Freenotes, initially came as a free app and grabbed a sizeable chunk of the market. Now, users must pay if they want the ads gone. Technically, the promise for an app that’s free forever is still being kept. What does Freenotes have to offer in 2025?
Pricing and supported OS
A handwriting note-taking app with ads is not ideal. Every ad eats into your productive time, and over time that adds up. But if the ads don’t bother you, they come once when you open the app, you can use the app for free. There are not a lot of free functional handwriting note-taking apps to choose from. Sometimes even paid ones don’t work, so we can still appreciate Freenotes.
For $7, a one time purchase, the price is quite competitive if you don’t mind being stuck in the Apple ecosystem. The app doesn’t even have a macOS version, yet. So, we don’t have any hope of seeing it on any other platforms any time soon.
User interface
Freenotes is one of the most modern and minimalist handwriting app on the iPad, which is expected seeing it is such a young app. Its floating toolbar goes on any side of the screen, and it blends well with the background and pages, unlike in any other apps. The third toolbar feels like a duplicate of the second, and that can feel a bit redundant. It’s good that they have an option to turn it off.
Theme colours are always fun to play around with, even if they don’t change everything and I rarely use them. Why do they skip some parts, though? Some of our team members really love the themes, but some of us not so much. Are you a theme human? Do tell!
New notebooks
The app has a decent page template collection, but few page size options. You will like the app if you love colour, though, because you have it for your page background, lines on your page templates, and even covers.
Handwriting notes
Freenotes only has two pen types, which, in most cases would be too little for serious note-taking. But the amount of customisation you get for the fountain pen is incredible; motion smoothness, tip adjustment, pressure sensitivity, and opacity. You will have to spend a bit of time learning the terms in the app, though. I am getting tired of complaining about this, honestly. Opacity, which the developers have conveniently called concentration, is available for all your writing tools (pencil and highlighter included).
The number of colour palettes you can have in the app, yet your toolbar can only carry three at a time. How does that even work? At least the eraser supports the scribble-to-erase gesture. Not sure if it makes anything better, but yeah. It’s selective for the highlighter and tape too.
Your ink, in Freenotes, does not pixelate when you zoom in your pages. You can zoom up to 800%, and it feels like 800%. The app doesn’t have a zoom window, which most note-takers love because it has a tendency of making our handwriting look better. Unfortunately, in Freenotes, you won’t have that super power.
Attachments
Attachments for your notes are not particularly great. Shapes are terrible, consider them unavailable if you want to use the app. We can’t expect much for text in a handwriting note-taking app. The best you get is the ability to save your favourites text styles from very little styling.
You can add photos, stickers, and audio recording. Without handwriting sync or transcription, audio recording is practically useless in 2025. There is more missing for your photos than what’s available. But if all you need is just adding photos to your notes, Freenotes is not a bad choice. It is the second handwriting app we know to support videos. The app doesn’t add them the same way that Apple Notes does, but it’s great that we can watch videos from within the app.
Tape
Though the colours for tape in Freenotes are fixed, it has a decent number of patterns to choose from. At least it’s not just one pattern like you get with most apps. After that, everything about the tape is quite standard; freehand and straight tape that you can show and hide at once. It works for active recall.
Search
Freenotes does not search through your handwriting. The text that it does search doesn’t have a preview for the results. You do get some filters that make it easy to find what you’re looking for. Universal search organises your results, which is great. The big question is: do you need handwriting search? If the answer is yes, then Freenotes ain’t for you.
Page editing
What is the point of rotating a page if its notes don’t rotate with it? I suppose you have to rotate the page before writing any notes on it, and never rotate it afterwards. At least you can add space around your pages if you ever need it. That could make up for the limited page rotation. The only problem is, it’s for the whole notebook, you cannot apply it to a single page. It doesn’t crop your pages either, it only expands them. Not many handwriting note-taking apps can do that. It makes for a compelling reason to consider the app.
Organisation
Version history is yet another reason to consider Freenotes in 2025. The app keeps up to eight versions of your notes that you can revert back to if you ever needed to. We’ve not seen version history in a handwriting app yet. The hyperlinks for linking the ideas in your notes are also great. They make it easy to connect the information in your notes to make sense of it.
Final thoughts
An in-app web browser, half-decent OCR that converts your handwriting to text and a timer that you can put anywhere on the screen all make Freenotes a great app to consider for a handwriting note-taking app in 2025. AI will cost you a little extra starting from $40/year if you pay it at once. You won’t be collaborating with anyone though, and your export options aren’t great. If none of that phases you, then you definitely need to try Freenotes.
