How To Use Notability on iPad 2024 | Complete Walkthrough + Tips & Tricks

hey everyone it's Dennis and in the notability tutorial I dropped about a year or so ago the feedback was really positive but as one of you rightly pointed out notability has since had an update so I've spent the last couple months to really get to grips with everything to do with the brand new notability UI and I'm confident I can deliver a top class tutorial for all you guys oh and by the way I've taken all the advice on board from the previous video to the point where I've now got a secondary camera right here and I'll be screen recording my iPad as well oh by the way I'm using notability on the iPad Pro 12.9 in Edition but it should also work on other iPad models and on Android devices as well so let's dive right into it to start you need to launch notability for me it's already in my dock down here so you just have to open it up now when you open up notability for the first time you'll see a screen similar to this except you have no current notes so the first thing I'd recommend is to go to the settings bar at the top left corner from here you have a whole bunch of options now I think the important ones are first to back up your data at one point in my time notability actually removed everything and if I did not have it backed up to my Google Drive I would have lost all my documents that's the first thing I'd recommend doing is make sure you have some kind of auto backup I personally use Google Drive but feel free to use dropbox one drive box webdb if you use it anything that you think would be best for you the next tab is manage accounts this is where you can log into a notability account which is what I would recommend especially if you want to also use notability on your MacBook for example so you can sync it across both devices you can also use your iCloud if you want to sync it there instead in terms of the themes I personally use dark mode but of course that only changes the appearance doesn't actually change how notability Works inside now document type this is important now the standard default document is the letter document as they call it where it's just handwriting lines I personally change this because I study engineering at University I personally use the grid formation as it's better for when I want to do maths you can change it to plain rule dot wherever floats your boat I also would recommend changing the grid size I've actually reduced my spacing to two because I believe the default is four and it makes it really wide so I would say that so you don't have to keep changing it within every document going through the other settings quickly here we've got typing where you can change your font and default text size I haven't altered this but feel free to handwriting as well that's simple that just tells you what language you're writing in it's going to be English for the majority of people and math conversion as well I've turned that on because I do engineering so it can convert my actual handwritten equations into highres mathematical formulas straight line shape detection and palm detection I'd all tick on they make a big difference especially the palm detection one if you don't have that on your your basically your palm will start writing for you which is obviously not what you want audio transcription is on for me but I personally do not use this feature but when I did my last notability tutorial a few people do so I would recommend turn it on especially if you want to turn on the feature during lectures which I will show you how to do that later in the tutorial lock objects that's if you want to actually set a password for certain documents so only if you input that password you can actually open it I don't personally do this but if you have any confidential information is probably recommended gestures as well that's two finger to tap I completely forget to use this it's a good shortcut but I personally just forget to use this I use the arrows in the top Corner okay so now all the settings should be up to date let's get into creating and sorting documents so if you first look look at notability you have your notes on the left hand side just underneath you have the gallery now this is where you have actual other notability users creating templates and these are quite good I don't personally use them but for example you could search Fitness and there'll be someone that creates a fitness template for example for your fitness workout if you click the blue arrow in the bottom right corner they should be able to import it into a document if you want to use these but for the vast majority of notability users they will purely be using it for academic or vocational purposes so I'm going to show you how to use a notes now first on left hand side you have subjects now I've got two YouTube and University these are called dividers so I use notability purely for my University work but also creating scripts for my YouTube videos so if I expand both these you can see that the YouTube just has YouTube scripts one subject but under university I've got five distinct subjects for my subjects this year now you can see a subject is differentiated by a circle and it specific color on the left hand side you add your own subjects and dividers you click the plus next to subjects and then you can add a subject or divider individually I'm going to add a divider here and I'm going to name it uh YT for short for YouTube now if you want to move pre-made actual subjects into that divider that's very simple you just have to hold over it and then drag it up into underneath where the document is and it should be able to fall just inside and then you have it right here so if you open and close the divider you'll have your subject inside there so that now means if I open up a specific subject for example operations I've now got all my individual notes within that subject for that lesson this is really helpful for my organization to be able to differentiate different subjects and the notes there let me start up an individual note to show you guys what all the operations do to do this you just have to click new in the top right corner and note because I'm currently on notes right now on the left hand side this new document will be unfiled if I was to for example click on YouTube scripts and then click new the file will automatically be filed into my YouTube script subject as we click new you'll see a brand new document open as I said before I personally use the grid formation with a spacing of two as I believe it's best for the mathematics I mostly do in engineering but for some of you might you may see a different document type for example the normal lines also when you first launch a document notability actually is part of their new update allows you to instantly change the document type for example down the bottom left I'm going to change mine to Now aign set up so you have your fresh new document in here and at the top you have a task toolbar now this has been edited with the brand new notability updates the first one is your pen so this is where you've got different colors you can add there if you click the add Button as well you can add brand new colors and it's got a large spectrum of of them I stick to mostly black red green and blue to be honest with you guys if you scroll to the right you can change the actual size of the pen so small is right now and it looks something like this but if I change it to Big it looks like this and then the biggest setting looks like this so I personally stick with the smallest setting as I believe it's most aesthetic especially for the work I'm doing especially because I take a lot of small notes so I zoom in an awful lot to take them if I zoom in and use this you can see it get very hard to actually read out what you can also change the pen stroke so the default stroke right here is the normal bullet point pen as they call it so as I write no matter how hard I hold down the screen it's going to be the same however if I change the fountain pen as I hold down the pen actually gets more Bolder and defined equally youve got the two here which are like the hash line so I can actually write and it will give a hash line right here with spaces in the middle next on the tool bar we have the pencils I personally do not use this to be honest because I mean I'm not drawing if you're drawing on notability app sure I'd say use them I personally don't I just stick to the pen but the next feature is the highlighter which I do use normal full lot I've got quite a few colors here as you can see so you can highlight text as normal just like you use the pen however neat feature I like to use is if you hold down and then drag across it will automatically create a straight line which you can adjust in any direction this is something that not a lot of people know and it happens with the pens as well for example I've got the red pen here right if I just hold a straight line trying to draw straight it's going to look like that but if I hold the pen first and then draw you can see it snaps into whatever Direction I want and will create a perfectly straight line next we have the Eraser now as it says on the tin the Eraser just erases anything on your document however it will do one by one for example you've got the highlighter here so it'll raise the highlighter first and then each word so as you can see if you want to erase Small Things fine the Eraser works perfectly but for large scale items it's not the best so I actually use two other methods the first method involves the undo button in the top left corner I use this if I've just made a quick mistake and want to undo and the other method uses the lasso over here which I will get to later in the video next we have the text function now I didn't use this an awful lot when I gave my first tutorial but since then I've used it more and more especially for my YouTube scripts so if I tap anywhere on the document now the text comes up now I can start typing away saying this is a YouTube tutorial for example and it will type up on the notability document going into the lines as well so this is a really neat feature especially if you want to send over some academic documents to professors example but don't want to do half of it on Words and half of it on notability you can type Parts on notability so it looks really clean and nice and aesthetic in that sense but also do MTH on the same document as well and the next feature as mentioned is alasso and in my opinion this is the biggest game changer and I said this in the first tutorial as well so what the lasso does there's two options the free form and box I personally use free form what box does is as you draw here it creates a box but I personally prefer free form because what free form allows you to do is draw whatever shape you like so you can select multiple items at once then with the lasso you can then move this anywhere you like on the document for example I'm going to move it down here and the other thing I said that I was saying how it's better than eraser is the ability to delete right here so I can delete all the information by clicking on the right hand side I can also with the lasso change a lot of the style so if I click in the middle after selecting the items I want to deal with I can then either change the style of them for example I can make the stroke bigger I can change the colors there's also have op as well the style I can duplicate I can cut copy convert into math I said earlier group save and delete as well so lasso is a big game changer if if you're not using the lasso you're actually missing out on a lot of productivity right there next we have the photo board function now I personally do not use this but it does have some productive effects if you save an item for example I can click on this right here this line right here and save it so if I selected the lasso and then click save when I then go to click on the photo board it will be saved right here so I can click on it and this brand new item basically duplicate can show up and I can Happ across multiple documents so I've got one pre-made here understanding Young's modulus I should use this more and I do use it at times if you're especially doing something that involves a lot of repetitive actions and you know you want to create a preset that you will use on multiple occasions I would definitely definitely use a stickers function if not it's not as useful but it's there for you if you need it alongside you also have gifts to use if you want to use it you've got sticky notes which I don't personally use but you can use on your document if you want to add especially if you're doing I know Medics use this a lot cuz they want to make really aesthetic notes cuz they're studying medicine and you've also got the photo album had photos and the camera as well pre-saved on your device next we have the microphone feature now I personally have said before do not use this however a lot of people do now if I click play and start talking and then start writing at the same time if you go back to play it you will see your writing alongside as it's been spoken so you will see for example if I say this is a YouTube tutorial and then as it plays back you will see the pen actually write it alongside when I actually said the statement in real life so if people that are sitting in lectures fairly close to the lecture they can use this especially because they'll see oh I wrote this when the electure was saying this for example the microphone feature is fairly decent and if you click the button right here you'll now be able to listen to the audio I can move forward and backwards in time now we can move on to the second page of the toolbar so if you drag over you start with the item right here now what this allows to happen is allows your pen to actually be used to drag up and down the paper I don't personally use this because I use my finger to drop drag up and down instead but for some people it may be of use next we have the zoom function this allows you to zoom into a specific part and then you can actually make it bigger and smaller and start writing inside as well which I think could be very useful next we have the laser pointer now this is very good for presentations because it allows me to show you what I'm talking about I could have been using it throughout this tutorial to be honest so I can point to specific areas on the page especially if you're actually showing a document for example on Microsoft teams or Zoom where me saying look here or look there doesn't really do much because the people aren't seeing me point to the actual item in real life the laser pointer shows exactly what I'm referring to for example look at the sticky note right here the next item is tape now I don't use this to be honest you can tape over anything and then of course rewrite over it again if you really want to like I said I personally don't use this I think it's one of the more useless features on notability to be honest but they've added it as part of their new update so fair enough we also have the ruler available to notability plus customers now like I said this also could be useful if you're measuring certain items but in terms of writing straight it's not it's not really useful I'd say because as I showed you guys before if you snap anyway and hold your line straight it will be a straight line so you wouldn't use the ruler for straight lines in that respect only to actually measure the size of items but when I do engineering a lot of the documents actually they say oh the items are not to scale when whenever I'm doing problems so the ruler feature is wasted on me but it might be useful to certain people I want to remove the ruler just pinch it and then drag it away from your screen basically and if you click the settings on the far right hand side you can then add and deselect certain toolbox elements so for example if you know you're going to use the navigate feature a lot you can then drag it up inside your main toolbox and if you know you're never going to use record you can drag that out of there for example I've not personally touched it because I believe the default settings are best for my personal use but if you feel like you want to use one item more than others feel free to change around the order and you can always reset default using the red button in the bottom in the top right corner you have two other features as well the three dots here surrounded by the circle allows you to share your document and change the template as I said before as well as the settings so your template can be changed to a whole set of options like I said I use the grid an awful lot but for some people they might like Cornell notes I know that was pushed heavy uh to me when when I was in school you can use a college rule for example if you're doing engineering you can use the engineering grid I'm studing engineering I still don't use that but you never know and you've also got the page manager this allows you if this document is I'd say around 5 10 pages at least you can scroll through and see different pages and you can choose to clear the page create a template from it you can copy the page and cut the page as well as add a page underneath as well so that is everything when it comes to actually note taking but there are some bonus features as well that I use an awful lot the first one is importing documents externally into notability let's show you how to do that so if I switch over to Safari here I've got a document that I'm going to use for my tutorials if I then click the top right corner the Box up here I can then upload it I then click not ability is one of my options I'm going to create a new note note title doesn't matter right now subject it is traffic ironically enough it has selected the right uh topic already Pages all of them and click import so now if I switch over back to notability and go back and go to my traic trffic option as you can see the note is right here ready for me to edit now and when you are done and want to share that document to a friend for example you can click the three dots on the top click Quick Share it will take some time to save it and then you can airdrop it email it whatever you would like to do that you can export that document wherever you like now let's say you finish your file for example the one we just finished here the note 7th of November 2023 brackets 2 and I want to actually change it now into a subject so what I can do is I can hold on to it and then manually drag it into one the sub subjects I'm going to drag it into YouTube scripts for example so I then click on YouTube scripts you'll see the notes at the top right there and I can easily drag it out again as well so that concludes our notability tutorial for 2023 going into 2024 as always drop a like down below if this video did help you and subscribe as it really helps the channel out and please let me know in the comment section if there's any further tips you would like to provide or anything think in this video you think needs further clarification check out the video right here if you want to see how I use notability as an engineering student I've been Dennis I appreciate your company for this video and I hope to catch you all in my next one take care

Channel: Deniz Sancar

Views: 55,038

Keywords: notability, notability tutorial, notability tips and tricks, notability walkthrough, notability update, notability vs goodnotes, notability tutorial 2023, how to use notability on ipad, ipad notability, notability hacks, notability notetaking, ipad notetaking apps, note taking apps, notability ipad pro, notability ipad, notability 2023, notability 2024

Id: Ib1rEYI55i0

Length: 16min 3sec (963 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2023