Fantastic human, hello! Today we’re looking at Notability 15 in iPadOS 26. This is now the 15th version of the app, and once again, the developers have tweaked the logo. Personally, I’m not sure how I feel about it—what about you? Drop your thoughts down in the comments. But logos aside, is Notability still worth it in iPadOS 26? Let’s dive in.
Pricing
Notability 15 has, without doubt, the worst pricing setup for a handwriting note-taking app in 2025.
- The Pro plan costs $100 per year, or a painful $20 a month.
- I’m on the Plus plan, which is $20 a year. This used to be $15, but they bumped it up.
Now, the Pro plan gives you smart notes, real-time transcription, and chat—but honestly, those features haven’t been game-changing in other handwriting apps, so I can’t justify $20 a month for them. Especially considering you could just use ChatGPT for the same price.
But if you’re using the Pro plan, and it actually works well for you, let us know. And to the Notability developers—please send us some promo codes so we can test your Pro plan.
On the bright side, Notability is free if you just want to create and edit unlimited notes, plus record audio. That makes it a solid option for beginners. And the Plus plan now supports family sharing, which we’d been waiting for, for what feels like forever. Hopefully, they extend that to the Pro too.
Supported Platforms
Notability works across iPad, iPhone, and Mac. There’s also a web version, which is starting to feel more functional. That’s exciting, but it’s still in beta and not quite there yet. When we tried it, my notes didn’t sync, and it wouldn’t even recognise my subscription. And there’s no option to restore purchases at the moment. So yes—definitely still needs work.
Shapes
On to shapes, and here Notability does something a bit clever. There isn’t a dedicated shapes icon on the toolbar. Instead, you simply draw the shape you want, and the app converts it instantly.
It works with all kinds of shapes—even irregular ones—and you can edit them afterwards. You can draw shapes with any handwriting tool: the pen, highlighter, or pencil.
One tip though: don’t bother trying to draw arrows with the highlighter. It just doesn’t handle them well.
The good news is, you can adjust border thickness and type, and add or remove the fill colourfor your shapes in Notability 15. The only frustration is that the opacity is still fixed—so you can’t make fills more transparent or solid. T’is a shame.
That said, you can easily duplicate shapes, and the guidelines are genuinely helpful. Honestly, the shapes tool here is one of the most complete you’ll find in a handwriting note-taking app.
Stickers
The plus icon is back for adding items. That awfully confusing photo icon is finally gone! Notability 15, like its predecessor, has a big collection of stickers. If you’re the type of person who likes decorating notes, you’ll love this. It even supports the iPadOSstickers that come with your keyboard, and you can create custom stickers too.
My personal favourite is the sticky notes where your handwriting actually sticks. Those are pretty rare in other apps. But I was hoping they’d make them look more realistic this time around—maybe add shadows, folded corners, something to make them feel like proper sticky notes. Hopefully in the future.
Tape
Another feature worth getting Notability 15 for, is the tape. It’s not perfect, but it’s functional. You get a handful of patterns and colours, you can draw freehand or straight, and you can toggle all the tape on or off with just one tap. What more can you ask for?
Audio Recording
Now, if there’s one single feature that defines Notability, it’s the audio recording. And this is where the app truly shines. No handwriting app comes close to what Notability offers. You can sync handwritten or typed notes perfectly with your recordings, and it does it with pixel accuracy for your handwriting.
In fact, we scored audio recording out of 15, in our database, and Notability gets a 12.5. It only loses points for transcription, which is frustratingly limited. The Plus version’s transcription is painfully slow. What used to process in real time now takes ages. A two-minute clip can feel like it takes donkey years to get a transcript ready. Meanwhile, Apple Notes, and Goodnotes 6 handle this in seconds—at a fraction of the price.
It gives me the impression the developers simply aren’t prioritising transcription for Plus users anymore. Instead, they want to push us towards the Pro. Which is disappointing. Also, some changes feel like a step backwards. We were hoping to see this fixed in Notability 15. The playback speed toggle was moved away from the timeline in Notability 14, which made it harder to reach. Why they did that, I don’t even know.
And I really miss the old option to hide note previews during playback. I didn’t use it much at the time, but when I finally found a use for it—it was gone. Such a shame. That said, the editing tools are excellent. Notability lets you trim recordings, merge them, and even fine-tune the audio quality. That’s unique in this space.
The only bright side for transcription is that you can resize the sidebar to any width you want. But without any transcription after 30 minutes, it’s basically useless. Notability 15 just failed to transcribe my two-minute audio. It doesn’t feel like an upgrade anymore. At least not for the audio transcription.
OCR
Handwriting conversion in Notability 15 is excellent. It retains your ink colour and handwriting size when you convert notes to text. You can also just copy text from the conversion without actually converting anything.
Math equations are still editable, and you can search through your handwritten notes. That covers everything you’d want for working with handwritten notes in iPadOS 26.
Collaboration
Now, collaboration is where things fall apart. Even though Notability now has a somewhat functional web version, collaboration is still dreadful. You can’t really work with anyone on your notes. The feature is still limited to downloading documents others share with you. Which is as good as not having collaboration at all. So, if teamwork is important for you, avoid this app like the plague.
Conclusion
Should you try Notability 15 in iPadOS 26? Well, it depends on what you value. If you care about shapes, stickers, tape, audio recording, and OCR, then yes—Notability 15 is worth a look. But everything else? It’s just average. And when it comes to collaboration, it’s terrible.
So for me, Notability 15 is a mixed bag. It’s brilliant in a few areas, frustrating in some, and overpriced at the top tier. It no longer packs the amazing features it used to a few years back. It’s not an app we’d recommend as a first choice excerpt in a few special cases that are very hard to come up with.
But what about you? What do you love—or hate—about Notability 15?
