Freeform Reviews

Free has the potential to be great but it keeps freezing and lagging on my brand new iPad Pro m4 8gb and even did it on the 16gb version I had. To say the least this is super dissappointing, I recently switched back to apple after a very long hiatus. I haven’t been an apple customer since the first IPhone that didn’t have a video camera yet my Nextel did lol anyway my Samsung s20 from 4 years ago has a notes app which can do similar things if not more and i often find myself using that because it doesn’t lag. I wan’t to use the IPad for this but sometimes its so frustrating and considering the cost of this device as well as my Mac Studio this is unacceptable and honestly I feel super ripped off. Everyone says Apple is the best yet this $1400 IPad struggles to do things my Old Samsung Phone from 4 years can do and more. Really Second guessing my purchases and was waiting for the new IPhone to come out but if this is a preview then I will end up sticking with Samsung which is a bummer because it seems I can’t use my phone on Mac Studio like I can for Windows. Another feature I saw the new IPhone will be able to do which is beyond me why a Samsung Phone can do this from 5 years ago but IPhones are just now catching up. What’s going on here? It’s super disappointing to think that other companies may have surpassed Apple, I hope I am wrong. Sorry for my rant but this stuff is super expensive and considering the price point should work efficiently.

I never heard of this application until it showed up on my iPhone in one of the more IOS 16 recent updates. As a creative myself, I was so excited to try and expand ways to make this work for me in several aspects of my passion projects and potentially professional projects. I can’t do that at this time because some tweaks have to be done to iCloud on Apple’s end. I’ve already toggled on the sync to iCloud and everything that I added on my MacBook (including a whole board )does not show up on my iPhone. I was willing to hold out on this review but the final straw was me taking the time to update my iPad to iPad OS 16, something I was looking forward to making use of this app form on- yet nothing showed up. Not a board, a note, nothing. And sync was turned on. This might be a iCloud issue, a Freeform application issue, or maybe both but the bottom line is nothing can be done from my end. I have 2 TB of iCloud storage and the fact that the key purpose of iCloud is to have your important information synced adds to my skepticism that I don’t trust it all the way 100%. So many creatives are looking forward to this and hopefully want to rely on this within both personal and professional formats. Apple please don’t let us and anyone else with a creative spark down.

Update - the sync updated and deleted something I spent an hour on creating. Apple & iCloud has to do better with the millions people pay for this service.

You better fix the glitch when I was drawing I wanted to draw something and the game reset at the whole thing. I cannot reset it the game reset itself the whole thing I wasted so much time and the game reset in my thing. I will tell everybody he plays this game about this if I see or hear anybody talking about Freeform also tell my friend didn’t even know about you, so that’s good that’s good, and that’s very bad for you. Cause my friends are gonna be very upset at you you noodle thing I’m taking all my stars away I’m not gonna play the game until you fix this stupid glitch and you apologize to me immediately this made me cry.😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 and I’m not being dramatic I’m serious I don’t like this game. I will not like the game this is fixed.😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 when my baby brother grows up, I’m gonna tell him he sees Free and he gets it for this app that he should be careful about the glitch because this happened this game this game it’s making me so mad. I’m only gonna give you one star that’s it so you’re starting on a new fan and I want you to try to get me back of liking this game get rid of every single glitch that can happen in this game😭😡😡😡

Free has decent features that make notetaking much easier than most alternatives. Free (beyond issues I will get into) is relatively easy to use, with intuitive writing tools and utensil options as well as a decent interface. I can go into more detail, but its nothing that has not already been said.

Where my issues lies is in its optimization. I have a relatively new 9th generation iPad that supposedly should run smoothly with Free , but Free crashes extremely often. When in use over a period of an hour, Free crashes between 4 to 6 times, and on some instances this happens without input from me and without warning. Like I said, I use Free for taking notes, and it takes 2 whole minutes to reboot all the way back to my board. It is crucial time missed. A related issue is that Free occasionally freezes while zooming in/out at certain parts while it tries to load writing in. This issue is most apparent

While there may be a solution to this issue, the fact that the issue exists and is so potent is such an enormous oversight on part of the developers. I have not had this much issue with anything even remotely related to drawing, yes I understand this is partly because this is backed to the cloud, that doesn't help the problem. I recommend Adobe Fresco or Collanote instead.

I used to use Freeform almost every day, I do art on it since I don’t have any fancy drawing apps. It works well for an artist, although I do wish there were even more tools. Now, I know you might feel that there are a perfectly good amount of tools for usage, I just am sometimes looking for a very specific look that Freeform doesn’t have. So, you don’t have to change this if you don’t feel it will be useful, but I would appreciate it. The biggest issue with Freeform right now is that while I’m drawing Free will randomly close out on me. Not only that, but it’s super laggy even when it is working. So, devs, I would really appreciate if you tried to fix this. Thanks. [EDIT] It keeps kicking me out… I’m not happy. I’m going to get a better drawing app for sure. I’m just sad about losing all my work. It keeps kicking me out with no explanation. I never get to spend more than two minutes on it at a time. It’s honestly really sad. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to lower this review to a two stars. (It was four before.) If you can fix it then I can bring it all the way up to a five, but I also know that Free pretty much never updates. So, if anyone wants a drawing app, I highly recommend investing in a *real* one instead of trying to use Freeform and lagging badly after a few months.

March 22, 2023 Free is broken. I’m a UX designer and know what its like when your shipping an app. This feels like the MVP, the very lowest version of Free. When you paste text it defaults to center. There is a lot of clicking or tapping to get to what you want on both desktop and mobile. It’s frustrating to use cause of all the effort it takes. Take a note from Craft, Miro and Figma for user experience.

Feb 12, 2023 Man I feel like I wrote this original review a month ago and I still was having the same issue. It only just sink after I deleted the file and recovered it on my iPad. The problem is that it takes ages for it to sync, so if I want to come up with quick ideas and then carry it over it’s so slow. I’ve been using this on my iPad and then on my Mac and I just download it for my phone. What happened to hand over? Or the continuity features? I’d be nice if there was some sort of way to activate the sync or to save and sync without having to wait for Free to decide to sync when it wants to.

FreeForm is an adequately designed tool; I find the basic functionality to be extremely convenient but recently I had a project that required me to edit a photo. I just had to delete this white outline on someone’s face and it didn’t let me. FreeForm could be so much better than just a shared whiteboard app but Apple hasn’t created anything useful since the Airpods so I’m not surprised that FreeForm can’t do anything ‘advanced’.

I mean we don’t have a proper Audio Equalizer or full control of colour on any Apple device with a screen which is extremely disappointing when taking into consideration Apple’s ecosystem is the go to for most people irregardless of whether they are using it for productivity or not. Personally I would say Apple needs to step away from the R&D table for a few years and look at how to perfect the tools users already have. It’s not that they’ve been doing a bad job, they just have to more mindful of what consumers want.

I just used Freeform to take notes at a conference. I knew going into it that it’s not really made for note taking. The experience was just OK. I made a sticky note for each session, and was frustrated by some things. The sticky notes could only be square, which posed some problems when trying to organize them on the board. Also, it would be really helpful to be able to write on sticky notes with Apple pencil. I couldn’t find a way to group items, either. A few font choices would be nice; just a few, like one serif and one simple script, as I realize part of the appeal is to keep things simple.

I will, however use Freeform again for days two and three. Maybe I’ll like it better after I use it more. I don’t really want to learn yet another app, and Notes has its limitations as well. At least with sticky notes it’s easier to move information around. I can zoom out to see it all at once, too, if I choose.

Following up on my 1st review. Incredibly, you CANNOT “rotate” a drawing or object! It’s really amazing that Apple apps are so consistently disappointing…Google? This is the missing drawing too as well as being a superior organizational tool. My first use was to drop a series of screen grabs to create an investment document. I’ve used and dropped numerous such tools including Paper, which was the best until the new subscription era forced me to drop it. (Cripes, how many subscriptions does Apple think I want to carry!?) But this is better. I made my notes on a stack of images, complete with arrows and full control of top to bottom order (missing in Notability), and exported it as a pdf document into Notability, my go to document storage app. I was about to start another concept exploration and immediately thought to go with Freeform. Thus, I thought it was a good time to show my appreciation with this review. Thanks for doing a good thing Apple. But do fix your date function on documents. I don’t know why this is still an issue seen in people losing work—or just give users back the Save button.

Freeform is a fantastic app that allows you to be creative! The feature I use most is the drawing tool, which is an awesome cure for boredom on long roadtrips. (Not when you’re driving obviously) Freeform has many different artistic tools, like painting, pen, calligraphy pen, highlighter, and so much more! I like the ability to download images onto the canvas because it makes it so much easier to draw what you see realistically.

One issue I have with Free is SO ANNOYING! I love to draw dragons, and I’ve been working on one and it’s just mwah. I’m still new to shading so I would experiment with the brush and such, but then all of a sudden Free would close. I would go back, but it wouldn’t have an undo button on my precious-now-ruined masterpiece! So I would just have super silly and wrong looking shading on my dragon. I hate that so much! Each time it would shorten the amount of time until it kicks me out of Free significantly, until it kicks me out every single MINUTE! Please fix issue, my guess is that it can’t have too much stuff on one board!

Free is super great for designing, and has been fairly helpful for my small business. For design purposes,I also recommend canva but this does a lot more. Tbh I started using it because it popped up on my screen when Apple released it and I updated my phone and I clicked and got lost drawing scribbles and figuring out how it works😅 but yeah. It’s not the best and sometimes kicks me out of Free randomly and stuff but not to bad, just a minor annoyance. The notes app is close to the same without some key features of Free, but yeah. I’ve had an issue collaborating, sometimes I do something and everyone else won’t see and vice versa, but I don’t need to collab often. I’m also annoyed messing up sizing when printing things 😑but that’s really a me thing. It’s helped me design a couple things for a party I hosted also which I liked and I fully plan on using it for my bday party 🥳 so yeah. So also after Free kicks me out randomly I click on the board agin and It says something like ”app quit unexpectedly last time you opened it” when it didn’t quit which is questionable but yeah. Sorry for the long review but overall it’s a pretty good app

EDIT: I also started creating mood boards for some things and I do recommend doing that

To be frank, I really appreciate that you make Free, it encourage me to do maid-map more, literately, I scarcely do it, but with Free,I will try and try, especially on the iPad with Apple Pencil, it’s convenient and modern, but the current use situation is very unstable, such as handwritten notes too much, will be stuck, and crash; I think it's a little rigid, given that multiplayer collaboration requires a lot more data processing and requires a lot less complexity and playability. My suggestion is that it can be separated. For example, a "share with others" can be added to the Settings. The "Yes" section of the page can give priority to "share", and take away some of the complexity and playability. "No" allows users to create their own random thoughts. I'm sure the iPad pro will handle the personal part more than adequately.
That’s all I want to say, I can’t help saying it’s an amazing app, a wonderful job, although there are already another mind-map apps, but I even don’t give it a look, I think this is the best app ever, thanks to you, thanks to ，❤️

This is a good whiteboard app that I can easily see using as a graphic design student. It works really well with the Apple Pencil. I use a similar app called Mural all the time for group projects. My main issue with it is that Free has no browser support. It requires both you AND EVERYONE your collaborating with to be in that walled garden. This means I most likely will only be using it for solo assignments as you do not want to leave anyone out of the mood board design process. I also prefer windows as my desktop operating system, so not being able to edit it from my main work machine or to access links makes it harder to use. It would be better if apple users where the only ones that could host a mood board, but anyone can join via a link similar to the FaceTime update. It’s a shame, because other than that one major flaw I like Free way better than Mural.

I spend quite a bit of my time making and organizing lists and putting things into categories. I previously did this mostly within my photo albums, since it made it so that I didn’t have to copy paste, and could instead simply drag my images. While categorizing, though, the groups seemed to blend into one another, as there was no clear endpoint to anything. With Free, though, it functions basically as a bulletin board of sorts for me, but doesn’t require copious amounts of paper to use. It’s great!!
I do still have a few issues with Free, though I have learned to deal with them. For starters, it runs incredibly slowly. I don’t tend to put more than 40 images on a board, and yet applications such as adobe illustrator, which deal with many many more assets on average, seem to run twice as fast. Alongside this, typing is always a bit slow, and half of the time Free will not seem to register that I am even making an attempt to type.
Overall, though, despite my complaints, I am more than happy with this program, and I am extremely grateful that it even exists, let alone freely.

I would have given it 4.5 stars, but it would only let me do whole stars. The only problems are it sometime is hard 2 work w/, and won’t let me move something exactly where I want it, and the formatting in the text boxes doesn’t change. But otherwise great app. Good 4 making virtual invitations, and even editing photos. You can also creat puzzles, word searches, and other games w/ Free.

Now that my storage is kinda almost full (but i still have, like, 10 gigabytes left, so not really?) Freeform has been acting really annoying. When i use the keyboard to type something in Freeform, it's often really slow to respond. It also often undoes stuff that i didn't tell it too, won't show me all the stuff on my board, is slow to move things, etc. It also keeps exiting Free when i'm in the middle of using it, and then when i tap on it, is blank for about 30 seconds, and then opens up and then i tap on the board i was on, and takes a while to load it, yeah.

I don’t know how to talk now but this game is I mean this is in the game. It’s a drawing app. This is called Freeform. It is so nice. you could have as much gone as you want so helpful I’ve even can draw pictures of my family and if you go to the grid with the low square, she can find a perfect skin color. This is so fun tic-tac-toe and you can even dots without having to draw any board you just have to draw border for your dots and you choose choose your colors and play, Free now is good for working. You can draw stuff out for work. You can make PowerPoint drawings. Happy birthday pictures. It is so cool and fun. Please download this now. and creators thank you for making me. Sad is the best drawing app ever has 1 million star rating creators developers there’s nothing you can do to make Free more worse every time you do it gets better and better thank you to burgers.

i love Free so much! i can do whatever i want and ik bunch of ya struggle cuz ya can’t rotate, i got it! so first, realllllllly easy, unequip the pencil right above your screen, how to unequip u ask, well, tap the button right above the screen, to theee… LEFT! of the sticky note. then the bar with items to draw shall disappear. then tap the item YOU want to rotate. now hold onto the drawing and a blue outline should appear. then pinch the drawing down to adjust size. pinch your fingers so they are touching. with your index finger and thumb should be touching. this turns the drawing or writing smaller. to make it more bigger you do the same, but EXPAND! pinch the screen then make a gap that expands with your index finger and thumb should be getting farther away from each other. soon it should be getting bigger and BIGGER! then stop when u have the right size! now rotate! tap,pinch,twist ya hand a lil to rotate! bye have a great day!

LOVE Free , but would have wished that all dates from beginning and all changes to the last date was accessible somehow. It would also be great if you could put your boards into folders like you can with notes, really hoping on an update where that is possible! Another area of improvement could be to have some kind of template, format or organization system to choose from. To start off of nothing can be a bit overwhelming. I would also prefer it to havw the alternative for other colored boards, especially black/dark grey, maybe green etc. Something else that is frustrating is that when you want to move what you have done around and it is a mix between drawing and other only the drawing part can move and not other objects which forces you to have to move the other things individually.

I love writing books and drawing Free helps me practice. Thank you for making Free. this is an awesome app. It’s really fun and gives me a chance to write and illustrate you make me feel like an artist that can do two things at once. But I’m older I want to write books and do art Free helps with practice and I’m really thankful that Free can help me do writing better but I also uses for my emotions. It really helps me write things that I really want to say out loud I can’t do it. still reading because I think Free is really a good app and I could use it any time for anything honest I can write about feelings Sportime people I can draw and you just really thought possibilities I really like Free and thank you. I really appreciate freeform and I hope you can come out with another app just like freeform thank you. 📔📒📓📕

I love to use Free because i love digital art. I love how it also has things like shapes and decals and you can use stickers and your photos. You can have multiple boards which I like because I can have boards for different categories of stuff like I have one for nature digital art and i even have a whole board about donuts. It’s kind of annoying how it takes so long to load but other than that it’s really fun. I guess I wish sometimes it wouldn’t freeze up because when you go into it, once you use it for about ten minutes the screen goes white and Free restarts but other than that, it’s great. I also love how you can do things like crop photos and emojis and remove the background of your photos. In all this is a great app and i think everyone should try it! 👋🏻❤️🫟✨