Want to take notes on your iPad or annotate documents with the Apple pencil? Follow me and get what you need.
Whink
When using your Apple Pencil for writing, shape-drawing, and annotation, Whink is a beautifully-made app for doing so. Though you can create dozens of notebooks, the app features three modes within those digital books for your working pleasure: Write, Type, and Read. You can highlight the documents in or draw shapes with important words within Write mode. You can create custom colors by double-tapping on a swatch, but compared with Paper, Whink encourages using the complimentary palettes.
Apple Notes
Apple Notes is Apple’s own Notes app that comes pre-installed on every iOS device. Prior to iOS 9, Apple’s Notes app was pretty lackluster in comparison to many note taking apps on iOS. With the new system coming out, however, this app is gaining more attention. It still doesn’t support things like searching notes or even different page styles, but it’s improving. New features such as additional font formatting options support for inline checklists, and link thumbnail + textual previews is pretty helpful.
Notability
It is an excellent app full of tools for handwriting, drawing, making shapes, highlighting, moving objects around, adding audio, integrating photos and web clips. You can choose multiple colored paper styles and lined or unlined paper at your preference. What’s more, you are allowed to share your notebooks to every major service and print them. It is also available for you to receive notebooks from Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or a WebDAV service.
SmartNote
Different from the above apps, SmartNote comes with unique function of handwriting recognition. It means that your handwriting could be converted into text by using it. However, it doesn’t officially support the Apple Pencil or iPad Pro. But you can certainly run them on an iPad and the Apple Pencil will still work as an input device.
Notes Plus
In addition to standard features like PDF and image support, folder management, and shape detection, Notes Plus includes a few standout features. On the one hand, it supports a built-in browser for quickly and easily looking up facts and statistics. This means that any handwritten notes are searchable and later annotatable. Additionally, it supports the ability to covert handwritten notes to text. Also, it is available for recording background audio. For example, you can record that lecture directly into the app when you’re in a lecture, then you can later go back and review the lecture.
Evernote
Like Notes, the tool set is minimalistic. It offers a pen, a highlighter, an eraser. The lasso tool in it allows you to select portions of your notes and move them around. It also goes with a “snap to shape” feature by which a rectangle drew by you will automatically convert into a perfect rectangle. This is especially nice for quick sketches.
It is hard to judge which one is the best app for Apple Pencil, for different app are outstanding in different areas. So, it is advisable for you to make a choice based on your personal needs.