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Samsung Notes is a free handwriting note-taking app developed by Samsung, available on Samsung phones and tablets running at least Android 7. However, it’s not compatible with iOS, iPadOS, or desktop operating systems like macOS, Linux, or Windows. If you’ve managed to use it on a non-Samsung device, we’d love to hear about it. For this review, we’re using the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra with the latest version of Android.
Samsung Notes offers an impressive array of page templates for a free app. It supports both single-page and multi-page templates, which is another standout feature. We appreciate how easy it is to add custom templates to the app’s library, which is incredibly convenient for those who prefer using their own digital notebooks. This means you don’t have to keep importing templates for every new notebook.
Page customization is crucial for a note-taking app, and users should have options. Samsung Notes doesn’t specify the size of its native templates, which is why importing custom templates is so useful—you won’t have to worry about the size. You can even change the color of your pages, with a decent variety of options available. This change affects everything in the app except the toolbar.
The user interface of Samsung Notes is minimalist and modern. By default, the toolbar is located at the top of your screen, but you can move it to your preferred side or anywhere else on the screen. The app looks even more streamlined with the toolbar on the side. If you prefer a cleaner look, you can go into full-screen mode, which removes the status bar at the top. Additionally, you can customize the toolbar by removing, adding, or rearranging icons.
Samsung Notes provides four pen tools. The fountain pen’s tip isn’t particularly sharp, making it hard to define, but the calligraphy pen is exactly what you’d expect. The app also includes two types of ballpoint pens: a standard one and another with slightly pointed edges. Finally, there’s a brush pen, referred to as a calligraphy brush. With these options, you’re likely to find a pen that suits your needs.
There’s also a pencil tool with adjustable opacity. All these writing tools offer a thickness range from 1 to 100, the widest we’ve seen in a note-taking app. The color palette includes preset swatches, though customizing them isn’t very intuitive and involves several steps, especially if you have many swatches. Fortunately, the favorites toolbar allows you to save frequently used pens for easy access.
The handwriting experience in Samsung Notes is exceptional. Unlike the “writing-on-glass” feel on the iPad, the S Pen’s rubber tip offers a smoother, more natural writing experience on the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra. The app also adds stroke sounds to enhance the experience, which we love. The S Pen, with its thinner and smaller design, feels more comfortable than the Apple Pencil, but we’ll cover that in a separate video.
Samsung Notes features two types of highlighters that go behind your ink, making your notes stand out. You can adjust the size, opacity, and color of your highlighter and save it to the favorites toolbar.
The app’s writing tools use vector ink, so your notes don’t pixelate when you zoom in. You can zoom in up to 600%, with your zoom percentage displayed on the screen. Pages snap to full width, but we’d like to see them snap to 100% as well. You can lock the zoom level to maintain consistency across your notes.
However, the zoom tool only zooms in on a small section of your notes, which can be frustrating. It should have a wider range to capture more of the page. You can either auto-advance the zoom window or move it manually, but overall, this is our least favorite feature in Samsung Notes.
The eraser tool offers stroke-by-stroke and pixel-by-pixel options, with a size range of 1 to 10. You can choose to erase just the highlighter or clear all handwritten annotations from a single page or the entire document.
Samsung Notes supports both body text and text boxes, which is a rare combination in note-taking apps. You can format your text with bold, italics, strikeout, underline, and highlight options. While you can adjust the font size, there’s only one font available, which limits customization.
You can align text to the left, center, or right, and the app includes interactive checklists that dim and strike out completed items. Basic numbered and unnumbered lists are also available, though they only support one level of numbering or bullet points, which can be limiting.
The text boxes in Samsung Notes are simple and easy to move or rotate on the page. The background color is actually a highlighter, and while these text boxes are straightforward, they’re the simplest we’ve encountered in a note-taking app.
You can draw simple shapes with the S Pen, including basic circles, triangles, and squares. These shapes behave like ink, making them easy to erase, which is intuitive. The shapes tool allows for irregular shapes, curves, and arrows, but there’s no option to add arrows to curves, which is a limitation. The app automatically snaps the edges of shapes together, but shapes created with the tool aren’t recognized as ink and can’t be erased with the eraser tool. This can be confusing, so we prefer drawing shapes freehand.
You can add images (both .jpeg and .png) and GIFs to your notes. GIFs animate only when you’re not editing, and you can crop images in rigid or freehand shapes, wrap text around them, resize, and rotate them. Samsung Notes also lets you shrink or stretch images, and it includes a robust image editing feature.
Samsung Notes allows you to record audio while handwriting or typing notes, syncing the recording to your notes. You can adjust the playback speed, skip forward or rewind, and tap on your notes to jump to specific audio sections. The timeline indicates different recording sessions, and you can rename each one. The app also allows you to export audio recordings separately, providing everything you need in an audio recording tool.
You can add drawings to your notes on a separate canvas with a grey background. These drawings behave like images, so you can resize, rotate, and more. While this feature is ideal for those who enjoy drawing, it’s worth noting that the grey background remains when added to your notes.
Samsung Notes can scan documents into your notes, automatically recognizing documents. However, the app doesn’t offer a PDF option for scans, and you can’t search text within scans, making this its weakest feature.
The app includes freehand and rectangular lasso tools for selecting items on the page. You can change the style of your handwriting, though changes aren’t visible in real time, which isn’t ideal. Samsung Notes also allows you to straighten handwritten notes and copy items to a clipboard for extended use.
Page thumbnails enable faster navigation, bookmarking, and editing. While you can edit multiple pages at once, the app doesn’t support page rotation or duplication, features we hope to see in the future. The app can search through titles, notes, and even handwriting, though navigating search results could be improved.
Samsung Notes allows you to export notes in various formats, though the resolution for Word and PowerPoint exports is subpar. PDFs and image files also have low resolution, making them less suitable for use outside the app.
Samsung Notes organizes your notes with folders and tags, with support for an infinite number of nested folders. You can easily spot notebooks with audio recordings, and the app’s navigation is straightforward. Tags are also easy to use, though tagging notebooks can be cumbersome, and you can’t delete old tags.
The app includes a recycle bin where deleted notes are stored for 30 days before being permanently deleted.
Overall, Samsung Notes is an impressive free app that we highly recommend for Samsung tablet users. It’s so feature-rich that you might even consider getting a Samsung tablet just to use this app instead of buying an iPad, especially since Apple is pushing more apps toward subscriptions. For note-taking, Samsung Notes offers everything you need in a free app.
