Noteful: Note-Taking on PDF 4+

I love this app. I’m not quite sure why everyone is raving about GoodNotes and Notability when Noteful is more lightweight on resources and equally as powerful!
The app has amazing performance (on my iPad, iPhone and M1 mac) which means that Noteful is best in class when it comes to battery life. This was the key factor in choosing an app for me, and as long as this app remains lightweight I’ll probably keep using it.
While not all the features from other apps are here there (flashcard templates, OCR search, etc) I have not really missed any of these features. Like i mentioned before, performance matters more to me, and hopefully the developers keep efficiency in mind and do not give in to ‘feature creep’. It’s much better to have dedicated apps for flashcards and OCR searching rather than having one app trying to do everything at once (and being mediocre at everything).
My only gripe with this app is that the auto-backup feature chooses to export documents using the ‘high’ graphics quality. This makes small writing look crooked which is not ideal. It would be amazing if we were given the choice to auto-backup our notes in the best quality possible. Keep up the good work!

I have tried almost all of the iOS note taking apps, trying to find the perfect one. There are some apps that have more features, but for me this is the one that works. The learning curve and the feature set, makes for a hassle free experience. With some apps I feel I am battling to make them work, but this one is the most intuitive. As a university lecturer, I love the layers concept. I can annotate a .pdf but return to the original document with ease. One feature request would be Dropbox backup. A note app needs to be quick and easy to use. This one strikes the perfect balance. The cream on the cake is the price, it’s a bargain!

The app is superb, with good folder management, tags, layers (!!!), and a UI which leaves most of the screen free for writing and which makes navigation easy. The experience is positive enough that I now use it as my main note taking app for university instead of Notability or Goodnotes 5. I do wish the tutorial was a bit clearer though, especially regarding layers (what do the eye/pencil/padlock symbols mean!?).

That said, it’s missing some features. None are completely deal breaking, but they do make me miss Notability:
- Shapes do not snap to each other, nor do they snap to the lines on pages
- No “duplicate” feature, instead have to copy & paste (this takes up a fair bit of time when you’re trying to keep up with a lecturer)
- No handwriting recognition; handwritten notes thus can’t be searched
- No maths/LaTeX conversion; this one is less important, but I really miss it for when I want to make sure an equation is nice and clear
- Can’t move the tools around on the toolbar (I prefer it on the bottom, but the colours are out of the way if I do this)
- No ruler; would be a nice addition.

Overall though, I’m happy to see where this app goes in future, since I’d be surprised if a lot of these aren’t added going forward. I hope these improvements come quickly though, because if Notability fixes it’s awful file management and lack of various paper types/pdfs in one notebook, I’d probably switch back.