritten notes are necessary because of all the symbols, but I would like to have legible notes. The handwriting to text conversion didn’t recognize ANY of my text. All of it was wrong. I regret buying NotesPlus. It’s a waste of money for me. It’s only useful because of that conversion, but if it doesn’t work for bad handwriting what’s even the point? It’s not as necessary to convert good handwriting to text as it is to convert bad handwriting to text. This in general was actually one of the biggest reason why I even wanted an iPad Pro, so my notes could be legible. There should at least be a free trial because I wouldn’t have bought it if I had known how bad NotesPlus was for what I needed it for. And the interfaces of free apps are a lot better than this one. I also hate that it erases things when I didn’t even scribble it out and then other times I scribble for like an entire minute and still doesn’t delete the thing. It’s so frustrating. Definitely not worth it.

by 911only_rvwr

Obviously no discerning consumer is installing Notes Plus at this point but it is good that it remains in NotesPlus Store so people can benefit from the lessons learned. There is no point in rehashing the details of went wrong again here except to highlight that the product was a pretty broadly adopted darling of handwriting recognition fans. They were cleverly tweaking around the edges of the cutting edge of functionality when they rolled out a poorly tested revision and decimated years of user data and essentially self destructed.

A timely reminder to be wary when you are integrating a product or function into your critical workflow when you’ve paid less than the price of your breakfast for it. It’s not the bells or whistles (or advertising & promotion) that get short changed at these companies — it’s the basic blocking and tackling ... the testing and risk management.

Many probably felt they had a lot of backup ... were as safe as they could be. They couldn’t have imagined a company, so successful to date, would release a revision that would dig all the way back into the historical data, and the way it interacts with NotesPlus , and blow it all up. Boom. Chernobyl.

by Iphonefish

I downloaded NotesPlus after playing with the developers free handwriting app. I was very impressed with the way the Apple Pencil interacts with the screen. It felt more like true writing to me. The OCR feature is also quite nice, and I found that it recognized my handwriting pretty well.

However, in the course of trying to use NotesPlus for note taking in the real world situations. I found it more difficult than I expected. Sometimes random dots and lines appear on the page, and when I go to use the eraser tool to erase them they disappear as soon as I hit the tool. When I go back to the pen mode, the lines reappear. Very frustrating. Also, two full pages of notes disappeared from the notebook. I’m willing to admit that that could’ve been user error, but I have no idea how I would have made them disappear. Also, as mentioned in other reviews, the scribble to a race feature does not work very well. I also didn’t like that you have to go into a special edit mode to name each page. It took too many clicks to get there, and just felt cumbersome. Overall, I think NotesPlus could be really great, but I felt it was not a very good value for the price right now.

by Jada42

I have never written a review but, with NotesPlus most likely being used for educational purposes, I felt the need give my input. I was very hopeful about NotesPlus when I first purchased it despite it being ranked lower than some of its competitors. I have been using it for about 3 months now hoping that some of the minor glitches would be corrected but, the amount of glitches and the frequency of them have increased since first downloading NotesPlus . I have now lost at LEAST 4 whole notebooks worth of graduate course notes both on NotesPlus as well as my iCloud Drive. I also unintentionally set a password to protect my notebooks/folders and 1) there is not an easily accessible way to reset your password, which is very frustrating and 2) when I contacted their support team, I received an initial email to help me solve the issue but when the steps they gave me did not work and I tried contacting them again, I got no response. I understand there probably isn’t a completely perfect app but I relied on NotesPlus heavily in order to be as successful in an already stressful graduate program, and the added stress of losing my notes is very frustrating!

by HC Stevens

I like the idea of this program and much of it works relatively as you would expect. However, I like to combine text with writing and the text part of the program is glitchy causing me to save, quit and restart often in one writing session. A few suggestions I hope get fixed SOON: when selecting a location to type in the T mode, the pages automatically scroll up, up, up, up every time and don’t select where I am touching. Weird and super frustrating. Also, when you select to delete a page, which NotesPlus creates blank pages seemingly randomly as you type or move text/notes, NotesPlus says you can’t. Undo this option but it doesn’t confirm the page you want to delete, so you just cross your fingers the right page gets deleted. Some times the text pages don’t have borders or are zoomed in randomly while other pages are the opposite, and as you scroll your work appears to have disappeared, then slowly reappears on the page. Hope you wait to make sure the page isn’t blank and then delete it! Lastly, if use return to move a section of text, NotesPlus will spread that section over multiple pages, often leaving just a few words on a few pages with the rest of the words on a few more pages. What?! Lastly, there is not option to save your document as one document. Instead, it is saved and exported with each page being a separate document. Why in the...?! Please fix these things, makers of Notes Plus!

by Shyanncyann

I feel like NotesPlus is decent but I’ve noticed some issues, I use an Apple Pencil on other apps such as procreate I’m able to rest my hand and write/draw. It seems I can’t do that with NotesPlus, that’s huge problem with me because I have motor issues. Every time I rest my hand on the screen with NotesPlus I’ll write but as soon as I move my hand it erases. I don’t think it’s a problem with my tablet or Apple Pencil as I just purchased them and I use other apps that allow me to rest my hand. So I feel like if this was fixed NotesPlus would be a lot better. Kinda sad I paid $10 for it I can’t use it how I need to :/
Another just small thing I feel like there needs to be more cover options for the notebooks, and maybe more paper options. I think more customization settings would be great for NotesPlus . Other than those things it seems like a neat app. It’s good if you like typing that seems to work for me but I enjoy writing more.

by ZAD90

Fanatic App! I have switched to using the iPad (specifically Note Plus) in all my client intakes and note taking ventures—trial lawyer here...take A LOT of handwritten notes. Couple of Points I would like to see improved on: (1) Easier exporting/naming—I save all my notes as PDF in client folders on my firm’s server. I have to remember to rename each PDF Note as NotesPlus carrys the naming of my previous note to my new notebook...creating a lot of confusion when trying to locate a note; (2) Palm Rejection needs some work, very frequently when I go to write in the notebook NotesPlus zooms the note to the point that I often have to pinch to resize to normal “fit” zoom; (3) Add “insert date” button, I date all of my handwritten notes so when I print them to the file they are put in the proper order...would be nice if there was a way to insert date by default.

Otherwise app works great! But Please Please Please work on better Palm Rejection...very annoying to have to stop note taking to resize the note.

by Wujsioyhnm

NotesPlus used to be my favorite handwriting app because of its smooth strokes and features that allow me to easily erase, select, and move written text. After the iOS13 update, however, the handwriting is no longer smooth and it sometimes fails to recognize strokes if I write faster (while in other handwriting apps my Apple Pencil still works perfectly).

Another issue I’ve been having with NotesPlus is the lack of search-ability even though it claims to support conversion from handwriting to text. While the OCR button in the tool bar seems to recognize my handwriting without any issue, the intended pages never show up when I try to use the search bar in the top left corner to find specific words. Also I hope Notes Plus can keep the OCR texts when exporting to pdf so that the exported file is still searchable, which would be a huge plus.

Although I loved Notes Plus in the past, these bugs have become more and more annoying for me. If they are not fixed in the near future I am considering the switch to other note taking apps entirely.

by Idaho1976

Notes plus is a good app, but it defiantly has some issues. No drag and drop is an issue. As a medical student, I use multiple note apps. One to take all the notes in, and another to condense all the notes. For this I like to copy small parts of diagrams, and place these pictures next to a brief description of the drug or disease. Notability is the only app that I have seen do this. I can paste these pictures into some apps. The lag on Notes plus on pasting more than one picture between apps is 5 minutes. Notes Plus also seems to struggle more with larger documents. Yet I like the smoothness of the writing in NotesPlus. The
Handwriting to text is best in Notes Plus. Selecting which pages to import is also nice. Being able to see more pages than notability is nice. The search feature is one of the main reasons notability is the best college app, and the file organization is great. Good notes has one feature I love. Once you select the defect shape feature it is east to quickly highlight and get very straight lines. That feature makes pre-lecture reading a faster process. I like many features of many apps, but none of them are prefect. One feature no app has, but I would like to see is the ability to add several pictures at the same time from photos to a document. Each of these photos would be their own page. This would be of great use for many university students.

by Addy111dffffffff

I use NotesPlus daily both at work and school. It is the perfect companion for the Ipad with Apple Pencil. It has many pro’s to the handwriting experience and have preferred NotesPlus to many others (goodnotes, metamoji, Notes, ect.) Good job building NotesPlus .
Nevertheless, I have to bring up the fact that lately NotesPlus is losing its credibility. I have had various features that have broken on me. When I got NotesPlus , getting files from dropbox was readily available. A while back, I could no longer reach dropbox through NotesPlus (had to find an alternative way to import files into NotesPlus ). I cannot export recordings without having to disable icloud backup when transferring the files to my computer. Recently adding pages to a pdf, corrupts the files and all marks get shifted and messes the whole file. When renaming files, it gets messed up and shuts down. As you may expect, I’ve spent a bit of time having to find alternatives to these problems. I’ve sent request through their help service and have not gotten many responses to my requests. Hopefully this is not a negative trend team.
NotesPlus is a great product, but I hope the team gets on the ball with all of these required bug fixes.

by The_Best_Review!

Pluses: An intuitive tool that allows notes to be taken easily and fluently for both academic and work purposes. Very straightforward and easy to use. The number of tools or well-designed and allows for a smooth note writing experience.

Major Minus: Notability has caught up with Notes Plus, copying many of its features. A few years ago Notes Plus was clearly the better option, that is no longer the case. Notes Plus would clearly be the better application except that Notability now has an incredibly advanced search function, not only can handwritten notes be searched but now PDFs can be searched. Meaning that PDFs can be uploaded, a general search can be completed and it will show which PDFs contain the word, then where in each PDF the word is, this is done by highlighting it. This is a huge advantage because PDFs can simply be uploaded and dropped into NotesPlus, terms can then be searched and notes apply to them when need be. In notes plus, PDFs are not searchable and written text is not highlighted when it is searched.

Question: Will Notes Plus be adding more advanced search functions in the near future?

by CarterMDiv

First and foremost, this is by far the best app for writing. I prefer pen and paper over typing, and I use a Lamy Safari fountain pen. NotesPlus is the closest to my penmanship on pen and paper, and so I love NotesPlus for that reason. I also like the functionality of working on PDFs from within NotesPlus and marking them up. The zoom feature is fantastic and is another important reason one should use NotesPlus.

However, my main issue is the file sizes when exporting. I had the same problem with an app on my old Samsung device when I wrote notes on top of a PDF. The file sizes when exporting to a PDF are tremendously large. If exporting three (3) hand-written pages, expect the file to be about 3MB. Compare this to a 6 page typed document that was converted to PDF and it is 56KB. Those three pages compose a 54x bigger file. This means that my notes from class, which can be over 50 pages (~1MB/page), would not even be able to be emailed as most emails only allow <25MB files. I know the reasons is because of the handwriting which seems to be vectors, but something needs to be done to make this more reasonable.

by Ericbfitness

I saw a colleague using his iPad and Apple Pencil a couple years ago at an event. When I lost a paper notebook recently, it was time to kit up and get an iPad, Apple Pencil and Notes Plus. I’m glad I did. NotesPlus has been great in keeping all of my notebooks in one easy-to-find location. And I’m loving how my writing is what I see in each of the notebooks.

Some questions for the developer -

1. I am a lefty and I have my settings as such in NotesPlus for use with the Apple Pencil. I prefer to scroll with one finger on my right hand and it usually works, but I have noticed that sometimes my 1-finger scroll doesn’t work... It comes back after a while, but why is that happening? Am I missing a setting / toggle somewhere?

2. Sometimes, as I’m writing with the pencil, the notebook preview screen pops up on the left and I’m not sure what I’m doing / what gesture is triggering that preview.

3. Often times I’ll be writing with the pencil. I’ll lift it up from the screen and go to write more, but the pencil has switched to erase mode. I may be double tapping the Apple Pencil to toggle between the write and erase when I lift up from the screen, but I’m not sure that is the root cause. I’ve also made sure the tip of the Apple Pencil is secure too. Are there other gestures that could toggle that I’m missing?

Thank you! It’s a great app and look forward to using it more!

by IWanit

I use NotesPlus as my electronic Engineering Notebook. I especially like the natural appearance of the inking engine. The pens can be tailored to mimic my pen on paper appearance almost to a tee! The conversion of written notes to text to make searchable notebooks is particularly handy, specially when searching for old data.

Notes Plus has relegated my other note apps to the archives. NotesPlus has won a coveted page 1 icon location! What also seems to set Notes Plus apart is the developers commitment to constantly improving NotesPlus . They gladly accept ideas and criticisms and will establish open dialog with their users to reach resolution.

Sure Notes Plus is not perfect ( yet ) but it has become my go to notebook app. There are some things I wish it did better but those issues are mainly one of personal preference. I do wish that the search function highlighted the found words on the page - I am told this is coming!

[Additional Comments]
NotesPlus is stupendous on the new iPad 10.5! I was considering getting the Pencil but the Adonit Pixel works so well with NotesPlus, and the new glass feels so smooth, it actually improved my handwriting. I did cooberate the graphics placement issue, but this was addressed nearly immediately.

I've worked with the team at Notes Plus and they are responsive and interested in me as a customer. I cannot recommend NotesPlus enough.

by Gdp4

I’ve had NotesPlus for years. My need is to be able to take handwritten notes and convert them to text. I’ve tried every app in NotesPlus Store. None ever worked well enough to meet my needs. I now own the new iPod Pro, and pencil. Paired with these, Notes Plus is amazing! At last I can take handwritten notes in real time, as if I was using a really good pen, and Notes Plus does a remarkable job of accurately turning them into text! I tried my other apps too, but they’re not even in the running. Kudos to the Notes Plus folks!!!

There is one problem for me with NotesPlus . I have to convert, copy, and move my document one page at a time, which is slow and tedious.

If I could convert a whole document to text at once (rather than page at a time), copy it all at once, and paste the entire document where I need it, I would be in heaven. I hope NotesPlus is upgraded so it can do that. Otherwise, I hesitate using it for documents more than two pages long.

by Bob(Swede)

I normally do not write many reviews unless something is extraordinary.. either good or bad. In this case it is very good. I have been using Notes Plus for over 4 years. I have found it to extremely useful for my business work.

Details -
I can keep all of my notes from meetings with me at all times. I have been in meetings where I have had to recall information amount a supplier from e years before. I can search in Notes Plus, go to the meeting (where I have inserted a phot of the business cards of everyone present) review my notes and look at the photos of the products that I had taken that day and embedded into my notes. If I had kept an audio recording of the meeting that is available also.

Issues-
To date I have never had a loss of information (I do back it up to my PC) and am 95% satisfied.
The only issues I have had is if I have added a lot of photos or other images into a document and not shut NotesPlus down for a long time, it will slow the writing speed. I shut it down and restart and the issue is generally resolved.

Preferences
I wish they had the option to copy pages in a workbook or even set up a full workbook in NotesPlus . I would like to make my own, personalized year long, dated planner and have it in NotesPlus to help with my ability to organize things more efficiently. I am having to do that myself and it is very cumbersome.

Great APP and I hope you continue to improve and support it!

by Simeon A

When I purchased my first generation iPad Notes Plus was one of the first Apps I installed. The possibility of using a device to create a handwritten digital notebook was fascinating.
Not only was the initial concept very exciting but as each update and new version was released I discovered something more, the heart within NotesPlus . The developer Viet Tran and his team constantly amaze me at their responsiveness to user feedback and implementing new ideas that make continue to move Notes Plus into the realm of excellence. Every time I open NotesPlus I feel a deep sense of connection to not only the notes and journaling I create but feel the team and community of users as well.
The 6.1 update is possibly the most anticipated yet as Notes Plus moves into a new unified notebook format. This will allow for more growth and efficiency going into the future.
Notes Plus continues to be the best iPad note taking application available and I look forward with much enthusiasm continuing to use it in all aspects whether the mundane all the way capturing life experiences and as a repository for my future hopes and dreams.
All the best to Viet and the team!

by KSC Jan

Update:
This happened that time and since then, without seemingly changing anything, I have been able to use it.

Now I just wish that it read Word Documents and make them editable in the same manner as PDFs.

It is an excellent app, my daughter uses it for all her school work that requires note taking, or reviews.

The developers are very responsive and go out of their way to make sure that the customers are happy with the product!!

Old review: I purchased NotesPlus after extensively researching the top note taking apps available for the iPad Pro.
I liked all the features offered by Notes Plus and decided to install it for my imminent need to review three pdf files from work.
I cannot seem to be able to import the pdf files into Notes Plus, although I have watched multiple videos on how to do it from an email, from iBooks, from Files, etc. I do not use Dropbox nor Google Drive for my work documents so I don’t have those available. The files are on my iPad and/or iCloud.
Notes Plus does not show up on the list of Open With apps. Even when I go to More, it does not show Notes Plus on the list to add it. I have deleted NotesPlus and reinstalled it, and nothing changes.
This is extremely frustrating!! I sent an email to de developer and have not gotten an answer yet. My experience with NotesPlus has been very frustrating in these three days since I purchased it!:(