ghoti

I like GoodNotes for many reasons but typing isn’t one of them.

Interestingly there isn’t even a button for text input in the toolbar (update: it’s buried deep in the “+” menu). To type text you need to hold a finger down somewhere on the page and select “text” from the popup menu. What you get then is a text-box. You can type what you want then save.

But because of this the text does not “flow” on the page. It doesn’t feel like a “notepad app” which is what taking notes should feel like. In other words GoodNotes is an annotation app for PDFs and not really for taking notes by typing. This is why the handwriting input system is its focus, not it’s typing input system. One can almost say the typing input was an afterthought to GoodNotes.

Because it’s handwriting input system is so good you can use that independent of any PDF and handwrite on a blank page neatly and usefully. Combined with the latest feature — handwriting recognition — and you have an infinitely more useful productive app.

More on this later.