GoodNotes has added a community page to the app! Our developers were inspired by how digital note-takers love sharing their notes on social media. So they thought to make it easier for us (how thoughtful).
You must be 16 or older to sign up for an account. At the moment, you can only access this feature by joining the waiting list. Our developers have made signing up very simple. It uses your Apple ID, no passwords to remember, which gives you one account you don’t have to remember a password for.Â
Creating a profile
You can Set Up Your Profile to pick a username and quickly fill out your bio to introduce yourself. This is also where you can add a profile picture. The app then asks you to Allow Notification or Decide Later. To make sure you don’t miss any mentions or activity on your profile, you can turn this on.
The app ought to have a Don’t Allow option though. There is nothing to decide late if we only have one option. This prompt keeps popping up each time you get into the app, forcing you to allow notifications. Some of us never allow notifications for any apps, we would like to have that option.
Once you’ve created a profile, you’re ready to start your social media life in GoodNotes. We’ve had several unproductive social media communities in the past, but this is awesome! You can now see how others are taking notes in GoodNotes; a community of digital note-takers!
Your profile doesn’t have much. It displays the number of your followers and those you’re following. It would be helpful if we could link our other social media accounts to our profiles. Bio profiles don’t support weblinks but most users want to share links to their other social media accounts. Weblinks would make for a complete social media profile, but we are not sure that’s what our developers are going for.
We’ve been sharing our notes for centuries, it’s what students do. Finally, it seems we now have the technology to share our notes in the ‘traditional sense’. It is exciting to see this inside a note-taking app. We can’t help but wonder if this will make a lot of people switch to GoodNotes.
Browsing content
You can browse through many different subjects. While this seems inspired by academics, it is not limited to that. While some GoodNoters have uploaded notes for different subjects, others are sharing diagrams and drawings, planners, headers, etc. Well, the possibilities are endless. We’re excited to see how educators and learners are going to take advantage of this community. You can also search for documents or members and filter your search results.
The community has two types of content. It has Freebies that you can download, and they are clearly labelled. You can Save a freebie to Import as New Document to save a copy to your app.
The other documents are for viewing only if the owner has not made them available for download. If you need inspiration or information from others on certain topics, you can just view their notes and take your own on the side. You can do the following with a document:
- Save for later to add it to your profile
- Share the link
- Like
- Report
- Comment to start a conversation on the document.
Uploading your content
On the landing page, you can Add your notes or Contribute, both options send you to the same place to upload your content from Files/Library. You must Confirm Selection for the app to upload your document. It automatically adds a Document Name from the title of the notes. The app doesn’t say what kind of file you are uploading though. Wouldn’t you want to know the file type you’re uploading? It could be a PDF or GoodNotes file, who knows? You can then:
- Add a short description
- Decide if you want other community members to download your notes (this labels the document as Freebie).
- Mark as academic to add details about the subject, university and course.
- Add tags: the app will suggest some for you. Once you’re done, you can Agree and Publish your document.
On your profile, your Freebies are clearly labelled. They should have this label on the homepage too. Your profile shows your Published and Saved notes. You can also Contribute to Community from your workspace in the app. You can upload All Pages or Select Pages to Upload. Even on the homepage, you have the option.
Win great prizes
When you upload notes, you get entered in a monthly giveaway, about which you can get more details in the app. That certainly makes things more interesting. A social media platform for GoodNoters, how do you feel about that? If you’re not already a GoodNoter, do you feel left out? Join the waiting list to be a part of the GoodNotes community.
