Notability – The Top Note-taking app for iPad (mini)

There are a rare few iPad (mini) apps that actually make it onto my dock. Today I’m excited to introduce to you one of my most favorite note taking applications called “Notability”. Notability’s features, ingenuity, and ease of use have made it my top note taking application that I recommend to anyone as a “must-have”. Here are some of the features that really drew me to this app over other note taking apps such as Paper and Penultimate:

Cloud Syncing and Backup:

Notability supports back ups utilizing Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, WebDAV and iCloud

Media:

Supports importing PDF’s for annotating over the top. Can also insert photo’s, create a figure, insert a Web Clip or a sticky. Users can also record audio while taking notes that features a stop and start allowing for multiple recordings within a note.

Destinations:

Notability allows you to send your note as a PDF, paper (notability file) along with your audio recordings to email, Dropbox, Google Drive, Twitter, AirDrop, Open in.. (for opening in other iOS apps), Box, iTunes, WebDAV, as well as to a printer.

Customizable interface:

Not only can you customize the file organization system that manages your files, but you can also change the look of the actual notes section. This eye candy is nice, but it’s the main features within the note taking app that caught my attention.

Note taking tools:

Notability has your standard note taking tools such as the ability to pen your notes using the pencil tool, or type your notes by tapping on the type tool. The highlighter allows for continuous highlighting but once you’ve lifted the “marker” from the page, new highlights darken on top of existing highlights showing the overlap. The eraser is also unique in that it remembers each stroke of the pen tool and simply swiping through any portion of a line erases the entire stroke. This is great for quickly erasing things but does eliminate Notability from being any sort of sketching tool where partially erasing lines is needed. There is also a scissors tool for relocating notes and drawings to make space for the “after-thoughts” that helps keep your notes more organized. While all these features are great and mostly standard in the average note taking program, it’s the palm rest and the handwriting magnifying glass that truly sets Notability apart from the rest.

Palm Rest:

Most other apps have the pencil tool that allows you to handwrite your notes but I found it difficult to write quickly as the screen often would sense the touch of my palm as I attempted to scribble out my thoughts. Notability solved this problem with a movable slider that grays out a portion of the screen making it unresponsive to touch. This has been a very significant feature of this program. Occasionally you still get the quick access panel that pops up from the bottom, but the palm rest feature is phenomenal.

Handwriting Magnifying Glass:

I utilize a stylus when taking notes and by selecting the pencil tool and simply touching the screen for a few seconds in one spot brings up a magnified box to aid in the handwriting process. This box appears at the bottom and can be moved up further to allow for the Palm Rest feature mentioned above. The magnified box at the bottom gives you a better view of your notes that is sizable to allow for taking more notes in a smaller space without having to write smaller. As you begin to write your notes there is a small green section to the right where once your notes enter into that area it automatically slides the magnifier to the right to allow for continuous note taking. There is a slider that controls the size of the green section so users can decide how far into the line they’d like for notability to begin to shift over. Notability waits for about a second (allowing for you to finish writing your word) and then moves you over. Once you’ve reached the end of a line, it hard returns you to the next line. For someone that has always struggled to write notes in a straight line on blank paper, this helps keep my notes looking clean and precise. Combined with the auto-smoothing technology that Notability comes equipped with, each stroke of the pen seems much more natural and clean compared to other apps making it my most favored app for scrawling and scribbling through notes. Combine it with a bluetooth keyboard (which I have) and you’ll never need another note taking app again.

Note Management:

The file folder management system allows for creating new Subjects which act as file holders for your notes. You can also create Subject Dividers to separate different Subjects from others.

iPhone and iPod Touch:

While available for iPhone and iPod Touch as well, this review is primarily for the iPad (mini) version. The iPhone and iPod Touch version is very limited in that it only has support for typing and not handwriting (which I believe could still be functional in landscape mode). The only pro to the scaled down version of this app is the ability to access your notes across your different iOS devices. The ability to type notes and record audio is still available but I couldn’t recommend this app purely from the iPhone and iPod Touch perspective (hence the reason this review is for the iPad (mini) version).

Conclusion:

The seamless interface, ease of use, and intuitive design paired with a $2.99 price tag explains why this app is running with a 4.5 star rating by almost a thousand users. I highly recommend giving this app a spin, you won’t regret it.

So what apps are you using for taking notes? Do you have one that you feel is a better find than Notability? We’d love to hear from you!

Download Notability for your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad (mini) by clicking here.