Exciting updates are rare to come by these days in handwriting note-taking apps. But iPadOS 18 has been great for Apple Notes and Goodnotes has joined the party with their 6.5 update.
As one human who has recently limited the amount of handwritten notes I take, in favour of typed or text-based notes, I am super excited to see handwriting editing features starting to roll out in handwriting note-taking apps. Text is more flexible and easy to move across apps, to use elsewhere, and these features might just help us get there. First, it was Apple Notes in iPadOS 18, now it’s Goodnotes. How awesome is that!?
Smart selection vs Smart ink
Our handwritten notes can now flow like text. Goodnotes has implemented this in a way that is very similar to what we get with our text boxes. We can also select it, to copy as text for pasting anywhere. Handwriting just got an upgrade. This is one of the features I left Noteful for, the flexibility of handwriting in Apple Notes. I couldn’t fight the compulsion to compare these new features to the ones in Apple Notes to see which app implemented it better. The selection in Apple Notes is more accurate because it selects per stroke, whereas the one in Goodnotes can only selects complete words. I’d say it doesn’t matter how it’s done, it is simply exciting to be able to select handwriting like text.
Another difference I noticed is that, in Apple Notes, simply long-pressing your handwritten notes will select them. In Goodnotes, that is only possible when you’re in the smart ink mode; that’s what I team’s decided to call it. It takes several steps to get to it, which is not ideal. Though the selection in Apple Notes also flows like it does in Goodnotes, you don’t have much control over what is selected. Apple Notes sort-of automatically does it.
Alignment
I never thought we’d get text alignment for handwriting! Apple Notes doesn’t have that. It instead lets you straighten your smart selection. Alignment sounds better than straightening handwriting that you can write straight from the very beginning. There are many ways to make sure your handwriting is straight in Apple Notes. We didn’t need a feature for that.
Add Space
The coolest feature, by far, is adding space in the middle of sentences. This has been one of the top requested features in the digital note-taking community. Goodnotes is the second third-party app to bring this feature, after OneNote. But Goodnotes’ approach is slightly different. It is limited to the handwriting box and page; a limitation you don’t get in Apple Notes and OneNote. Another limitation in Goodnotes is that; you can’t remove the space once you’ve added it. You can only adjust the space while you’re still adding. That can cause problems when you create too much space, but, cut and paste should easily fix that for you. Apple Notes doesn’t have a problem removing space you’ve added. Even when it’s buggy like mine.
All these features are currently supported in the English language only for Goodnotes. Apple Notes has had smart select for more than a year now, that one should work in other languages. But, the space feature is new and could be limited to English only. Let us know if you’re using any of these features in other languages.
Math Assist vs. Math Notes
Now, let us test the mathematical capabilities of the two apps. Apple Notes calls it Math Notes, while Goodnotes calls it Math Assist. I am going with Goodnotes on this one. Math Assist makes more sense. Goodnotes also has some great maths problems that we can use. Let’s see which app solves them better. My first two questions got no feedback, and when I failed to get anything for the simple calculation in Goodnotes, I switched back to a normal notebook. And we made some progress.
Goodnotes recognises the math problems better than Apple Notes. Math Notes has been buggy for a couple of weeks now, so much that we are considering quitting beta testing. How can the app fail to recognise an equal sign?! Goodnotes appears to support more math functions, but it could just be that they chose to present it better. Only time will tell, as we put the feature through its paces. Apple Notes supports graphs, a feature we haven’t seen in Goodnotes 6.5.
It is interesting to know who these math features are targeting. Students? I should think not because then there is no point going to school. Teachers, maybe. But most of them already know all this. So, they wouldn’t be teaching. Engineers? These don’t seem nearly complex enough for that either. I imagine there are some powerful engineering software that makes all this look like a joke. If you’ve found the AI math tools useful for work, without trying to cheat any system, please let us know. We are really curious to know.
Final Thoughts
We are happy that Goodnotes’ come to the rescue with Math Assist because Math Notes has been nothing but a massive pain, lately. We’ll probably be seeing more of these features in other handwriting note-taking apps in the coming months since these are iPadOS features that all developers have access to. So, it’s really just a question of who’s next on the line. What do you guys think?
