Part two of this review was a little disappointing. Adding and interacting with items in Notes Plus X wasn’t as fun as taking notes in the app. This is the third and final part of this review. Is it worth it?
Handwriting Conversion
Before Nebo, the handwriting conversion in Notes Plus X was great. It is still good because not many apps support the Arabic language, and you have more than 40 supported languages. The accuracy is also one of the best I have seen. You almost never need to fix any errors. So, if handwriting conversion is a big part of your work, you will like Notes Plus X. The feature is straightforward and easy to use. Given how bad the text tool is, you’ll probably use OCR more in the app because it’s much better than trying to type anything.
Search Tool
You can search through your handwriting in Notes Plus X. But the search tool setup is terrible. It is away from your notes, does not highlight your found terms, you get no preview, and the app only points you to the page. It’s helpful when you have few notes. I went on and imported another document with more notes to demonstrate how inefficient the search tool is, and I got the shock of my life; the app doesn’t search through PDFs. I thought to try another one, just in case there was something wrong with the first document. It sure took its time to import that one. Nothing. Notes Plus X does not search any document you bring into the app. It can only search information you’ve added from within the app. So, if you rely on searching external documents, you won’t like using Notes Plus X.Â
Page Editing
PDF reading as it exists in a handwriting note-taking app does not work in Notes Plus X. Earlier on, I was disappointed that the app doesn’t recognise hyperlinks. That meant I could use our digital notebooks in the app. They work in every other handwriting note-taking app. Even in Apple Notes! The only page editing option you have is duplicating pages, for which you can’t select multiple pages. There is no page rotation, but you can move your pages around. You can also change your page template. And that’s it; not great in 2024.
iPadOS Support
It doesn’t support true dark mode. That’s not surprising because most apps don’t have that. Multiple instances works, but you can’t open the same notebook twice. It defeats the whole purpose of multiple instances. Scribble works, so it can help you avoid typing your notes in the app. That can improve your user experience in the app.
You can only share your notes as PDFs or images. After naming your document and picking pages for it, you can export. The app doesn’t export a native version of your notes. That means you can’t back up your notes. More about that in a bit. But I like the print feature in the app. It can export some decent PDFs but just playing around with a few settings.
Organisation
While I love the organisation in Files, it’s only great for syncing across your devices. It doesn’t do much for your backup, though. That is something you won’t have in Notes Plus X. There is no excuse for that in 2024. Every handwriting note-taking app should have both syncing and backup The app supports folders within folders, but it’s nothing exciting.
Verdict
In part one, Notes Plus X was a blast from the past. It looked like it did ages ago, but still worked like any modern app. However, the more you use it, the more you realise that the app is a bit stuck in the past. You’ll have to give up a lot of features to enjoy the experience you get in it. Is that even possible? I believe it is, for minimalist note-takers who don’t use much. I think Uncle Dan would do just fine in this app. He’s mostly using Apple Notes, but doesn’t do much in it. Notes Plus X can’t replace Apple Notes, which I thought was possible at first. Until now, there was nothing simpler than Apple Notes.
