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If handwriting conversion is a key part of your work, you might be wondering if Scribble is sufficient for your OCR needs. Scribble, developed by Apple, allows you to handwrite directly into text fields, instantly converting your handwriting to text offline on your device. It works in any app that accepts typed text, but it doesn’t always offer the smoothest experience. On the other hand, Nebo is a dedicated note-taking app that lets you handwrite notes and convert them to text, though you’re limited to using the app itself. Scribble comes free with iPadOS 14, while Nebo is also free but requires in-app purchases to unlock its full features.
Scribble currently supports only three languages: US English, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese. Nebo, however, supports 66 languages, though it does not support Arabic—a frequently asked question. Additionally, Nebo can handle a decent range of chemical and mathematical symbols, accurately converting simple to moderately complex equations, whereas Scribble is limited to text conversion only. Nebo also features a dictionary that lets you add technical terms for better conversion accuracy, which is particularly useful for subjects like engineering, pharmacology, and medicine.
Both Scribble and Nebo offer useful gestures to enhance your user experience, allowing you to interact with your notes intuitively. Nebo provides two methods for deleting words: strikeout and scratch out, while Scribble only offers the scratch-out option. Unfortunately, the scratch-out gesture can be inconsistent, especially with Scribble. The strikeout gesture in Nebo is cleaner and easier to use, making the deletion process more pleasant.
To insert text in Scribble, you touch and hold where you want to add new text. This gesture is easy to use, and your paragraphs automatically snap back into place after you’ve added your text. In Nebo, you can add more lines by long-pressing a line with two fingers and dragging to create additional space for writing. While Scribble’s method is more straightforward, both approaches have their strengths.
In Scribble, drawing a vertical line can join or separate characters, depending on the situation. However, Nebo’s approach is more versatile: drawing a vertical line from top to bottom separates characters, words, or paragraphs, while drawing from bottom to top joins them.
To select text in Scribble, you circle the text or underline it. While these gestures work, long-pressing a word is a more familiar and intuitive method, one that Nebo wisely retains. This allows Nebo to use circling and underlining for other useful functions.
Scribble also offers two standard gestures for any text on the iPad: double-tap to select a word and triple-tap to select a paragraph. Altogether, Scribble offers only four gestures, which pales in comparison to the extensive range of gestures available in Nebo.
Although Nebo restricts handwriting conversion to within its app, it offers a richer and more robust set of features than Scribble. When Apple introduced Scribble with iPadOS 14, it was an exciting development, finally allowing the Apple Pencil to be used more broadly, even for web browsing. However, several months after its release, it’s clear that Scribble still has some way to go before it can become a central tool for handwriting conversion on the iPad. While we look forward to future improvements, for now, Nebo remains the superior handwriting conversion tool on the iPad.
