Noteshelf 3 Reviews

I had a longer explanation but accidentally tapped away and lost the text before I sent it. 🤬

Short story. I have used NS since my first iPad in 2012. I had no trouble migrating NS1 to NS2 (although I didn't like losing abilities on converted pages, it was still useful.)

I have been testing the latest NS3 every few months to see if I can migrate to it with my daily work notebook now at 1413 pages. I send to NS3 from NS2 and I get a writeable notebook, but the most important features do not work.

I really would like the new tag and organizational features, but they are simply non-functional. In prior tests, tags would show the right number of pages, but the images were blank placeholders. In my latest test today, it's worse. NS3 recognizes the tags of my imported notebook, but tapping a tag only shows the message "No tagged items" and a truncated message that I should tag pages to "easily orga ..."

I have submitted multiple tickets, have interacted with support, and sent videos of past behaviors. I'm disappointed that the new features can't ever seem to work with my existing notebook.

I may test again in the future, but it's looking less likely. I'll keep using NS2 for a while, it seems. I'm not in "waiting" mode anymore, hence my review. I can't use it; I wish I could.

Until recently Noteshelf3 was a vital part of our daily operation. Our business uses apple business manager to keep control of comapany devices. Noteshelf 2 (which I paid for) disappeared from the devices and there seems to be no way to recover it. I am now forced to buy Noteshelf 3 instead. I understand product development however an app I purchased should not be taken away. The data was not being stored in the cloud. A mistake made by me, however, I don't believe this is a good or fair. The new problem once I got over my original frustration is that I can't seem to get the premium version through the in app purchase when using apple business manager to load apps on the devices. This is Frustrating to no end. I'll gladly change my rating if a representative from noteshelf can help me through this dilemma. Until then I will have to look for another note taking app to run my business.

I was perfectly happy with Noteshelf 2, and disappointed to see support was being discontinued before the end of the year and that they were going to turn it to a subscription program.
I pushed the button to upgrade, was taken to the AppStore, purchased the upgrade.
When I opened up the “Noteshelf 3“ that had actually downloaded it doesn’t appear to be all of the “upgraded“premium/lifetime benefits that I purchased it for.
It could not find my Noteshelf 2 files and I had to do a export from the originals. Now, N3 will only open three of my Noteshelf 2 files.
I open several folders to check the contents… Three of them!… Now I’m locked out of all the files. I actually wanted to work on.

I’m at my $6.99 for the upgrade, I’ve got something that pretends to be Noteshelf 3 that only opens three files and I feel like I got cheated.
There is no contact/email/message/report problem available on their homesite… All you get is a bunch of faq stuff, none of which applies.

I very much hope that the creators will be in contact or reply on here.

Noteshelf has been one of my favorite problems since 2010 when I purchased the original, and if it were not for this ridiculous problem with a “upgrade” my five star favorite of this would’ve been continued.

… better yet don’t buy Noteshelf3. It’s better to be safe than sorry!

You’d expect a note APP to save your notes, and you’d expect it to grant you access to the notebook after you’ve written it. Well think again!

I read all the rave reviews, purchased a premium plan, meticulously began writing incredibly important information, and did so for over two weeks… and then one of my notebooks “crashed” and “puff” I couldn’t access it. The notebook is visible, but “click” “click” “click” a million clicks… and nothing happens.

Agony! To be sure, I tried everything imaginable to get my info back… researched it thoroughly all over the web, left messages with Noteshelf3 developers, and clicked on it a million more times because Noteshelf3 made me crazy. But I’m done now, and the only thing left to do for the society of Noteshelf3 people looking for a notebook APP is to warn them…YOU!

I can’t get back the two weeks I wasted writing everything concerning an incredibly important and timely project, and despite a dooming deadline created 100% by this infernal APP, I’m taking a break to warn YOU… If you value your time and your sanity, looks elsewhere, especially if you plan to use Noteshelf3 for stuff that’s consequential.

Zero confidence here. Good Bye NOTESHELF 3. It was a very unpleasant experience. You owe me whatever the heck I paid for your “premium” product (cough) (cough) and two weeks of my life!

P.S. 1 star is generous.

Hello, I like the new interface and all the whiz-bangs that come with a new version of an app, but after migrating to version 3 none of my scanned pages from version 2 are searchable anymore. I open the notebooks in version 2 and I can search any word and it will give me the results of the pages where that word is found. Version 3 of these same notebooks gives me no results found. If I scan a new page, then that text is searchable in version 3, but I have lost all searching from my pages migrated from version 2. I cannot recommend this upgrade to anyone at this time. I’m sure new users are unaffected, and I would recommend Noteshelf3 to anyone who is not migrating, but this upgrade is a non-starter for me because I have lost this function that is vital to my using Noteshelf3 . If I have overlooked a step that would activate this function for me, then I would be very grateful to be shown how to regain it. I will increase the rating I have given if this function is once again available to me.

Update: the new version that I was instructed to update into is still not working. Beware using Noteshelf3 if you are planning on scanning pages and have the text be searchable. It has not worked for me. The developers told me that they are working on it. I await their update to make Noteshelf3 fully functional.

You would think that Noteshelf3 is still in beta with the amount of bugs there are. The apple pencil constantly stops working and I am unable to add text to a document. So I'll need to restart Noteshelf3 , this happens at least once a day. It can also be extermely laggy where I'll need to wait ~30 for the frame to reload with my writing. While writing sometimes it will quickly move to another part in the notebook. Lastly if I try to import photos from my library into Noteshelf, I can't use the sharesheet, it won't let me select the notebook to add it to. Instead I need to enter the notebook and add a single new page at a time from the photo add tool, this is frustrating if I need to add multiple photos at once.

I've been using Noteshelf for over 10 years now and this is a very disappointing release. If I could downgrade and get my money back to go to NS2 I would. These new AI tools are cool and all, but you can't break the basic behavior of notetaking.

I am a long-term user noteshelf, and really regret regret updating to this version. Unless you hand write a lot of things that you would like to change into AI, I would keep away from it. Almost every step of the way the new changes have been worse than the old, except for the pin pallets on the screen. A good deal of my old Notebooks did not move over, all of my covers loss their names on the front I use it a great deal for business, and I hate not having the clock readable on the sheet now. Also, the new custom templates folder is far less organized and a pain to find anything, after the last update, I lost all of my pens which I had had to re-create with the color codes from Noteshelf 2, trying to move a sheet to another position in the notebook is far less easy and quite cumbersome, etc. it reminds me of the new Apple Watch update that changed a lot of things that worked well just for the sake of changing.

How does an app go backwards! I have used notepad since the first version which I loved. It had different paper options, one being plain lined paper with different colored papers as well as multiple covers so it was easy to identify notebooks. Noteshelf 3 has NONE of that. I hate absolutely everything except I could at least bring over my old notebooks. I will be using none of the new papers because I don’t want someone telling me how to organize. I want paper I can write on for notes which you would think with note being in the title it would be a no brainer but nope. I could also use numerous different ink color palettes which notebook 3 does not offer. How do you try to improve but mess up everything that made an app great? I will be using my old noteshelf app to build notebooks to then import to this noteshelf and will miss all the color palettes I loved.

I would love to say Noteshelf3 worked super well for me! I loved it as an undergraduate. Worked great. To be totally honest, I’m not sure if my issues were an Apple issue or an app issue. I didn’t like that you can’t make a folder within a folder, so I couldn’t like stack my subjects/courses, I just had to make a ton of folders. Maybe there’s a way that I couldn’t figure out, but if there is, it’s hidden very well; but, I digress. I’ve been using it for medical school, and it wasn’t syncing between my 2 iPads and laptop. I could never open documents on my laptop, which isn’t great for trying to rewrite my lecture notes. I switched to having notes open on one iPad and rewriting notes on the other, but eventually that stopped working too. Not sure what the issue was, I have plenty of cloud storage, but nothing would open on a divide that wasn’t the primary device I used for my notes. It was GREAT in college when I only needed one device for note-taking. I unfortunately had to become a Goodnotes convert; I’ll miss you Noteshelf. Wish I could rate you higher but I just had so many issues at the end that I can’t justify any higher than 3/5.

Love Noteshelf 2 and was excited to see what Noteshelf 3 brought. Love the new design and features all very welcome. Love to see the update keep them coming. However it feels like 3 steps forward 2 steps back. I feel like you changed how certain worked just to change them and you changed them for the worst. When they worked just fine in Noteshelf 2. Such as the zoom view, share options, all seem to have bugs that make it perform worse than in Noteshelf 2 or the old way was far superior.

Some cool features I’d like to see added if possible. I take a lot of math notes for work and it would be great if you could include math translate feature to convert hand written math into latex,png. To have inline math with the handwritten notes for ease of reading or for sharing. Something like nebo does.

I think I will stick to Noteshelf 2 for now until some of the bugs get worked out.

Noteshelf3 is a little better than the Noteshelf 2, however it could go a little further. I have been with Noteshelf since the first version and I see the change. One of my pet peeve is not having the ability to draw lines or rotate items on the 0, 15, 30 90 degree angle "easily". I think it should have a free and a set option. Rotating something 90 degrees should be easier, not fighting with the 1 degree off. It should have a flip / mirror option. Those are just two things I fight with on the regular. It has other things that could use adjusting but over all it is a good app. I have tried others and they have features that this one doesn’t, but I find myself using Noteshelf the most. Hopefully a rep from NS will read this…..when you upgrade and import the books, does it convert the old book to a new one? Or does it modify the old book. Do I now have 2 copies of the book? If so can I sadly delete the old book? My books are large and contain lots of pictures and audio thus it takes up a lot of space. Definitely need to know this info before I run out of space and find out the hard way.
It you have made it this far in my review…… Noteshelf3 is worth it. I would buy it again.

I love Noteshelf and have used it for years, upgrading every time. I love the the functionality. For instance, custom pages and custom covers have allowed me to endlessly create what I want and need. I like the tools—writing implements, colors, shapes, hold to make straight feature—and it is a place I go multiple times a day to take notes and plan.

My only challenge right now is the extremely long time it takes to open—sometimes even reopen in the middle of switching back and forth between apps. As I said, I use this multiple times a day to take notes and manage my time. This lag in Noteshelf 3 is really causing me problems as I sometimes loose the thread of what I was going in to do while I’m waiting. Please, fix the lag. It’s the only reason this isn’t a five star rating.

I have used Noteshelf for over 8 years and recommended it to everyone. I would always give it 5 stars and is my go-to app for almost everything. But, NS3 needs more work to get my 5 star rating again. I Easily transferred from NS1 to NS2. For me Transferring to NS3 has been a pain. First, not all of my custom templates transferred, many of which are related to my businesses. I had to transfer them one at a time. For the hyperlinks to work you need to be in read only mode...never had to do that before and seems read mode turns off all the time. Im not comfortable with the tool bars...technically 3. I would prefer the pen, highlight and erase bar be on same tool bar as colors. I would prefer having my favorite colors remain open like NS2. The erase/return is also separate from the others. This last update just created more issues...but once they get it all together, hopefully all will be good. I love that they added AI. Now I just wish they would let me add stickers from outside vendors that better relate to my business. They do have very good customer service, my reason for the 4th star. Hopefully soon, I'll be able to recommend them again as being the best.
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I’ve been using Noteshelf 3 for about 2 weeks now. I use it primarily for work. I had no migration issues from Noteshelf 2 as opposed to other users and the instructions were relatively easy. I even had a question regarding a feature and customer service responded within a few days therefore, my experiences are much better than several other reviewers. I simply prefer Noteshelf 2 to Noteshelf 3 for a couple of simple things that I’m sure they can fix. 1) I can no longer name my bookmarks. I use Noteshelf like a regular book and I do a lot of reading along with note taking. When I use bookmarks, I name them so I can easily look them up. Noteshelf got me through two Master’s degree’s with this feature. 2) Selecting pages: I used to be able to move/re-arrange multiple pages simultaneously. I am no longer able to do that which takes up much more time. 3) I’m unable to touch the 4 squares in the corner, view multiple pages simultaneously (more than 3 or 4), and quickly find the page I am looking for, as I can in Noteshelf 2. Noteshelf 3 added some features like AI, but at a cost of taking away some very simple and useful features. I’ve been using Noteshelf since the original and will now have to consider alternatives as one day I’m sure Noteshelf 2 will all-of-a-sudden stop working with a future update. It was good while it lasted. I’ll keep using if these features are added.

Been using Noteshelf since version 1, and it’s taken me a while to move from 2 to 3 because things just didn’t feel right in 3 whenever I’d check in on it. But this latest check-in finally prompted me to make the move, and I’m happy with that move. Some UI changes take getting used to, and the default preferences may need tinkering, but past that I can’t find anything in NS2 that I’m doing without in NS3.

It should be noted that I also haven’t found anything I want to do in 3 that I couldn’t do in 2, but maybe that’ll come in time. In the meantime, I do like the new interface more, the Mac version of app is significantly better than 2’s (which is a big deal if you like using both platforms), and I’m happy to give another $7 to keep development going after all the years I got out of 1 and 2. Anyone complaining about that needs to understand the costs of keeping software development alive (and be glad it isn’t $7 a month like so many other apps would do).

I have been using Noteshelf for years and am using the Dash planner with it. There are some flaws that need to be fixed and are forcing me to use Notability. The pens in Notability are no match to Noteshelf. I would have rated this higher as I believe you are on the right track, but the issues below have forced me to use Noteability until these are fixed.

1. If you copy a page using the thumbnails and want to paste the page after selecting a page using the pdf links, the thumbnails don’t update their position so you can paste the copied page.

2. What happened to all the great templates from version 2 like pastel papers?

3. When are you going to add a history button so you can go back to a previous linked page? This is a huge problem when using linked pages where there are several hundred.

4. If you copy a template page on Dash planner, or amply planner I have tried, and paste the page at a different location, the pasted page becomes the new template link. This is not the case with any other products I have tested. There is a workaround, but it isn’t easy or good.

5. How do you snap objects and lines for alignment?

6. Can you add a ruler?

I want to give this a maybe 3 1/2 stars. The reason why is because it crashes and glitches so much. I do keeps my information on Noteshelf3 and I enjoy it. I just have to backup my things up in a different area because I’m scared I’m gonna lose all of my documentation. I’ve also had to delete Noteshelf3 after backing it up and reinstall it. If this could be fixed, I would give the apt a 4 1/2 star .I would like to have more room or space for more pens or pencil colors. I’ve had noteshelf since the inception of the first one and I’ve always enjoyed it. This is the first one. I’ve had some problems with, but I will continue to support it and I hope that you are able to fix it soon.

I am still giving Noteshelf3 5 stars because I use it everyday and I couldn’t imagine my routine without it. I love that I can import a pdf and write all over it! I love the simplicity of pens/highlighters. I love that I have over 10 years of stored notes that are searchable! But. . . they’ve added so many features, it’s getting more difficult to navigate. I understand that people want the moon, and in trying to accommodate for everyone’s wishes, one ends up with way too many choices and simple note-taking is no longer simple. I agree with a previous reviewer. I’d like to go back to #2. Anyway, thanks for a great, I know how hard it can be to make everyone happy.

This is truly an amazing app! I count on it all the time and use it every chance I get. I love it for marking up PDFs and articles that are important to me and easy to organize them all so I know exactly where they are. I think the look of my documents is the best ever seen, and with the ability to convert handwriting into text to search for words is pretty amazing. I love the enhancements that are made continually by the company and they are quite helpful. Nothing makes my handwriting look better. They have so many features to help me add variations and photos to my documents. Signing documents looks more beautiful using their fountain pen than any other writing utensil. Can’t say enough about it.

I have been using Noteshelf since its original release. I love how forward thinking this company & app is. I recently migrated to this app & absolutely love most of the features. But there are a few things I wish they had kept from Noteshelf 2. My rating is really a 4.75, lol because I REALLY miss having the Date & time in the upper left hand corner. I also miss having the color wheel, I thought it was much faster & the ability to save the color to a specific pen or highlighter was fantastic. I have been using the color picker & hex color & those functions are great just need to get used to them. Thank you Noteshelf for a fantastic app.