5 reasons why ZoomNotes might not be the best app for you

My personal reason

I thought I’d give my main personal reason first. I can’t find a pen tool that works for me in ZoomNotes. A pen tool is the most important tool in a handwriting note-taking app. If I can’t use any pens in an app, then it’s useless, even if it has 15 great features missing from other note-taking apps. 

When it comes down to it, features are great, but nothing replaces a great inking tool. This is why I have stuck with Notability because my handwriting looks best in this app. I will patiently wait for Notability to add more features. 

Inaccessible searching tool

At first, I thought the app didn’t have a search tool. I couldn’t find it anywhere on my screen for several months, actually. That’s how difficult it is to find this tool!

Even after one of my subscribers tried to explain to me how to get it, I still couldn’t figure it out. I accidentally bumped into it later, while looking to add a sticker to my notes.

The Search tool is a very basic tool. If an app is going to put it under advanced tools, I doubt most people will have the patience to look for it.

The location of the search tool in ZoomNotes is not convenient at all, even after you know where it is. The idea of making two or three taps just to search for something in my document is not appealing at all.

2. No OCR Updated

This means you can’t search through your handwriting. Their website says they are working on adding the feature. There is no telling when that will happen. It could be weeks or months. Years even. If you want to search through your handwriting or to convert it to text; ZoomNotes is not an app for you at the moment. 

3. No vertical scrolling Updated

I love vertical scrolling! Horizontal scrolling just doesn’t work for me. The scrolling experience in ZoomNotes isn’t even that smooth. It’s probably the worst scrolling I have used in a handwriting note-taking app. It requires too much effort to navigate through your pages. 

4. ZoomNotes is very complicated

 ZoomNotes is great, with a lot of features. However, it requires time to learn. Which might not be a fruitful way to spend your time when you have assignments to do or meetings to attend. Most of us would rather just pick up a more intuitive, simpler app and start working.

5. A strange zoom tool

ZoomNotes uses a different scaling system. What’s wrong with percentages? Updated! Every other app uses that and we’ve got used to it. The zoom tool makes it very difficult to appreciate your page sizes in the application, which is very important. Especially for this app, considering the app supports the creation of different page sizes. Their scaling tool should make it easier to appreciate page sizes in their app. 

Other minor reasons

These are not massive deal breakers for you to stop using ZoomNotes. But, they still bother me. 

  • Pages are not stable on the canvas. They move around, making for an unpleasant writing experience. Pages in the application are superimposed on the canvas, not embedded in the app. 
  • The user interface looks old-fashioned. Like something on a Windows 95 computer. In 2019, most of us are shallow. Presentation matters: a smoother, more modern look UI would be appreciated. 
  • When writing, the ink sometimes disappears and reappears. Almost as if the app is blinking/flashing. That’s the best way I can describe this. It is distracting when doing serious productive work. 
  • I don’t like their folders. They don’t look appealing at all.

In my defence, I am not as shallow as I sound right now. I am actually a very deep human being. For those of you excited about the planner; it’s not a fully functional one. It only has a monthly spread. No weekly or daily options yet. 

If you still think ZoomNotes is the app for you, then give it a try. ZoomNotes comes with a trial version. It’s not very useful, though, because most tools are missing in this version. ZoomNotes lite lets you try it out before purchasing the app. Other note-taking apps could learn a thing or two.

What do you dislike about ZoomNotes?

6 thoughts on “5 reasons why ZoomNotes might not be the best app for you”

  1. mehboobelahi777ob

    All that she has mentioned now changed..

    1. pens are very smooth like that of goodnotes… Now its far far better..
    2. OCR is there now..
    3. verticle scroll is also available..
    4. Easy search tool at the top of document is available now.. with much cutamizable..
    5. Pages are now fixed.. and its very smooth…

    Now I like zoomnotes ever before…

  2. scottossington

    i love zoom notes and all of the features you hate have mostly been fixed and yes you do sound very shallow

  3. John Bonavita-Goldman

    I keep using it because the handwriting feels like i am using pen and paper

    But

    Very unstable
    I have had several occasions where all my data disappears
    If you have a window open on top of a background it tends to twirl around. Can figure out how to keep in from moving
    The lasso tool is awful
    There is no one to call
    Ery hard to comtrol the width of an apple pencil

    What i like is that there is no other pencil app where the handwriting looks so good. Other apps feel like you are sliding. He the handwriting actually looks like it

  4. Есть ли там самая важная для моих коллег функция, которая есть в нотабилити и которой не встречали ни в каком другом приложении.
    А именно: синхронная запись с диктофона и карандаша?

  5. I think what scares new Zoomnotes users is its complexity.

    Zoomnotes is definitely not Goodnotes, Notability or any other notes app. It sits alone in its class, at the top of the heap. What is interesting to me, is the features other app users are begging the devs to add, are already there in Zoomnotes. Along with much, much more.

    Every time I use Zoom, I discover some hidden gems. I look at Zoom like I do Microsoft Office. Anyone can create a document in Word, yet Word can be extensively modified to suit the users needs. Zoom is complex, but not too hard to use effectively, right out of the box. The features are there to discover.

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