Contender for best note taking app for iPad

Notability on the iPad

I keep finding new way or new apps to take notes on the iPad and the latest app I have installed on the iPad is Notability. It is an app that you can use for handwritten notes as well as audio notes, typed text and drawings. You can save these notes out as PDF, RTF and its own format to a variety of places. These notes you make can go to Dropbox, WebDAV, iTunes, email, to print and to other apps you have on your iPad. it say it will send out to iDisk but I wonder if you need MobileMe for that and that is ending quite soon. A link up with iCloud would be handy. I wonder if that would make it the best note taking app for iPad.

Use with or without a stylus

I do own a stylus but on the day I was giving this a try I didn’t have the stylus with me. Even so, when I was using the pencil tool I found I could write well enough with the fingers.That says something good for the control that the application gives you over the pencil tool when you write or draw. There are options you get such as the width and colour of the line as well as there being two types of line. One is a single continuous thickness and there is the one that I prefer that varies the thickness and looks more natural. I got to the options for the tool by tapping and holding on the icon for the pencil tool. You can do your note taking strategies on this iPad note taking app without a stylus too.

Write me a river on the best note taking app for iPad

You can write directly on to the space that the app makes for you and the way the line flows is quite nice. There is no excessive smoothing nor do you get a jerky sort of line. I found that I was able to sign my signature easily using the finger and it looked quite like my normal signature. Then you have the ability to zoom in to write in a box at the bottom of the screen that put the scribble onto your page. You would use this if you wanted more control over the writing, especially if you want smaller text. The zoom box can be changed in size and moved around the screen to where you want the text. Then also when you are writing in the text box you can press a key which will move the box to the right if you want to continue the line of text. It will also move down if you want to start a new line. This works very well especially if you need smaller neater writing on the screen.

Typed notes in Notability

You can type notes in and I would do that because my handwriting looks like a drunken spider dropped into an ink pot and then crawled across the page. You can tap on the screen after choosing the tool and just start typing. Or you can make a text box that will confine the typed text into a specific rectangular area.

I just found out that you can make lists and you can indent them. You can have numbered lists and bulleted lists. I hit the tab key to make an indent, but there are controls at bottom left that will control that too.

Record audio notes to go with your visual notes

There are some note taking apps that have audio that will keep track of your audio and text notes to highlight the text at the correct point in the audio. Or they will play the audio when tap on a note on the screen. I don’ think that Notability gives this function to us but having audio is still good.

Exporting out of Notability

I sent a file out that had drawings, typed text and handwriting as a RTF document and it was only the typed text that survived the export. I was able to open up the RTF in MagicalPad and the lists I had created were there. The indented list had to be re indented.

Next I sent it out as a PDF and included everything with it including the audio. Strangely it made it into a zipped file and I had to open it up in WinZip, of all apps, so that I could get at the results. It did work though and I was able to send the document to iBooks as a PDF and read it. It worked well and then I was able to hear the audio. It goes out as separate documents and are no longer connected as it was in Notability. Not a big problem though. You can send out as a Notability file but I doubt if any other apps will read the resulting file.

What do I think of the Notability App on the iPad

There are features in this app that I like. It does a great job with recording you handwriting, but you will have to use a different app if you want have the writing converted into editable text. The app has wrist guard spaces so that you can write wit out messing it up, a nice touch there.

The way you have a number of pages that you can fill up ands scroll down through is good so that you will not be struggling with the space that is made available.Then you can add more pages if you like. You have easy scrolling through the pages using two fingers and there is the icon bottom right that will give you a set of thumbnails to use to navigate the document.

A place for your effective note taking strategies

All in all I think it is a good app with your basic tools of pencils for writing, an eraser tool and a cutting tool to move things around on the page. The eraser tool is a bit broad and will rub things out too easily sometimes but that is no problem when you have an undo key to use if needed. Of course there is also the text tol for typing notes in.

In the folders area where you start documents there is also the folder functions to help you organise your files and put them into folders if you wish. I would like to see integration with iCloud although that might not be necessary unless you can open up the Notability files on a sister app on the Mac OS or on your iPhone. You could open up the file on another iPad though I suppose and use the best note taking app for ipad.

Notability iPad – Another best note taking app for iPad

Good App – Go and buy it if you need the functionality it offers. You will be able to improve your note taking techniques. Effective note taking is possible with Notability iPad app. When you are looking for note taking apps for iPad, certainly put this one on your shortlist. Is this the best note taking app for iPad? One more thing – The price is right too. 99 cents, How about that then?