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I had been trying to find a replacement for Notability for years. At one point, I switched to ZoomNotes, but that didn’t last long. ZoomNotes is very powerful, but it’s also quite complicated and requires a lot of time to learn, which I simply didn’t have. Here’s why Noteful ultimately became my go-to app, completely replacing Notability in my workflow.
There are two main reasons why Noteful won me over so quickly. First, the app is as stable as Notability, and even more so than GoodNotes. Typically, we don’t focus too much on bugs when reviewing apps, as developers usually fix them. But because we test so many apps, we constantly encounter bugs, and an unstable app is easy to spot. Noteful, however, is incredibly stable—so much so that we haven’t encountered a single bug yet. While that doesn’t mean the app is perfect, it does mean that everything you experience in the app is predictable. A predictable app leads to fewer distractions and a smoother workflow.
The second reason Noteful was a perfect replacement for Notability is its audio recording feature, which syncs with your notes. This is the best kind of audio recording feature you can have in a note-taking app. I do miss the animations in Notability and the ability to skip through the audio directly from the notes, but I don’t record much audio these days, so it’s not a dealbreaker. Hopefully, the developer will add this feature to Noteful in the future.
A third, albeit minor, reason for switching is the handwriting experience in Noteful. I never understood why I couldn’t write comfortably in GoodNotes. Every time I tried, I couldn’t get through a single page without my hand cramping. In Noteful, I didn’t have that problem. The fountain pen in Noteful feels a lot like the brush pen in GoodNotes, which is my favorite. This made the transition to Noteful much easier.
There are several other reasons why Noteful outshines Notability. These were just the initial perks I noticed after switching. If you haven’t yet invested in a note-taking app, these could be compelling reasons to choose Noteful over Notability.
For new users, Noteful costs only $4.99 as a one-time purchase, and it’s yours for life. In contrast, Notability now requires a $14.99/year subscription if you’re a new user. The great thing is you can try both apps and see which one suits you better before committing. You can then decide whether Notability’s subscription is worth it.
Notability recently improved its organization by allowing up to five levels of folders within folders. Noteful, however, offers a much more modern approach. You can create universal tags to use as folders, and creating subfolders is as simple as adding a forward slash to create hierarchies. It’s never been easier! Plus, a notebook can belong to multiple folders, which is incredibly convenient.
You can also pin your notebooks in Noteful, a feature Notability doesn’t offer. This makes it easier to access the documents you’re currently working on.
Noteful’s user interface is minimalist, especially if you position the toolbar on the sides. You can place it on any side of the screen—left, right, bottom, or top—and even remove the Status Bar for an even cleaner look. Most features are easier to access in Noteful, where you might need two or three steps in Notability.
Noteful supports tabs, which is a feature you might love if you enjoy multitasking. The tab bar can be placed at the top or bottom of your screen. Just be aware that placing both the tool and tab bars on the same side can make the interface look cluttered, but you can avoid this by positioning them on opposite sides.
In Noteful, you can adjust the opacity of your shapes, finally allowing for translucent autofill and customizable borders. You can also change the opacity of images and add frames with different colors and thicknesses. The lasso tool in Noteful is more advanced, allowing you to selectively pick up handwriting, highlights, text boxes, images, or shapes—whatever combination you need. Notability’s non-selective lasso tool can be frustrating by comparison.
Another standout feature in Noteful is the ability to copy page templates within your notebook. You can add the current page to your notebook, and for minimalist digital notebooks, it copies them exactly as they are, including hyperlinks. You can’t tell which pages were added in-app versus those imported, making it incredibly easy to duplicate pages.
You can also mix different page templates within a single notebook, and you’re not limited to the app’s built-in templates. You can import your own page templates and documents, placing them exactly where you want them. In Notability, all imported documents go to the bottom of the opened document, and you have to move them manually. Multiple-page selection makes this less of a hassle, but Noteful still does it with fewer steps.
Notability finally added page rotation, but it doesn’t rotate your ink—a critical oversight. Page rotation is a must-have in any digital note-taking app, and it’s surprising that a subscription app like Notability still doesn’t fully support it in 2022.
In Noteful, you can zoom in and out of your page thumbnails, which is a cool feature worth mentioning.
The universal tags we mentioned earlier don’t just work on documents—they also work on pages. You can tag pages for easier access right from the homepage, making organization even more powerful.
Noteful also allows you to add page layers, which is a smart way to annotate documents without permanently saving your annotations. You can share original documents without your annotations—a feature Notability lacks.
Noteful can recognize outlines in your PDFs, and you can even add to your outline. It also supports nested outlines, allowing you to create as many levels as you want—a highly requested feature in apps like GoodNotes.
Of course, Notability does have some features that Noteful doesn’t offer:
Noteful has been my go-to app since November 2021. We’ll be working on a full review of Noteful soon to help you fully understand the app’s strengths and weaknesses.
