GoodNotes 5 is ready to help you everyday in study, work, hobby, and anything you pursue.
Everything that was good in GoodNotes 4 has been enhanced with lots of totally fresh improvements. Now the app is on a new level, on GoodNotes 5 level, and we would gladly recommend to know more about it.
It is effortless to type on a keyboard if you have to work with different types of texts. I prefer to use a text editor on my Mac or iPad Pro when I need to write my ideas, thoughts. And when I just try to do something coherent I have to do it really quickly, because all the ideas can fade away from me as fast as they overflow, if we talk about a new article or organization something new.
With GoodNotes you have the opportunity to draw or write anywhere in the working area, you can easily copy something, paste, cross things, change the colors of the already drawn lines, and apply lots of other features that you are able to do only on your device. Document that your boss has just sent to you, can be commented by you and sent to another person and then you can just erase everything.
There is a feature of handwriting recognition which allows you to search among handwritings, like it's typed.
And it is so easy to operate with math equations, it is a real problem if you need to bring it to a digital view. But application just recognizes all your equations from handwriting.
Now there's no need to waste lots of paper, if you have a big contract to sign, just take your GoodNotes, download a PDF file and sign it with your hand.
Difficult professional articles you can comment making notes inside the article or from one side (not in another window, for example, which is not very convenient).
Choose GoodNotes for your study, because in this case you can flick through all your materials, which will help you a lot right before the test.
As an issue we have an application that is more pliable, strong application which uses its own potential. I'm sure that other users will be glad to highly appreciate these features as well. And the audience becomes larger.
Notes for study
The only way to study in college is note taking. This application is perfectly made for organizing your notes in the best way. There is a huge amount of information, and the student's work is to organize it in such a way, that it becomes suitable to remember.
Also digital notes are good because for some reasons sometimes it's easier to have audio files from your lesson. Or a picture with notes on it.
If you can organize the information, you will not have to memorize it at all, it will be remembered from the first reading.
It is always important to be ready to help friends with your interesting good looking notes, especially if the computer decipher your handwriting, not your poor friend.
To study with pleasure you need to see something gorgeous, something that will be printed on nice looking paper, with good colors and maybe even with photos. You can read your studying material like an interesting book, you need only to make proper design for it.
Sometimes you remember just the place in a page where information was located. Actually, it is the first step to remember it all. If you change the color of the sheets, grey for math, green for biology and so on, it will be easier to remember information during your test. When you attempt to remember the answer,just try to find in your head, what color was the sheet with it.
Highlighting the most important info is a good method to make the best from your study process. All you need is how to do it in the most effective way. First, read the text, then leave it for a few minutes, after come back for the highlighting process. Second, use different colors for different reasons (for example, yellow for interesting, orange for things I don't know, grey for good ideas and so).
When notes have pleasant views, this can make you come back to them again and again, just to change the picture or something like that, and this is the best way to remember all the information it provides.
Notes for work
While working, digital notes have a huge amount of pros, just like for study, you can make notes right on the top of the most important documents and then erase them, you will never leave important documents behind at home and your dog will never chew them.
Also it is good if you can make video or audio note, pictures or diagrams with notes on them.
And different people say that if you need to do it while your customers are talking to you, for example, if you are a lawyer, or doctor, it is better to do digital notes, than typing, or writing. If you use the old writing method, information will be difficult to find. Old notebooks will disappear, the new one won’t have all the information.
It has a perfect navigation feature, using search through all your documents, notes, typed and written, you can find anything you need. No matter what year a note was made, you don’t need to go home to find some information in a notebook which you could have thrown away a long time ago by mistake.
GoodNotes are great for study and work, you may need their features in personal life as well. You can take up a hobby that needs comments on papers, pictures, and you can draw a doodle to a friend and send it anytime to cheer him up or comment something privately.
New features in GoodNotes 5
Nested folders
In our days GoodNotes 5 supports a limitless amount of preinstalled folders. In the past the application had a simple folder structure. And this can help anyone who has lots of information which needs to be organized in a brand new better way. If you have a huge amount of notebooks then these installed folders will help you to put in order all of them.
When you try to put in field of vision all your documents, now you find all kinds of notes. From Documents button make a new folder or notebook and now you do it by choosing the New.
There are some critics for application. In iCloud Drive they need to have their own folder, now you can't place a notebook in a special folder. Of course they have features that do that as an alternative.
In spite of everything, the application can't be opened yet in a few iOS applications but their document browser is magnificent.
Notwithstanding application note organization solutions seem to have some advantages and disadvantages, but I don't think someone can perceive it as a problem.
Quick Notes
Quick Note are able to be generated by pushing the Add button. It works like screenshot on iOS:
- no need to save it, you can erase it easily with one click;
- to write down a phone number or email, while phone conversation;
- you can draw cute pictures and send them to your friends with or without saving.
This is a recently developed feature in GoodNotes 5 and it helps you to write something when you need it quickly. Sometimes it is not convenient to open a notebook. This feature is magnificent and it helps to do less useless notes, meetings you never go, things you never wanted to save.
Favourite views
Some documents you may need to view lots of time per day, it can be the project you’re working at, or your study schedule, or any other to-do list. Sometimes you just need this quick access to your main documents, no matter where they are located. To see the special page in this area you need to add a bookmark.
To organize all your documents by date, alphabet or any other way, you can do in here. Different objects can be sent, moved, copied to a place that you want just by tapping a checkmark in the top right corner.
Vertical scroll direction
Now you can use vertical scroll. This feature you can find in More button.
So now you can select the scrolling direction.
Search
You can see your latest search results and put them in order by type. Now you can do notes, do some changes in PDF.
Now you can restore all your steps from the beginning of the usage of the application. For example:
- latest searched keywords
- newly looked through notes
- freshly searched documents.
The application can search in names of folders, handwritten notes and results are thoughtfully separated into Written and Typed notes. Titles to point out where they are based. In the document that you are observing you can also use search in notebooks and Quick Notes.
Now search is available in personal notebooks.
I'm not a calligraphy writer, not even close, and GoodNotes sometimes even can decrypt my handwriting so I can search for the last notes. I have only nonpermanent notes, nevertheless you may look through the old notes for different reasons. Text recognition is very good, speedy, you will be able to see a list of matches very soon.
This feature doesn't have any analogues in the app that also produces involvement in note-taking.
PDF is easy with Copy to extension, which copies documents to GoodNotes as autonomous documents or a part of a notebook. Good Notes has special editing tools for PDF where you can easily change it.
New toolbar
New toolbar
First thing you may observe right after set-up is that the toolbars are different now.
Changes are not only in their size and shape, now it is placed more vertically than horizontally in space. It helps to locate tools more effectively, they all are better readable now, more homogeneous than in last versions. They announce that the amount of taps is reduced to minimum.
In the title bar now you can find such buttons as:
- search
- add to favourites
- switch on read only mode
- view thumbnails
- share
- add pages
- redo and undo previous changes
Some of them are well known, but there are those who need some clarification.
It incorporates a panel for two their views. First, pages marked as favourites. Second, PDFs that were downloaded. You are unable to redact notes.
Special effect for study is called streamlined reading mode, everything is hidden, you see only those things that you need to concentrate on. Ideal for pupils, reading professional literature and so.
Interactive names of the notebook let open the information with where this document is placed, and it is new for GoodNotes. Moving a notebook is easy with tapping in its name.
Multiple tabs with different notebooks inside. Easy and convenient to work with a few documents.
Every instrument has its own style
Now adding an image is not difficult to find and use for a person who starts to cooperate with this app for the first time, and for those who are already familiar with it.
Now about zoom. At present it is very comfortable to find, and it was terrific earlier. Fortunately I don't need to zoom frequently, nevertheless it is good when you have to pack lots of words in a small place. There is a notebook specific toolbar below GoodNotes, divided into 3 parts, the left one is zoom. When it's on, you can draw or write in a special area, after that it can be pasted anywhere.
Close with the zoom you can find all nessesary tools to work with. If any of that instrument is chosen, the right area of the toolbar modifies the setting that tool is programmed for. For example, if the pen is chosen, the right area shows ink color. You can find settings by tapping on any button.
Setting that are available for pen:
- you can select from a set of preinstalled ink colors or create your own;
- modify line width from 0.1mm to 2.0mm.
In the eraser tool now you can modify thickness.
In highlighter and shapes tools you can modify color and thickness.
Brush pen
Now your notes or doodles can have an unusual and creative style.
I like fountain pens most of all because it is smooth enough in curves and has a good pressure sensitivity, the best for my opinion.
I like changes that happened in the usage of a ball pen, its ink engine has been upgraded. And it's easy to identify those corrections.
Now the pen and eraser are placed close to each other. If you have Apple Pencil, then you'll need to tap double on the barrel, so you could change from one instrument to another. When you are concentrated, it is easy to get distracted by even picking the wrong instrument. That’s why it's so important to place each instrument in its own place.
There is a shape instrument which helps you to draw any shape and the application will allow you to do it well, even if you can't draw at all, smoving curves, straightening the lines. I don't need this feature but it can be useful for making diagrams for work or study.
Now recognition of the shapes has become much faster.
Work with photos, stickers becomes so easy
For example, you study science and need to do some reports about cells. Just find a picture on the internet, or do it by yourself using different instruments and pens. Then you can label every part of this cell and it will be easier to do a report in class.
The same you can do with your working material. Even if you don't want to show others the result of your work you can use this picture like a list of tips.
The lasso instrument
The lasso shows us how much better options we will find in the digital world. When you circle anything, it can be replaced in any other page, select, copy, and paste, change its color. If you made some mistake during movement, GoodNotes will take the whole word or picture even if you were too lazy to do it by yourself.
Easy to work with schedule planning, when you need to move all the plans from Monday to Thursday.
Huge choice of papers and covers
In GoodNotes 5 you can find even bigger variety of styles than in GoodNotes 4, best designers worked on it, and now your notebook can be as personal as it has never been.
And you can change everything in modifying options, language, orientation (portrait or landscape), style of the paper, title.
PDF marking
Now you can edit PDF right in the application.
Siri
It is possible to work with Siri, she can offer documents that you open often. You can build your own shortcut.
One more feature, a small bar or latest photos open to help you find photos faster.
When you think of last version you understand that it is so prudently every little mistake or just some sort of bug was remodeled, in each area all things were remastered to a new level. I really appreciate this, but there are some things that I disliked.
First, in the Document view you can mark as favourite with the star, but if you are inside the notebook you use bookmarks. They are totally identical, only the pictures are different, it makes me think that they wanted to do it in the first versions. Anyway I guess such things can guide us to some sorts of misunderstanding.
Second, only behind the Resize menu can be spinning a lassoed part. To make it easier to find, maybe it's better to place it in the toolbar or at least rename.
And the last one, I hope that in future updates will be solved such problems as in my iPad Pro some of the toolbar pop ups dropped down from the wrong place.
The application is suitable for iPhone and iPad, but I've never tried it on a phone. As for me, the Apple Pencil is necessary for everyone and nothing can be compared with it. I hate to type while taking notes.
Some instruments that I loved so much on iPad look too small on iPhone. And most of them are located in the More button and settings developed for the notebook particularly are not part of the toolbar, but are located at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes I need to open the application on the phone, but usually I use it on an iPad, and the phone is not convenient to me.
And the last admonition about the application that it doesn't have any one feature in this update. Maybe someone will think it is not so significant, nevertheless I will tell you about it because there can be those who depend on it.
List of features that have been deleted from the application: compatibility with the GoodNotes Mac, Presentation mode, Wi-Fi file transfers, Auto-backups, some of the zoom mode controls, styluses that can work with Apple Pencil and Logitech Crayon only.
While we are waiting for a version for Mac application, if you need something deleted, you can leave version 4 only on your device.
Apple has made promotional material, there they illustrate GoodNotes 4 and all its features lots of times. It was difficult to do something to change things that needed to be done and don't touch those that didn't. As I've spent many hours using GoodNotes 5 compared with the previous version many hours, I can announce that everything is in balance now. Changes in design are important because of iOS trends, it makes you just comfortable. The developers focused on those features that they already have, in place of enlargement of the instruments. The application organizes your notes, and concentrates on user experience and strengthens all opportunities of the digital world. It's clear that everyone who uses notes a lot must add this app in their list.