Hand Written Notes on iPad

I am very frequently asked about taking hand written notes on an iPad. This is almost always followed by the question of how to convert the notes to text. I find this a perfect example of really needing to rethink the question and dig into what we’re trying to do.

When I say I want to take notes, what do I really mean? Way back, I used to carry around engineering notebooks and take masses of paper notes. With the laptop revolution those became typed notes. While it did help being able to send notes to someone about a meeting, realistically I had to summarize and rework all of the content to have something worth sending as the raw notes were really meant for me and wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. The single biggest advantage of having digital notes was the ability to search notes for that key topic that I remember we talked about 2 months ago but I don’t remember exactly when or what we decided.

Fast forward to today and it’s the same question. I need to take notes so I recall what was discussed, action items to be tackled and to be able to refer back to past notes (which means being able to find them).

As much as I want to like the variety of note taking apps, their usefulness for writing notes is really minimal. For some reason most virtual notebooks and note taking apps assume you’re interested in ‘sketching’ rather than going to town with free form notes. What I mean by that is that you have to tap a few icons to get into ‘drawing’ mode or write on specific parts of the screen. This is something Apple has just made seemless in their apps. As soon as the Apple Pencil touches the screen in Apple Notes or the iWork apps (Keynote, Pages, Numbers), you’re writing. No mode changing, no remembering if you’re in writing or typing mode. It just works.

Back to that magic requirement of searching notes to find those past nuggets of wisdom — Apple Notes are searchable. Not just the text but the handwritten parts as well. It’s not well highlighted by Apple but the feature is there and it works really well. If you use the search box in notes, you’ll see a list of notes come back with those words in them which includes even those you have written that have no typed text. I’m really hoping that Apple will include a feature in the future to highlight those search results in the notes themselves in future versions as well.

I fully expect Apple will allow for full conversion of notes to typed text at some point in the future given the power of Machine Learning built into iOS. I can only assume it’s not yet recognizing text at the level Apple would have to demand for that feature. I suspect this may be one of the Machine Learning updates we hear about at the Apple developer conference in June.

So back to the primary case of taking notes and then finding them again in the future. I’d highly recommend sticking with the written notes and not trying to convert them to text.

Capturing your writing in Notes is just simple. Tap the button to create a new note and start writing. Tapping the small pencil tip icon at the bottom of the screen will bring up the writing tools. One of the most useful tools is the lasso. Writing is great but sometimes thoughts evolve to the point where you run out of space or want to regroup things. A quick circle of content with the lasso and you can drag it somewhere else in the note. I highly recommend trying it as there is just something so satisfying about touching your writing and moving it around the page. You can even touch the text with one hand to lift it up and then scroll the page with your other hand to get to the spot you want to drop it. Really well done.

Another quick tip — you can touch the pencil to the iPad when you’re on the lock screen and it’ll immediately jump into a blank note for you to start writing into. 

Don’t Do It!

If you’re hand writing something other than a note (an email or document for example) I have to ask something else. Why the heck are you doing that? That is exactly what keyboards are for. If you are worried about typing speed, try dictation through Siri as that works well for getting ideas down quickly which you can then go back and clean up any missteps.

If you really have to turn your writing into typed text, there are very few options worth using that don’t require you to write in specific areas of the screen and really break up the experience of a flowing note. One of the few worth using is Nebo. As you write it shows a preview of what it thinks you just wrote. If you like it, a simple tap on your writing converts it. I’ve tested with both printing and cursive and it cleanly converts both. You can also scribble diagrams, tap on them and see them converted to clean shapes and arrows. Like many of the virtual notebooks, Nebo’s organization of notes is lacking and they’re not easy to navigate.

Back to Apple Notes - you can create folders to store your notes in but iOS will only allow one level of hierarchy (all folders are at the top level). One trick to know is that you can create a deeper hierarchy of folders to store your notes in but you can only do it on a Mac. Fire up Notes on the Mac (the one you have connected with the same iCloud account so all of your notes magically appear in both places) and organize your folders there. When you check your iPhone or iPad you’ll then see hierarchical folders. This is another example of something I’m hoping to see cleaned up in iOS 12.

Another killer feature of Notes is the ability to collaborate in real time on shared notes. I use this all the time with both family and co-workers. Building a group packing checklist for a vacation, capturing lists of sites we want to see and anything else we might need is really handy. Sharing is as simple as pressing the share button and then sending the note via iMessage to another Notes user (this does require they have their iCloud account set up). As anyone makes an update to the note, everyone sees the changes in real time. Not necessarily hand writing related but an excellent capability (and yes, you can both write into notes at the same time too).

So — if you’re using an iPad and really looking for a way to convert your hand written notes to text, I’d challenge you to rethink your assumptions and get to the core problem you’re trying to solve. If it’s not something I touched on above, I’d love to hear about other types of challenges to see what options you may have to address them.

My passion is creating amazing employee experiences to drive business results and process improvement. My firm, Lextech, delivers on that passion. As a mobile executive, I’m all in on a laptop-free work style and share insights & best practices like this article in the MobileExec.Guide

—Alex Bratton, CEO & Chief Geek of Lextech