Notability: AI Notes & PDF app

Name: Notability: AI Notes & PDF app
Rating: 4.7 (1293 reviews)
Author: Ginger Labs

Write, type, annotate, draw

Free · In-App Purchases

1.3k Ratings
Ages

4+
Years
Category

Productivity
Developer

Ginger Labs
Language

EN
+ 20 More
Size

411.5
MB

From your first lecture to your next big meeting, Notability helps you think, learn, and work better. Take handwritten notes, annotate documents, record audio, and stay organized in one place so your ideas are always clear, searchable, and ready when you need them. FREE DIGITAL NOTES FOR WORK & SCHOOL • Write, type, or sketch with digital ink, highlighters, and text tools. • Mark up anything: PDFs, textbooks, lecture slides, images, and more. • Combine handwriting, typed text, images, diagrams, and sketches on the same page. • Stay organized with customizable folders and subjects that grow with you. FOR PROFESSIONALS: WORK SMARTER AND SAVE TIME • Mark up documents, capture meetings, organize ideas, and present with confidence. • Import and handwrite on any document: PDFs, DOCs, presentations, reports, and more. • Fill out forms in the office or on a job site. • Combine handwriting, text, photos and documents in one place. • Record calls and meetings to transcribe voice in real-time. Audio is synced to your notes so nothing is missed. • Receive automated meeting notes, takeaways, and summaries. • Search handwriting, transcripts, text, and PDFs to quickly revisit decisions and action items. • Present notes, documents, and ideas in full screen, with a laser pointer to guide attention. • View and edit two notes side-by-side to stay focused and productive. • Share a PDF of your note in one tap. FOR STUDENTS: STUDY SMARTER AND ACE EXAMS • Take handwritten notes digitally or annotate lecture slides or your textbooks. • Record lectures and get instant audio transcripts and real-time summaries in your notes. • Audio recordings are synced to the exact moment you write in a note — perfect for lectures. • Import lecture slides, textbook PDFs, and assignments into organized folders and subjects. • Search across handwriting, typed notes, and transcripts to instantly find content from classes. • Study content from your note with personalized quizzes and flashcards to practice with active recall. • Chat with your notes to review concepts, clarify ideas, and prepare for exams. WORK YOUR WAY • Seamlessly switch between handwriting and typing. • Import files instantly and keep everything connected. • Share notes easily to collaborate or get feedback when needed. • Access your notes across iPad, iPhone, Mac, and the web. • Create beautiful notes using templates from the Notability Gallery. UPGRADE TO A NOTABILITY SUBSCRIPTION Notability is free to use. With an upgraded subscription, you can receive: • Unlimited note-taking • AI-powered productivity and study tools • Handwriting recognition and math conversion • Live Audio transcripts • Auto-backup and iCloud sync Download for free on iPad, iPhone, Mac, and web. Privacy Policy: notability.com/privacy Terms of Service: notability.com/terms

Events

MAJOR UPDATE
Notability for Business

Create Shared Libraries of notes your entire team can access in Notability 16. Collaborate on and off site in real time.

Ratings & Reviews

4.7

out of 5

1.3k Ratings

Editors’ Choice

We rely on this sleek, powerful notetaker to annotate documents, record lectures, sketch illustrations and more. With built-in iCloud support, it’s perfect for keeping notes, documents and doodles up to date across devices.
Good
07/02/2025

Fraza234
good for organising my classes
Good
07/02/2025

Fraza234

good for organising my classes
Enough is enough, stop bombing me with advertisement
11/06/2024

Emanuele____
I did buy the tool years ago, and I expect to be able to use it in peace. Instead, I keep being bombarded by promos and advertisement to move to the subscription.I don’t even understand why that is legal in the first place, but I strongly recommend you stop pestering users that legitimately entered into a contractual agreement with you for unlimited use by a one time purchase.I will NEVER buy a subscription, understood?

Developer Response
Hello, Thank you for reaching out to us and sharing your feedback regarding the upgrade pop-up in our app. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Our intention is to provide information about the benefits of our upgrade, but we understand that it can sometimes be disruptive. Your feedback is important, and we'll take it into consideration as we work to improve the user experience. Thanks!
Enough is enough, stop bombing me with advertisement
11/06/2024

Emanuele____

I did buy the tool years ago, and I expect to be able to use it in peace. Instead, I keep being bombarded by promos and advertisement to move to the subscription.I don’t even understand why that is legal in the first place, but I strongly recommend you stop pestering users that legitimately entered into a contractual agreement with you for unlimited use by a one time purchase.I will NEVER buy a subscription, understood?
Developer Response 10/07/2024
Hello, Thank you for reaching out to us and sharing your feedback regarding the upgrade pop-up in our app. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Our intention is to provide information about the benefits of our upgrade, but we understand that it can sometimes be disruptive. Your feedback is important, and we'll take it into consideration as we work to improve the user experience. Thanks!
Disappointed Long-Term User
14 Mar

pith12340
I’ve used this app for years and recommended it to many other iPad users. For a long time, it was my go-to app for digital note-taking. Writing felt natural, and features like recording audio while taking notes were groundbreaking when they first came out. The app also improved steadily over time in terms of layout, folders, and overall features. However, over the past year, the experience has gotten much worse in three major ways.First, the app constantly freezes. Sometimes it happens within minutes, making it almost unusable. I often have to restart it multiple times just to keep working, only for it to freeze again. If you rely on this app for reading and note-taking, this is a serious problem.Second, the app randomly offloads notes from the device. Sometimes they disappear completely, sometimes irrecoverably, as if they were never created. Other times they are stuck downloading from the cloud and can’t be opened. I like the cloud integration in general, but the random offloading is frustrating and slow to fix. You also can’t prioritise or force-download a specific note when you urgently need it. Recently, I was about to give a presentation with all my notes ready, only for the app to offload everything. Imagine standing in front of a class and suddenly all your notes are gone. This honestly makes the app totally unusable.Third, I bought the app before the subscription model existed. Since I already paid for it, they can’t force me into a subscription. Instead, I constantly get prompts encouraging me to “upgrade,” even though I gain very little from doing so. I understand that developers need recurring revenue, and I would be willing to pay again if the improvements were meaningful. But right now, the app’s performance is simply too unreliable to justify that. Plus, now I get constant unrequested advertisement to “upgrade,” great!:)For context, I’m using a second-generation iPad Pro, which isn’t the newest (but also not a totally outdated) model. That might affect performance. However, everything else on the device runs perfectly fine. It seems like this app just isn’t optimised well for older devices anymore. Maybe that also explains why this app is generally so well received. But the 4.7 overall rating seems inflated.Sadly, I can’t recommend this app at the moment. I hope things improve, and I’ll gladly update this review if the developers start focusing on stability and their long-time users again. For now: GoodNotes it is the best app around and as a long-term Notability user, it hurts to say that.
Disappointed Long-Term User
14 Mar

pith12340

I’ve used this app for years and recommended it to many other iPad users. For a long time, it was my go-to app for digital note-taking. Writing felt natural, and features like recording audio while taking notes were groundbreaking when they first came out. The app also improved steadily over time in terms of layout, folders, and overall features. However, over the past year, the experience has gotten much worse in three major ways.First, the app constantly freezes. Sometimes it happens within minutes, making it almost unusable. I often have to restart it multiple times just to keep working, only for it to freeze again. If you rely on this app for reading and note-taking, this is a serious problem.Second, the app randomly offloads notes from the device. Sometimes they disappear completely, sometimes irrecoverably, as if they were never created. Other times they are stuck downloading from the cloud and can’t be opened. I like the cloud integration in general, but the random offloading is frustrating and slow to fix. You also can’t prioritise or force-download a specific note when you urgently need it. Recently, I was about to give a presentation with all my notes ready, only for the app to offload everything. Imagine standing in front of a class and suddenly all your notes are gone. This honestly makes the app totally unusable.Third, I bought the app before the subscription model existed. Since I already paid for it, they can’t force me into a subscription. Instead, I constantly get prompts encouraging me to “upgrade,” even though I gain very little from doing so. I understand that developers need recurring revenue, and I would be willing to pay again if the improvements were meaningful. But right now, the app’s performance is simply too unreliable to justify that. Plus, now I get constant unrequested advertisement to “upgrade,” great!:)For context, I’m using a second-generation iPad Pro, which isn’t the newest (but also not a totally outdated) model. That might affect performance. However, everything else on the device runs perfectly fine. It seems like this app just isn’t optimised well for older devices anymore. Maybe that also explains why this app is generally so well received. But the 4.7 overall rating seems inflated.Sadly, I can’t recommend this app at the moment. I hope things improve, and I’ll gladly update this review if the developers start focusing on stability and their long-time users again. For now: GoodNotes it is the best app around and as a long-term Notability user, it hurts to say that.

• Learn now supports quiz sharing. Share a quiz link with anyone, even if they don't have Notability. • Fixed the status bar overlapping with buttons on iOS 26

Version 16.1 3 days ago

Subscriptions

Notability Lite

Unlimited note-taking

6,99 €
Notability Plus

Unlock Learn, handwriting recognition and math support

8,99 €
Notability Lite

Unlimited note-taking

14,99 €
Notability Plus

Unlock Learn, handwriting recognition and math support

19,99 €
Notability Pro

Live Transcription, Smart notes and unlimited Learn

Free Trial

Data Used to Track You

The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:
- Identifiers
Data Linked to You

The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
- Contact Info
- Diagnostics
Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Identifiers
- Usage Data
- Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary based, for example, on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Accessibility

Information

Size: 411.5 MB
Category: Productivity
Compatibility: Requires iOS 17.0 or later.

iPhone
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.

iPad
Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later.

Mac
Requires macOS 14.0 or later.

Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
Languages: English and 20 more

English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
Age Rating: 4+

4+

Learn More
In-App Purchases: Yes

Notability Plus 19,99 €

Notability Plus 19,99 €

Notability Lite 14,99 €

Notability Pro 99,99 €

Notability Plus 8,99 €

Notability Lite 6,99 €

Notability Plus 29,99 €

Notability Pro 22,99 €

Notability Plus 19,99 €

Notability Plus 14,99 €

Learn More
Provider: Ginger Labs, Inc.

Ginger Labs, Inc. has identified itself as a trader for this app and confirmed that this product or service complies with European Union law.

Address
550 North California Ave.
Palo Alto California 94301
United States

Phone Number
+1 4152371943

Email
support@gingerlabs.com
Copyright: © Ginger Labs, Inc. 2026

Developer Website

Privacy Policy

Supports

Family Sharing

Some in-app purchases and subscriptions may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled. Learn More

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Notability: AI Notes & PDF app

Events

Notability for Business

Ratings & Reviews

Editors’ Choice

Good

Enough is enough, stop bombing me with advertisement

Disappointed Long-Term User

What’s New

Subscriptions

Notability Lite

Notability Plus

Notability Lite

Notability Plus

Notability Pro

App Privacy

Data Used to Track You

Data Linked to You

Data Not Linked to You

Accessibility

Information

Supports

Family Sharing

Featured In

Must-have apps for iPhone

More by Ginger Labs

Twobird

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