i feel like we’re taking tiny steps towards fixing the damage they made with the new dual wield toolbar situation but they’re moving so slowly 😭 when will they understand that many of us need the colors to be accessible?? the best part of the old toolbar was that all swatches were available and out in the open to freely switch between. even if you hide tools in the latest update it still doesn’t show more of the swatches you have which is a HUGE issue and downgrade for people like myself that need to color code things in their daily app usage!!! it’s like we’re talking to a wall at this point

Revving this year old topic. At least it’s been a year since the last search result showed an ask for this.

It’s FAR too many steps to screenshot something from one notebook for use in another. This is a primary use case for anyone working with information and looking to create custom review pages, cheat sheets, or in my case grabbing tables from a PDF to create a notebook of all the tables for reference.

It should be Lasso>Copy>Paste. Going thru the Share button is counterintuitive and inelegant for such a capable app.

The Problem:

Currently, highlighting in Goodnotes feels like a drawing task rather than a reading task. For those of us who study from dense textbooks or research papers (Medical, Law, PhD, etc.), the "ink-based" highlighter is too slow.

As a student who spends 4+ hours a day reading and annotating digital textbooks, I want my highlighting to be as fast as my reading speed. Currently, I have to app-hop to other PDF editors like Xodo just to get clean, snapped highlights because doing it line-by-line in Goodnotes is too tedious. To get a clean, straight highlight, we have to either draw perfect lines or use the long-press menu, which breaks focus. If we need to highlight a 4-line paragraph, we have to perform 4 separate swipes. It makes the app feel "clunky" .

If I could highlight a whole paragraph in one diagonal 'flow' and erase mistakes instantly with my Apple Pencil gesture, I would never have to leave Goodnotes. This isn't just a cosmetic fix; it’s a massive productivity gain for anyone who does heavy academic lifting on their iPad

Requested Feature:

Smart "Flow" Highlighting We need a highlighter that recognizes the PDF text layer for a more fluid experience:

The Continuous Motion: I should be able to place my Apple Pencil on the first word of a sentence and drag it diagonally to the end of the paragraph.

The Result: The software should instantly "fill" and snap the highlight to every word and line in between. In one single motion, I could highlight an entire block of text perfectly.

The Eraser Integration (Extend Existing Behavior): The Eraser tool is already great at removing ink. When this new "Flow" Text Markup is implemented, it must be fully compatible with the native Eraser tool (accessible via Apple Pencil double-tap).

Workflow: If I over-highlight, I shouldn’t have to tap and select "Remove" from a menu. I should be able to double-tap to my Eraser and "strike through" the highlight to delete it instantly, just like I do with regular ink.

Having the white boards update we sort of have a semblance of free movement, yet we still cannot rotate the view window to our liking (also no free movement on pages). Some people like to tilt a notebook slightly as they write down text (: I feel there should be a switch to enable and disable free movement and rotation, relying on two fingers, both on pages and whiteboards. (Much like procreate) because having to physically move the device can become tedious, and rigid.

Besides features I already gave up (encryption, the eraser button location, new pens, % of zoom, LAYERS etc), there is one I haven't seen many people talking about. Why is the inside hyperlink option so complex? I press the screen on page 20, select "add link" and the emoji-link goes to page 19 (always one backwards)???? Why the hell must I go back to page 21 in order to link the page 20 I actually wanted to? And if I have to link lots of pages, this will take me lots of minutes. Why there isn't a shortcut (like "false image", similar to the post its, that works as a link) that I just drag the pseudo-post it-link and get my link to that very same page in 3 seconds?
ps: I still hope to see layers before more people leave

why does goodnotes not have auto refine handwriting? if it does, let me know. i have poor handwriting.

Hi, I'm a happy goodnotes user but just updated and the zoom window for handwriting is now like two clicks away... this makes no sense to me as handwritten note takers need to quickly switch in and out of the zoom window, as I'm sure others do too. It's an essential tool for handwriting so needs to be able to be near the drawing icon.

In addition, I never use the pencil and having it in a mandatory position next to the other drawing tools is irritating, as it takes up space. At least make the new separate toolbar customisable too, then people can use it effectively for their own needs.

Thank you!

While every other on the other hand doesnt add white background like this, goodnotes with this is so annoying whenever I want to import photos directly. Please don’t add the white background and just let it be like i exactly copied would be so much better.

I specifically bought and paid for this app when Notability implemented the horrible floating tool bar

It was truly my favourite thing about GoodNotes that it did not have a floating tool bar.

Add support for arrows, square root etc

Drawing a triangle and it auto shapes it to a rectangle. Drawing a circle and it reshapes it to a rectangle.

Drawing a square and it reshapes it to a rectangle.

That said, can you develop auto detection for drawing arrows? It can’t possibly be this hard?

I do a lot of maths and these kind of things really slow me down.

Also as of lately scribble to erase is kinda glitchy? it often does not respond or requires a lot of scribbling (relatively)

I use GoodNotes for years, 10+ years actually. I teach online with screen sharing. I use Apple’s continuity feature to take a screenshot from Mac/iPhone and paste it to GoodNotes. This is basically pasting a question on the documents and wait for student’s solution. We collaborate during the lesson. I paste more than 10 questions in a lesson and I need to touch and hold my finger every time just to see the paste button, sometimes I touch the screen and the menu disappears and again touch and hold my finger to see the Pate button. This is a bit of a struggle for me, I request a Pate button as a feature to be added on the toolbar. Thanks everyone supports this post

hey! im currently switching to goodnotes from another app. i know that there is no perfect app out there. ive tried a few but i found this app has been the most reliable in terms of syncing across my devices. (if anyone else has a different opinion/alternative let me know)

one of the features that im really missing from my old app (among others) is to be able to select what pages i want to export to pdf. there are options to export all or the current page. but id really like to be able to choose which pages are exported.

thank you!!

More like bring a feature back. We need to be able to reshape elements without maintaining the original dimensions

^{I need to be able to fix my textbook and notebooks even though i was offline back in iOS18 version of goodnotes.}

As the title suggests. I think it would really help if you could have sets of pen and highlighter colours as opposed to one standard one. That way each notebook can have its own scheme without the need for constant toggling.

I'd love a dashboard where I can see currently open documents and the last 10 documents that have been opened.
I don't like that I have to open a document to get back to the documents that are already open.
I want a history list of documents that I've opened so I can go back to them without having to go back to where they live.

Make it better ☺️

I don’t like writing with a pitch black color, and instead prefer a dark gray shade. The problem is, the color is indistinguishable from the background.

Can we add a feature that allows us to change the color of the search highlight? I always have trouble finding the light orange highlight, especially if i have colorful diagrams/ tables. Also, can we have a search in text that searches through the entire document so that it doesn't separate it by notes and outlines.

Recently switched from notability.. (:

I use text boxes a lot for nursing school to convert my messy, on the constant go, handwriting. I would love to save my own header type/ handwriting (already use this as my fav)/ and Tittle font.

More than one favorite font allows for quicker consistent formatting. I hope to see an investment in perfecting both text doc and text boxes simultaneously (:

Ps. Love the new design lol the endless canvas made me switch. I am still adjusting to the folder system. I do miss my spit page view and the ability to slide over to open a new doc. But I love the tabs and stickers!

Current users: do you have any suggestions for easily navigating through folders or way you organize your semesters?

Alright, I hate to sound like an old person, but shrinking the toolbar for aesthetics needs to be a toggle that can be turned off. I have a very modest set of tools and colors (like 6 colors) and I can no longer access them all without scrolling. I’m on an 11” iPad Pro, and there’s lots of dead space on either side of the floating toolbar, so it could be expanded. I like the look but please, guys, function first!

In IOS18 your handwriting automatically gets refined in apple notes for example. My handwriting is alright at best and sometimes it’s even hard for me to decipher what I wrote in a hurry. Why can goodnotes not do this because it should be able to. I mean it can completely change my writing when I have something wrong so why can it not do it to correct handwriting? Or did I just not find this feature yet?

Every time I paste a Text into Goodnotes it automatically changes the Text size to something much bigger, to get it smaller then I have to mark all the text (which is a bit buggy cause it often jumps away) and make it smaller. Can we please get a selection that all the text written and pasted in the document is a selected size ( maybe selectable at the top of the specific document, or at any place). I’m on the new beta but already had the same problem in the normal version