Best study/note-taking iPad apps

[Vet_Squared80]

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It seems a lot of students like the iPad pro/Macbook combo for school. I just bought a Macbook since my current laptop is limping along, and I want to download some apps on the ipad pro I already have that will make studying and note-taking easy and seamless between the two devices. After reading a lot of different threads, which randomly mention apps inside discussions about the best tech to buy, is there an actual thread where best apps are listed? If not, what are your favorite apps that are must have or have made your vet life easier???

 

[Caiter92]

I believe within those threads apps have been discussed a bit, but Notability. Hands down. It will back up to whatever online app you want (drop box, google drive, etc), and you can make sub dividers, subjects, etc to keep things organized. It has a lot of pen and highlighter color options so you can annotate things however you want. I’ve used it for two years and have no complaints. You do have to buy it both for iPad and MacBook, which is a bit annoying, but it was totally worth it.

I think Evernote is another one people like, but I would not recommend OneNote. It’s really buggy on Apple products (or at least it use to be), and didn’t have as many features.

 

[katashark]

I believe within those threads apps have been discussed a bit, but Notability. Hands down. It will back up to whatever online app you want (drop box, google drive, etc), and you can make sub dividers, subjects, etc to keep things organized. It has a lot of pen and highlighter color options so you can annotate things however you want. I’ve used it for two years and have no complaints. You do have to buy it both for iPad and MacBook, which is a bit annoying, but it was totally worth it.

I think Evernote is another one people like, but I would not recommend OneNote. It’s really buggy on Apple products (or at least it use to be), and didn’t have as many features.

I hated one note. Notability is good, but honestly I now just have everything in Google Drive and connect different add ons. Seamlessly integrates across everything.

 

[Hopeful_DVM]

Go with notability. It is very user friendly. I am now nearing the end of 2nd year and have all the lecture notes from the beginning of first year from the professors, with my annotations included. All my notes backup to google drive as well, so I have secure notes to reference forever.

 

[SkiOtter]

I hated one note. Notability is good, but honestly I now just have everything in Google Drive and connect different add ons. Seamlessly integrates across everything.

Ooo what add ons do you use? I’m thinking about getting an iPad Pro to go with my old MacBook and am trying to figure out the best setup for class for my iPad.

 

[dract]

Go with notability. It is very user friendly. I am now nearing the end of 2nd year and have all the lecture notes from the beginning of first year from the professors, with my annotations included. All my notes backup to google drive as well, so I have secure notes to reference forever.

Will the notes sync across the iPad and the Macbook in the Notability app? Or do they only sync via Google Drive, etc.

Also do you feel that the 15GB of free space from Google Drive is sufficient or do you have to purchase more storage to back up all the notes?

 

[Caiter92]

Will the notes sync across the iPad and the Macbook in the Notability app? Or do they only sync via Google Drive, etc.

Also do you feel that the 15GB of free space from Google Drive is sufficient or do you have to purchase more storage to back up all the notes?

It will sync via your iCloud account automatically. Google drive is just to back everything up in case something happens.

I don’t have more space on my google drive and I’ve had no issues. Everything is backed up as PDFs, so way less space is use than just backing up ppt, ect. My notability says I have almost 600 note sets, and my google drive is only like 5 GB used and that includes other things I have saved there.

 

[youngkal]

I got Noteability, One Note and Nebo. I plan on playing with them during the first week but i like them all! Only downside is to get noteability on your Mac you have to pay for another download. The Mac and iPad don’t have the same license. 🙁

 

[Hopeful_DVM]

Will the notes sync across the iPad and the Macbook in the Notability app? Or do they only sync via Google Drive, etc.

Also do you feel that the 15GB of free space from Google Drive is sufficient or do you have to purchase more storage to back up all the notes?

I’m not sure about syncing you MacBook and iPad, because I haven’t done this. However, syncing them via iCloud makes sense. I have no issues with storage on google drive. I have 4 semesters of notes stored on google drive and still have 11.7 MB of storage available.

 

[mmmdreamerz]

Love notability. Love that I can record my lectures and it pairs in with what I wrote on the powerpoint. The only downside is you cant open multiple documents at once (You can with Goodnotes, but there’s no ability to record). For one of my 2nd semester classes, my professor put the notes on a separate document from a powerpoint of pictures, so what I ended up doing was downloading the powerpoint of pictures to Microsoft OneNote and then splint screening that way. (Just a random suggestion for anyone who has a similar experience). I got onenote free through school so I didnt have to buy multiple note taking apps.

 

[mmmdreamerz]

I got Noteability, One Note and Nebo. I plan on playing with them during the first week but i like them all! Only downside is to get noteability on your Mac you have to pay for another download. The Mac and iPad don’t have the same license. 🙁

I ended up buying two licenses because I thought I needed it...and then never really used it on my MacBook. We get free unlimited storage through Box and anytime I needed to open a notability document on MacBook and on my ipad, I just opened the saved version through Box on my MacBook.

 

[mmmdreamerz]

Will the notes sync across the iPad and the Macbook in the Notability app? Or do they only sync via Google Drive, etc.

Also do you feel that the 15GB of free space from Google Drive is sufficient or do you have to purchase more storage to back up all the notes?

Yes it will sync, in theory...I found it kinda slow and not always reliable. I set notability to automatically upload everything to Box and that worked really well. For what its worth, I just looked at my Notability folder on Box and I used 33 GB of storage for first year, though of course experiences vary lol.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

So I have spent the entire night trying to fix OneNote and it isn't working. I am so frustrated. I downloaded notability but it doesn't have the ability to insert spaces between each slide like I have been doing in order to type notes. It also doesn't allow me to order the notes how I want them.

I have a MacBook. Does anyone have any recommendations for apps? I need something where I can upload PDFs, search them for words, annotate them, insert spaces between, etc.

 

[Caiter92]

. It also doesn't allow me to order the notes how I want them.

Question, what are you trying to do? you can make dividers (i do them by semester) and then also subjects within dividers.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

Question, what are you trying to do? you can make dividers (i do them by semester) and then also subjects within dividers.

I made subjects and dividers. I want to be able to move my notes around in whatever order. It only orders them alphabetically, by when it was uploaded, or when it was last edited.

 

[SkiOtter]

I made subjects and dividers. I want to be able to move my notes around in whatever order. It only orders them alphabetically, by when it was uploaded, or when it was last edited.

Put a number in front of your notes titles then alphabetical. Or change the date to whatever order you want. There. Problem solved.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

Put a number in front of your notes titles then alphabetical. Or change the date to whatever order you want. There. Problem solved.

Yeah I thought about that but that's not a good long term solution because sometimes I want to insert notes in between ones I have already created

 

[SkiOtter]

Yeah I thought about that but that's not a good long term solution because sometimes I want to insert notes in between ones I have already created

The date thing will work fine for that. You just make it a date and time between the two notes. I’ve done it before.

 

[mmmdreamerz]

So I have spent the entire night trying to fix OneNote and it isn't working. I am so frustrated. I downloaded notability but it doesn't have the ability to insert spaces between each slide like I have been doing in order to type notes. It also doesn't allow me to order the notes how I want them.

I have a MacBook. Does anyone have any recommendations for apps? I need something where I can upload PDFs, search them for words, annotate them, insert spaces between, etc.

You can insert blank pages in between slides...

 

[SkiOtter]

You can insert blank pages in between slides...

Apparently a whole page is too much space.

 

[Caiter92]

I don't know if you're going to be able to find another app that meets all those requirements Most (if not all aside from One Note) apps are going to import a PDF with each page/slide being the whole page, not as a picture on a page like One note does. "Printing" a PPT into note mode or a 2 slide handout and downloading that to Notability will give you the white space between slides you want.

For the ordering, with numbering you could add decimals if you want to add things inbetween.... Like 1.1, etc to add between 1 and 2. I've done that when I've downloaded a bunch of ppt's at once and a prof has added a lecture and I wanted to keep them in order.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

I don't know if you're going to be able to find another app that meets all those requirements Most (if not all aside from One Note) apps are going to import a PDF with each page/slide being the whole page, not as a picture on a page like One note does. "Printing" a PPT into note mode or a 2 slide handout and downloading that to Notability will give you the white space between slides you want.

For the ordering, with numbering you could add decimals if you want to add things inbetween.... Like 1.1, etc to add between 1 and 2. I've done that when I've downloaded a bunch of ppt's at once and a prof has added a lecture and I wanted to keep them in order.

Thanks for your help! it's a bummer they don't allow for that but I think I understand the difficulty in trying to implement that

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

Apparently a whole page is too much space.

I'm really not trying to be particularly obtuse. But I've gotten used to taking notes a particular way and adding a whole page would take up a bunch of space that I don't need or want. Sometimes I'll add a couple bullet points, sometimes I don't add anything, sometimes I add a whole bunch. I like having the flexibility of being able to adjust how much space is in between PDF pages but it doesn't look like this is an option in notability unfortunately. I'm not trying to insult the app.