Freenotes Reviews

Augh! Instant delete! I have no idea where to begin, but I will try.
Not everything free is instantly better, and Freenotes is an especially good example of this. It lacks some basic features: zooming, page formatting, and even the ability to focus on one page at a time. The free version of Penbook has all of those and more, not to mention that one does not have to IMMEDIATELY save notebooks to Files.
This is also more of a planner than the notes app the devs sell it as. Yet if we are saying that this is a planner, it is not a good one of those, either. Again, Penbook (or, better yet, Calendar!) is better for that purpose.
If you are a serious note-taker, do not download! Do yourself a favor and get Penbook if you like writing with your finger, pen, or dog's nose. Do NOT believe the good reviews; they are either by zombies or robots or...or...robot zombies.

This used to be the most convenient app ever. They began inputting ads whenever you open Freenotes or refresh. I would not recommend this for school or work at all as it’s inconvenient and as a person who does work constantly, it is quite annoying. I feel betrayed as when downloading this long ago I was given “premium” implying I would be allowed to use these features for free. Others in reviews are saying the same about this “premium” feature which is unfortunate. Developers are not replying back with answers for why this “premium” feature doesn’t let early users granted “premium” avoid the ads. I would recommend to just use the other popular apps that might have in app purchases, but definitely don’t do something awful like overriding your work with ads!

I loved Freenotes when it came out the interface was prefect and it was tools were good and easy to use.

Now over the last couple months the company has been implementing paid features. With the most recent update "bug fixes" it makes so that when Freenotes loads an ad plays. This was never the case before and it honestly ruins the experience. The implementation of these ads were not made known to the users and a "bug fix" is not an acceptable way of hiding this. Why try to monetize a good app with adding features that distract from note taking like the recent ai helper icon (new paid feature) that cannot be hidden when typing on the notebook. And the links inside Freenotes to this app promotional material is suffocating. I miss the clean, non-monetized, no promotional layout of the old this app.

I love Freenotes! So similar to GoodNotes and it’s so accessible to many students (or whoever needs a good note taking app in general).
The only gripe I have with Freenotes is that each time you want to change the size of a writing utensil you have to click on the pen you are using and manually change it each time. Same thing with the colors. It’s a big hassle to do that, especially when you’re taking notes in class and need to be quick. I understand that you can add multiple of the same pen in your toolbar and make them have different sizes for each, but doing that clutters your toolbox and gets confusing when you have too many.
I wish there was another toolbox somewhere on the screen that includes presets of different customizable pen sizes and colors! GoodNotes had that and it was definitely super convenient when I used to use that app.

Switched from GoodNote. As long as Freenotes won’t force the user to upgrade to the subscriptions model like GN, I will be happy to pay for it. As a user and also a developer, I don’t expect this level of maturity is without effort. I understand *free* softwares are not really sustainable, while still, I appreciate freedom from a user’s perspective. I love the name, hope it will do better than others.

Freenotes has one of the best UI I ever seen in current market, and best handwriting experience from my personal view. I love the minimalism and its simplicity. One thing I hope it may come into later version is shape. Haven’t found that myself, but that is useful for me sometime.

I don’t normally write reviews but the fact that Freenotes is free and gives a way better experience compared to other more well known apps is the reason for me writing this. The features of Freenotes are on par compared to other note taking apps and I loved all of the ways that I could organize and reorganize different notes and the pages on the notes. Overall, I don’t know why people are choosing to use other apps when they can just use this. I’ll be recommending Freenotes to my friends if they need a good note taking app.

I have been using for nearly a year now and I love it, however, I have noticed on my iOS device a few changes or bothersome issues I haven't been able to correct on my end. When writing by hand, is there not anyway to place a photo over top? It would be great to have an overlay option here. I feel like it automatically used to do it, but I could be wrong.

Also the most frustrating one for me is when using the ruler. Regardless of imperial or metric, it's slightly off. It's very noticeable to me when against lined paper templates. Images seem to be level with the lines. Text also. Just not the ruler. Please look into this.

The recording addition, is there no way to include the recording to play with the file when exporting it? I wanted to provide my export to a friend with the option to include audio playback from my recordings on the note I had created. I just couldn't find any option to do this.

Freenotes is great. It's helped with a lot. Thank you.

This is exactly what I had been looking for! Something that I can doodle and take notes with without ads or a paywall. It works really well and though it might not have all the bells and whistles of other paid apps, the dev is clearly very passionate about this and frequently has updates to add new features fix bugs. I wish the eraser had a toggle to only erase pen or pencil like it does with highlighter and also wish the tape feature had more color/pattern options along with functionally acting more like tape and not a top layer sticker. But, since there are constant updates, this review might become outdated fairly quickly!

I love journaling and not taking. Freenotes is great, lets you organize with different notebooks and folders. I love the style of the pens the have as options for writing, they’re all very smooth and realistic to actual writing.

There’s only two things I wish would be fixed. I wish they would make adding pictures easier, and when it automatically adds the next page in the journal it isn’t always the same paper template I’m using (even when I select that template to use automatically.)

Overall it’s a great app, especially paired with the calligraphy app they have. 9/10 would recommend.

I am just recently getting back into college and was worried about spending money on an app that wouldn’t meet all my needs. But this app is truly FREE. And it has exceeded my expectations. It has made note taking, studying, annotating articles/textbooks a BREEEEEZE. There are so many features to help out in the process. I truly am so grateful for Freenotes. Plus, customer service is awesome! They really hear us out on feature requests, bugs and issues, and all that good stuff. There even is a little community on reddit for Freenotes which I think is a plus.

My only concern is the failure in icloud backup that I keep experiencing. I wonder if there will be a solution to this?

Love Freenotes , thank you so much for making Freenotes and not requiring fees for any features. The best thing about this app is that it’s free to use, not having to worry about limited amounts of notebooks and features. I’ve been having to switch between Noteful and CollaNote to take notes, since CollaNotes tools aren’t as nice as the tools in Noteful, and there was limited notebooks in Noteful. Now I can finally use Freenotes for everything, thank goodness.

The features are also The design of the user interface is very nice and clean (very neat), great job on the design. I was so surprised when I first double tapped with 2 fingers and it does the undo for me automatically! Love this feature since very few note taking apps have this feature, and I rely on this so much for undoing.

***The only criticism I have is the “Fitting Figure” feature. This feature does not work very well. Sometimes when I draw squares, it snaps in to circles instead. Other times when I draw squares, it does not snap into perfect squares at all, so this feature works like 50% of the time for me. Also, it would be nice if there’s an option to resize the “snapped squares” manually with lasso tool so that the dimensions/sides of the squares can be manipulated into rectangles like in Noteful

I recently got an iPad and have been exploring various apps for taking notes. While many apps offer free downloads, I found that most of them limit functionality significantly, often pushing for in-app purchases to unlock essential features. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this app. Unlike many alternatives, it provides a comprehensive set of features entirely for free!

Freenotes 's user experience is smooth, intuitive, and easy to navigate, making it a joy to use for everything from quick jotting to more detailed note-taking. I especially appreciate its clean and well-organized notebooks, which keep everything neat and accessible. this app supports a wide range of note formats without the need for expensive upgrades.

Overall, it’s one of the best note-taking apps I’ve found on the iPad—simple, functional, and completely free of the typical paywall restrictions. If you're looking for a versatile, no-cost solution for your note-taking needs, this app is definitely worth checking out!

I love that it completely free unlike other apps out there and i love the features on here so user friendly and compared to other apps I have used which were pairs one like goodnotes or notability its really nice and you get the same things on Freenotes as well so no dramatic difference for me and I was gonna ask that the dark theme feature be added and to my surprise they just added that to the update already! And I love it and seeing all the hidden and I love the video feature and audio recording!.
One thing i would say is to add more templates on Freenotes like daily planner and monthly and I know there some on there but more better and detailed ones but other than that I love Freenotes amazing app. I would recommend everyone to use this and I hope you guys never stop being a free app!!

Thank you to the people who made Freenotes possible and thank you for making it free! You guys have packed in so many features, some of which I haven’t even seen in other note taking apps even paid ones. There’s so much customizability, and so many tools for editing notes and pdfs. One request I have is that on the export options, if exporting as pdf, currently Freenotes flattens all notations. Which is good! But I would also like the option to export as pdf without annotation flattening, I think it’s useful to have both options. Additionally, I like the shape recognition feature but could there be more options for shapes? Fill/no fill, border/no border, border type (dashed, or not dashed), border thickness, etc. These are the only features I can think of that aren’t included in this insane app. Thank you so much!

I used notability for four years in high school because my school required it. When I graduated they no longer paid the subscription fee. As much as I wanted to continue using notability, I couldn’t justify paying the fee despite the numerous glitches. With notability, Freenotes would crash and notes would go missing. this app fixes that. It has everything you love about notability and good notes in one app!!! With this app, you can have notebooks like in goodnotes, you can record audio like in notability, and it works seamlessly with your iPad! On top of all of that it is free and has no restrictions. I can’t describe how much I love Freenotes. It makes it so easy to take good notes while also being organized. As a former avid notability user, I can’t even express how amazing Freenotes is. DOWNLOAD IT NOW YOU WON’T BE SORRY!!!!!!!!

I was looking for some note taking apps for free to journal in and just to make notes in general, so I installed the popular ones like Goodnotes and notability. They weren’t for me because I’m too poor. So I found Freenotes. So far, I’m loving it! It’s simple, can create many notebooks, the importing is easy, and I just feel more organized. But there’s one problem I’m experiencing, when I have two or more images and I want to lasso one, the other image(s) would be too. Even if they’re far apart. And that goes with when I want to delete an image. I don’t know if it’s me or Freenotes but I do wish it’ll be fixed! Overall, I prefer Freenotes. Can’t wait for future updates! And also, if you are considering getting Freenotes, they’re giving people free premium forever for how new Freenotes is I think. Who can’t resist a free note taking app and free premium? Thank you developers!

As a college student, I didn’t exactly have the money to spend on notetaking apps, so I used OneNote for a while. However, on the ipad, Freenotes would force me to download on onedrive to transfer it and constantly jumped pages as I took notes. On top of that, whenever I used the lasso tool, it wouldn’t seamlessly move my writing, and instead it would come in chunks. As soon as I got Freenotes though, ALL these problems were solved!!! Freenotes is very streamlined and easy to use, and I am so so glad I decided to look up notetaking apps the time I did, because I got premium free forever bc of it! :) Now I don’t know when you’ll be reading this message, but I’d definitely recommend trying it out whether it has in-app purchases or not! The only thing I’d fix with Freenotes is the option to choose between a chiseled and a round highlighter. Thank you to the developer for making such a stellar app!

I don’t write reviews often but I have to give credit to Freenotes. As a college student, it’s hard to pay additional money for necessary tools like notes apps. Freenotes is amazing - it’s completely free and has all the essential features you need for note taking. The layout it simple and easily editable. I like the option for different templates and colors.

I would like to make one suggestion. When I open a main folder, the subfolders do not show up on the main page. It only shows up on the side bar list which is easy to access when you’re working on a page, but I’d like it to see all of my subfolders there. I’d also like it if the color palate names were shown when you click on the color of a writing tool instead of just “color palette”.

Despite these few things I’d like personally, this is still an incredible app that I’d urge anyone to get.

Freenotes is absolutely astonishing, comparable if not better than paid Notes apps, and I thank the developer behind it for the fact that it is 100% free to use. This is my first app review ever, but I had to say something, because there’s a part of me that feels Freenotes can’t even be real. I was looking for a catch. A subscription, a paywall, limited features, clunky design— NONE of these things are part of Freenotes. Insane. Freenotes 's layout and user interfaces are very smooth. I’m hoping that Freenotes will be around for a long time. Lastly, I wanted to request a feature that seems arbitrary, but would be really handy— splitting a notebook by bookmarks! Imagine if you had a 100 page pdf and you wanted to split it into separate smaller notebooks— I think it would be cool if you could do so according to where you've placed bookmarks. Even without this very niche feature idea, Freenotes is amazing, and I recommend anyone who crosses upon this review to download it even if you don’t think you need it.

I've been using freenote for going on a year now, and it'll quickly replace every other form of note-taking, pdf editor, drawing, etc that I previously used. this app is such an amazing tool for students like myself and it's been an integral part of my college learning experience.
All the features that've been added since I started using Freenote have simply transformed good to great. If I could suggest one more innovation, it would be to include the ability for screen orientation to shift from portrait to landscape on the iphone version. It's currently a feature on the ipad version, yet that same feature of the iphone as well would be quite useful.

A big thanks to the developers of this app, you'll are a God-sent!