What Is Best App For Writing On Ipad

[Algernon Alcala]

Thisapp is most well-known for its audio syncing feature, which allows you to record audio and sync it with handwritten notes while you write, but other apps like Goodnotes have caught on and added this feature, too. However, Notability also recently introduced audio transcripts, which include time-stamped text of your recordings.

To set itself apart, Notability also boasts some unique features. Multi-note support gives users the ability to open two notes and arrange them in the app for comparison or multitasking. The new Pencil tool provides the app with added versatility, allowing users to draw and sketch.

By combining multitasking tools and technologies like handwriting recognition and math conversion, Notability makes it easier than ever to take notes during classes, meetings, conferences, and everything in between.

One of the biggest differentiators between Goodnotes and other competitors is its abundance of organizational tools. By default, Goodnotes allows you to create Notebooks and store everything within them. This is a fundamental difference from a tool like Notability or Apple Notes, where your ability to organize is somewhat constrained by the software.

Believe it or not, Apple Notes has been around since the early days of digital notetaking. The app launched with the first version of iOS, way back in 2007. Originally, it was a mobile version of the Notes app that has been (and continues to be) a staple on the Mac operating system.

You can open a Quick Note on your iPhone or iPad without even opening the Notes app. This allows you to quickly jot down a thought, save content from the web or another app, and more.

It works like this: When you open a file in LiquidText, the document is imported into a digital workspace. In the workspace, your document takes up half of the screen, and the workspace takes the other half.

#alt#A screenshot picturing the LiquidText interface, including a written article on the left, along with a window allowing for the selection of multiple documents. A mind map of notes and excerpts is located on the right side of the screen.

However, where LiquidText focuses on taking handwritten notes and marking up the document (all of which is possible in MarginNote), this software also allows for clipping notes, creating flashcards or mindmaps, and building study outlines.

One of the key differentiators in MarginNotes is that much of the mind-mapping generation can be done in a way that looks clean and crisp, with straight lines and blocks that feel sharp and organized.

MarginNote also allows you to compile a single set of notes from multiple sources or files, so if you have several books in a series or several documents where you should combine notes, MarginNote makes it easy to simplify that process.

#caption#Note how the handwritten text has already been pre-converted in the upper left corner of the text box. While you can keep the text in a handwritten format, Nebo gives you a clear indication that it understood what you wrote. (Image: Nebo / Screenshot by Scott Summers / Paperlike)

In many respects, CollaNote is still a work in progress that has gained a massive following in recent years. The app provides a rock-solid notetaking experience with simple and intuitive tools that look good and feel great to use.

#caption#In CollaNote, pressure sensitivity is enabled by default, so your text will shrink and grow as you write based on how hard you press your Apple Pencil against the screen. Converted text is framed within a text box and can be adjusted to taste. (Image: CollaNote / Screenshot by Scott Summers / Paperlike)

OneNote also includes features like a Math Assistant and audio recording that are great for students and a web clipper to capture content from the internet and video recording, which is completely unique to this app (Desktop or Windows app only).

Similar to both Evernote and OneNote, Zoho Notebook is available on a variety of platforms and seamlessly syncs across your devices using its own cloud service. It was awarded Best App of the Year in the App Store in 2016 and has risen in popularity since then.

But as a notetaking app, it takes a different approach than most of the other available apps in this space. It has an aesthetically pleasing UI, and the available covers for your Notebooks are works of art.

Individual notes inside the Notebooks are called Cards, and they look like little (brightly colored) sticky notes. You can change the background color on every note, making it easier to visually differentiate between topics.

Most of these are pretty self-explanatory, but the Smart Card is a really neat feature worth mentioning. When you want to save content from the internet or another app, Smart Cards automatically take that information and format it into a beautifully designed Card.

While the tools are pretty basic (Pen, Pencil, Highlighter), you can change the line thickness and color on each, and you can even customize or use hex codes to get the perfect shade. Once you have what you need, you can add up to six custom tools to your toolbar for easy access in the future.

Another feature that sets this app apart is the ability to create a page within a page. These sub-pages can be separate notes, like a mind map of your full notes, a sticky note with key concepts or reminders, or even a full PDF document that relates to your notes.

It syncs to iCloud and even integrates with your Apple Calendar and Apple Reminders, so you can easily manage your checklists and schedule. Importing, exporting, and sharing features round out this app, making it competitive with apps like Notability and Goodnotes.

For writers, the iPad does offer every bit of this content consumption, and it offers it extremely well. But every iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro is also a writing studio that is about as light and convenient as you could imagine, and at least as powerful as you could hope.

You really should buy some kind of external keyboard, or keyboard case, if you're going to be doing serious writing on any iPad. Typing thousands of words onto the glass is not ideal, and the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro and now also iPad Air isn't essential.

Beyond that, you are able to do just about every type of prose writing you need to on an iPad, straight out of the box. Without any other apps than Apple provides, you have a full word processing solution in Pages, for instance.

So there are specific needs to use alternative apps, and there are plenty of alternative apps to satisfy requirements like that. Plus there are apps that do the same thing yet one just works better for you than others.

Don't take that as a failing, do take it as your opportunity to enthuse in the AppleInsider forums. And also this: the reason people get very passionate about writing apps for the iPad is that they are worth it.

We used to write everything in one word processor, whether it was a novel or a shopping list. We did so partly because they were built to handle everything, but mostly because they were so expensive that you only ever bought one.

That's changed because of the iPad and the App Store, but while there is a booming market in more specialized writing tools, there are still a couple of heavyweights that would could make a case for being your sole text editor.

Then once a user has moved to an alternative on the iPad, they very easily moved to the same alternative on the Mac. And what they routinely found was that this alternative, whichever it was, didn't crash as often as Word, it didn't drive them spare twice a day.

That wasn't to say it was as powerful, but starting from scratch meant adding in only features that users need. The bloated Word for Mac was regenerated into the slim Word for iPad, and there is a huge amount to like about it.

Word and Pages continue to be used for writing that is going online, or certainly being sent digitally to book publisher systems like Affinity Publisher and Adobe InDesign. But they are not ideal for it.

You can't really have both a full word processor without issues like this, but you can have tools that do tiny, specific writing tasks. And you can have some in the middle, neither full word processors nor bare text editors, yet somehow better than both.

For iA Writer knows that writing has to be written, that it has to be put down on screen from out of the writer's head. Until then, there's nothing to format, nothing to create footnote citations about.

Now Drafts 5 practically bills itself as a text editor, which is a way of saying you can basically type into it but mustn't expect anything fancy. Except Drafts 5 is replete with fancy tools and options.

There's also no obvious formatting, no obvious controls, it's just a blank page for you to get your words down. There is formatting, though, you can use Markdown controls to set headings and bold, italic and so on.

And what's great about Drafts, beyond just the practical feel of it all, is that once you do have your words written, there is an enormous amount you can do. Take that text and email it directly to your publisher, send it to your Kindle, send it out as a text message, or publish as a blog.

Somewhere between the word processors of this world and the better text editors, there are apps that you might call writing studios, or writing environments. They are apps that work to help you with the business of writing as well as the job of typing text.

Scrivener, for instance, knows that when you're writing a novel, you are in it for the long haul. It knows you may need research, and it definitely knows that once you're up around 80,000 words or more, you need help keeping track of everything.

So Scrivener will let you write sixty chapters one after another if that's what you like, but it will also then slice that text up. If you have a character who only appears in chapters 4, 7, 11, and 33, then you can have Scrivener show you solely those chapters.

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