GoodNotes vs Notability - which is better in 2023?

for over a decade good notes and notability have been the top two contenders for best note-taking app both are highly rated and include very unique features that kind of set them apart from pretty much any other app out there and people like we're big fans of both but the question remains which one is better so let's break down their differences and find out [Music] good notes and notability make it very easy for you to navigate and find your notes but they go about it in very different ways good notes as a user interface that can be displayed as a list or a grid you can sort your notes by name by date or file type but you cannot manually rearrange them at the bottom of the screen you'll see a menu with the Search tool share documents and quick access and on the top right of the screen you'll see some icons for more tools like settings bulk editing or notifications plus there's this little shopping bag right here that will take you to the good notes shop or you can buy a new paper templates covers or stickers for example notability on the other hand divides its screening too so on the left sidebar you have all your folders and dividers and on the right side you can find your notes here as well you can display your notes as a grid or in a list and you can add dividers to keep your workspace organized it's a practical and very efficient approach just perfect for for people to want to keep it minimalistic and here at the top of the screen you can find other functions like bulk editing sharing or adding new folders or dividers and here you have the search and import icons and the notability gallery where you can connect with the community or download new templates or documents for example so as you've seen it navigation is very easy in both apps but in my opinion this is where notability actually takes the first win while with good notes you have to open different folders to access your nodes notability sidebar offers a better access to each divider in each folder make it just easier for you to find your notes and if you have notability plus shared folders and favorites are on the same area as well so you have pretty much everything in the same place if you're looking for an easy way to manage your notes notability is a great option for you from the main screen you just have to create subjects or folders on the left sidebar and from there you can access all your notes and documents you can also drag and drop notes between folders so relocating a misplaced notes is very simple and easy folders go with dividers and you can Nest dividers up to 5 layers deep for extra organization with good notes you have a few more options to keep your notes neat and tidy you can enjoy vertical layers for a customer organization we've actually tested it to a depth of 10 layers which is probably more than enough for anybody in this world and the app actually still allows you to create more no problems at all you can also search for notes using optical character recognition this can actually read your handwriting so anything you wrote will be shown in the search results now for node creation all you need to do in notes ability is hit this button right here and the app will instantly create a new node within the subject you've selected on the left sidebar and that's it it's fast and simple all notes within notability are created with the default template that you can actually change in the preferences and you got seamless vertical scrolling as well with good notes document management and node creation is a two-part process when you try to create a new document in good notes the app will ask what kind of document you'd like to create and then guide you through the appropriate workflow and this is where things can get very complicated for some people what you choose to create determines what options you actually have field books and quick notes will hold your or notes images or scanned files for example and folders can hold pretty much anything this isn't a big issue by the way because goodnotes makes it very easy to combine pages and to move things around so you can drag and drop to rearrange your pages or select one or more pages to move to a different notebook for example and you can even change page templates on selected Pages only so if you need to create a graph on a specific page you can actually change the template of that specific page without affecting the rest of the notebook in notability that's not something that's possible because if you change a page template or add a page color to one of the pages of your notes it will affect the entire thing to conclude this section here I have to admit I don't see a clear winner here the best app for you will heavily depend on what you prefer if you want a very simple approach a quick to use app notability might be the best choice for you but if you're looking for something that is a bit more versatile and complex good note is the best bet it's obvious that note-taking is the main focus of both good notes and notability and therefore they provide a very very complete toolkit for you to do so regardless of the app you use you'll be able to change color style or design of paper for example you'll have also access to a very similar toolkit that includes a pen a highlighter an eraser a lasso tool or a text box for example and these only present very minor differences between one app and the other customization options in size color style or pressure sensitivity even can vary but all in all the features offered are very similar the one feature setting notability apart here is the pencil tool if you're using a screen protector like paper like writing or drawing with this pencil tool is so satisfying and it has no real counterpart on good notes apart from that notability also offers a favorites bar where you can add a selection of your personalized tools for quick and easy access with good nodes on the other hand you'll have to reselect your favorites every single time you want to use them which is kind of frustrating handwriting obviously is supported by both and if you have sloppy handwriting kind of like I have both apps support handwriting to text conversions too as for a shape recognition it's common to both good notes and notability notability offers shape detection where you draw the desired shape and hold it in place as soon as the app recognizes the shape it redraws it using uniform lines and dimensions good notes offers the exact same thing but it also offers a shape tool that you can use to fill shapes with colors last but not least notability actually shines a bit more when it comes to working on multiple documents while on good notes you can open multiple tabs like you do on your web browser notability allows you to open two notes side by sides in a split screen view this makes comparing notes so much easier right you can argue that with your iPad split view you can create a similar kind of feature with good notes but it's kind of clunky because it's relying on the iPad OS while notability offers it directly in app okay this is a really tough one but I really feel that notability has a slight Edge over good notes Here in the past goodnotes offered a lot more customization for their tools as far as Styles and sizes go but notability has made some really important improvements that actually even the bar a bit the biggest selling point here for me is the favorites toolbar it's just so convenient to have your favorite tools available and easy to access at all time note-taking might be the main focus of both apps but there are some extra features that are worth mentioning here PDF and image annotation is possible with good notes and notability with access to the full toolkit you can write on those erase what you wrote and highlight whatever you want until very recently notability offered a very unique feature their audio recording tool when using this feature notabilities audio is synced in real time with what you're actually noting down so during playback when you're listening to the audio notability will highlight the notes that you're taking it makes it super easy for you to understand why you actually took that note let's say that for many college students this was a dream come true and good notes saw the value in that and actually launched the exact same feature in January 2023 as for unique features good notes actually has an in-app flash card maker it's pretty self-explanatory this allows you to create flashcards using your notes basically you write the question on the top half of the page and the answer on the bottom half to be honest it's not the best flash card maker out there but it's just so convenient to have it in app already and not having to buy an extra application a notability side their unique feature is the math conversion tool basically the app recognizes math elements symbols and rules it's actually really useful if you use a lot of equations in your notes okay for this segment it's actually a close one as well because the biggest feature both apps have they have it in common which is the audio syncing but with all things being pretty much equal I have to give it to goodnotes for their flashcards I think it's just gonna be more useful for college students or even business professionals basically for anyone who needs to memorize stuff this is where it gets interesting in the past both good notes and noticeability used iPads iCloud sync to backup your notes it's obviously super convenient and pretty much standard on Apple devices for good notes nothing has changed it still does it for notability users iCloud sync or any type of backup actually is behind the annual subscription which is terrifying to think about a very important note here is that both apps actually allow you to backup your files on the third party storage service like Dropbox Google drive or OneDrive for example but still notability only allows it with notability plus when it comes to sharing notability and good notes allow you to export and share your documents but they go about it in very different ways with notability you can create links that are publicly accessible so pretty much anyone independently of them using or not using notability can access that document you can access that link with pretty much any web browser on any device but collaborative editing is not possible the good notes app on the other hand offers the possibility to share your documents to goodnotes users only so if you don't have the app you can't open those shared links but good nodes allows multiple good notes users to edit the same document and at the same time and this is something that is just not possible on notability which is kind of why goodnotes takes the point here notabilities link sharing is more convenient if you just need someone to read over a document but the collaborative ability of goodnotes just surpasses anything notability has to offer in this area plus literal reminder but backup on notability is only possible with notability Plus pricing and updates is where apps actually greatly diverge from one another good nodes offers a free trial version with the option to upgrade to a full version for 8.99 and notability on the other hand has a free version and a premium subscription for 12.99 but it's annual the free version of goodnotes is essentially a free trial that never expires but you can only use three notebooks in there to fully take advantage of the app you'll have to buy it but keep in mind that it's a one-time purchase aside from this limitation on the number of notebooks you can use and some other minor things pretty much everything is unlocked so even a free version of goodnotes is very much usable on the other hand while notabilities free plan is actually super accessible for casual note takers it comes with very notable restrictions around saving storage and backup also keep in mind that the free version of notability also limits the number of edits you can do on a document per month as far as updates are CERN good note still appears to update everything to pretty much every user whereas notability mentioned that some features may only appear if you have a subscription at this point it's still unclear which features are kind of concerned by those changes which ones we're gonna have on the free plan and which ones will be available only behind the annual subscription so if you are looking strictly at costs good notes is probably the best bet here it's a one-time purchase and you won't have to be afraid to see some key features locked behind the paywall or not being updated at all if you don't have the annual subscription based on what we see and how we think we can use those apps to their full potential we believe that good notes is actually the current better bet for most users that doesn't mean it's the best app for all users we still believe that notability is a more practical note-taking experience it's just easier to use for someone who's just beginning and it's just a great tool for someone who needs to take notes on the go from time to time but in our opinion good notes is nicer to use especially on the long term the app has some incredible features and overall we think that the document management the document creation as well as the user interface actually feel more complete but hey what app do you prefer hop on the comments and let us know and if you're still stuck planning your days and taking your notes on paper go ahead and watch the latest video we did on why you should go full digital thanks for tagging along and I'll see you in the next video thank you

Channel: Paperlike

Views: 166,059

Keywords: goodnotes, notability, notetaking apps, note taking apps, how to take digital notes, digital notetaking, which notetaking app is better, ipad apps

Id: xa6tLMBp9s4

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023