The Best Note-Taking App for the iPad Die beste App für Notizen auf dem iPad La mejor aplicación para tomar notas en el iPad La meilleure application de prise de notes pour l'iPad iPad용 최고의 노트 필기 앱 A melhor aplicação de anotações para o iPad Лучшее приложение для ведения заметок для iPad iPad 上最好的笔记应用程序

- Oh hey there guys.

So about a year ago I did a video about the iPad Pro

and how it works as a note-taking device

versus paper notebooks

and you guys really liked that video

so I thought it was high time to do another one.

But, as an entrepreneur, I believe in delegation.

So, I delegated not just the editing,

but the script writing and research process for this video

to my editor Tony. - Woo. ||||Woo

And I thought it was only fair that you get

to be on camera for this one because--

- Yeah, 'cause, you know, I did the research.

- Yeah, I think you actually know more about this than I do.

So, what we were originally going to do

was a video breaking down what we thought

were the top five or six note-taking apps for the iPad,

both for the Pro and the base model,

and we're gonna talk a little bit later in the video

about how these two devices are kind of different,

but when you were doing the research

you kind of found a clear winner right?

- [Tony] Yeah, so like right away I immediately thought

that Notability had, not only the most features, |Notability tenía||||||

but it just felt really good to use as well.

- And that's actually kind of a departure

from that original iPad Pro note-taking video

that we did where I used Noteshelf,

and I think Noteshelf is a fantastic app |||Noteshelf||||

and it's definitely one of the top three

that I would recommend

if you weren't gonna go with Notability

but when we were doing the research,

you brought up Notability, I checked it out,

and it is kind of hands-down the best app.

- Oh yeah, definitely.

- So, what we're gonna do in this video

is break down five kind of advanced note-taking tips

for the iPad and we're gonna use Notability

as the example app here,

but I do wanna note that for most of these tips

you can do either the same thing or something very similar

in other apps out there.

But real quick, lightning run here

what will be your top three recommendations for apps

for people who are not gonna use Notability?

- All right, so if you're not using Notability,

like Tom said, use Noteshelf, that's a good one.

You can also go with GoodNotes 5, |||||GoodNotes 5

which is another app that I use intensively

and as well as just the built in Apple Notes app

because that you can still write and also type notes.

- [Thomas] And it's the only one there that's free,

so that's worth noting. - Yes, keep in mind, |||"tener en cuenta"||||

a lot of these, or actually all of them,

that we're recommending are paid.

- Yeah, but let's get into these tips

starting with the first one,

which is going to be to use the magnifier tool. ||||||||herramienta de lupa|

Now the problem I have with writing on an iPad

and I guess I have a couple of problems,

'cause honestly writing on notebook paper feels amazing,

but one of the big problems is that I don't wanna

have to constantly pinch-and-zoom

to be able to write within these lines here,

and I'm not going to be able to write legible text here. |||||||||legible||

So a lot of these apps solve this problem

by giving you a magnifier tool.

And in Notability you can just come down here,

if you have the pencil tool active,

click here and you get this little window

where you can just create notes.

So, I'll just go over here and why don't I make a list

of groceries not to buy later (laughs)

And one of the things I really like about this app

is there's this little blue area on the right

and once your pencil goes into it

it's actually gonna move the magnifier,

either to the right, or it's going to go to the next line

if you're already at the right.

And it's adjustable so if you wanna have it here ||ajustable|||||||

instead of here you could do that,

so I'm gonna go there,

or you can just hit one of these buttons

to go over or down if you want to manually.

I haven't figured out how to make

this like multi-column thing work

so it's a little bit of a pain but you know,

let's just go with like porcupine needles. |||||púas de puercoespín|

So, I mean already this is like,

again it's not as good as writing on paper for me,

but this is kind of a nice experience

and I think with some of the other tips

we're gonna talk about,

the slight trade-off in convenience

might be worth it for some people.

- Yeah, definitely, I mean again,

it's not gonna replace paper

but a lot of these features actually adds on

to the fact that you're using an iPad as opposed to paper.

So we're gonna move on to the second tip

which is being able to do audio recordings

as you're writing your notes

and have the audio match the notes that you are writing.

So up here on top--

- This is like my favorite feature.

This is the game changing feature,

specifically with Notability.

- [Tony] Which is amazing, so we're gonna go ahead and click

this little microphone up top. - [Thomas] Boop. ||||||Bip

- [Tony] And it's gonna start audio recording everything

that I'm saying or if, for example,

as if your teacher was saying if you got permission

in class to do so.

So we're gonna go and just go ahead and start writing,

so let's say we write a list of things

you do wanna buy at a store--

- [Thomas] I'm gonna keep going with my list

of things that I don't wanna buy.

- [Tony] Yeah go ahead.

- 'Cause I don't know, like I also don't wanna buy

like poison, or I don't know,

like maybe like Kenny Loggins box sets. ||||Kenny Loggins||

(Tony and Thomas laughing)

All right, so we're recording.

Here's the thing about Notability,

'cause Noteshelf can record and attach to notes as well |Noteshelf||||||||

and with any app you could just record a voice note

in the background and then just look at it later,

but with Notability, once you're done recording

your recording is actually synced ||||sincronizada

with the speed at which you took your notes.

So if you go in here and you replay,

it's going to show,

"all right, now class I'm gonna give you a list..."

a little overlay and let me ||superposición ligera|||

take this volume down just a little bit,

but it's gonna show a, kind of like, a grayed out version

of what you took and then if you tap on the text, ||||||||toques|||

it will skip to the audio that was happening

at the time you wrote that, which is pretty amazing,

because now you don't have to scrub through

like half an hour or an hour of lecture material,

you can just be like, "all right, I can't remember

"what the professor said at this point",

or maybe, they were talking too fast,

like I probably am right now,

and you only got a little bit of it written down.

Well, you can go back in time essentially

and see what they were saying

and then you could fill out your notes even more completely,

which is kind of a game changer.

Okay, so tip number three, and I'm gonna use my hand

that's not holding Apple Pencil, if I was gotta like,

There we go. - I could do it.

- There's three fingers, yeah.

Tip number three is to use the split-screen,

multitasking features in the iPad to bring up

reference material maybe in a browser or in a different app.

So in this case I'm just going to,

I guess, close out (laughs)

So in this case I'm just going to bring up Safari

at the left of my notes.

I'm gonna change the screen size a little bit

and now if I am, say researching this article

about how to, you know, create a great study space

I can do that over here and I can easily

take notes over here,

but that's not the coolest part.

The coolest part is that you can actually bring in

text and images from whatever other apps you are using.

So if I wanna bring in this image here,

I can just hold it and then drag it in and there it is.

And if I wanna crop it I could, I could go to crop,

I can, you know, maybe cut it down a little bit.

I could add a caption or I can just move it around ||||leyenda|||||||

and I'm good to go.

I could also highlight actual text content.

So let's just take a couple of paragraphs here, |||||||párrafos|

do the exact same thing, hold that down and drag it,

then it becomes plain text. |||texto simple|

And now, this isn't gonna work with your handwriting,

but with images you can actually move them around

and do text wrapping so you can kind of format |||ajuste de texto||||||

your notes the way you want,

which is not something you can do on paper.

Now one thing I liked about Notability in particular

that I didn't find in other apps

was the ability to actually bring in GIFs.

Some other apps would let you do pictures

but they wouldn't let you do GIFs ||||||GIFs animados

and you know, sometimes you just wanna bring in like

a Thanos GIF into your notes.

That's very important, right?

- [Tony] And then all that for a drop of clout. |||||||||influencia

- [Thomas] All that for a drop of clout. |||||||influencia

More importantly though, I think, is the ability

to scan in documents.

Now I was thinking I was gonna have to use

something like Scanbot and then import documents

myself like manually,

but there's actually a document scanning feature,

so if you get a handout in class |||||hoja de trabajo||

or you just have a piece of paper

that you wanna put in your notes

you can easily open this and you can just create

a document scan.

- And with that we're gonna go into tip number four

of which is being able to drag

from the left side of your note,

and right here you can see all the notes

that you already have that was previously made

and you can go ahead and click-and-drag the notes

and now you have multitasking of being able to go

from one note to the other simply by clicking,

writing on one, click on the other one

and do the exact same thing.

- And something that I really like about that

is in Notability, and this is something

that is in Noteshelf and some other apps as well,

you can import PowerPoint presentations,

you can import PDFs,

so if you have reference material,

if you have slides from your lecture |||diapositivas de la conferencia|||

that have been given to you ahead of time

you could easily bring in, say a PowerPoint presentation,

have that on the left and now you have the ability

to mark up and highlight anything you want

in your PowerPoint presentation.

You can follow along in class,

but you can also write in your actual note document

and follow along with your slides, which is pretty sweet.

Another thing that you can do

is use this little scissor tool here ||||tijeras pequeñas||

and you can highlight pieces of the PowerPoint presentation

or really anything you want, copy it,

and bring it over into your regular notes.

And from there you can add annotations, captions, ||||||anotaciones|

you could put plain text next to it,

do kind of whatever you want.

And that brings us to our last tip, which is to do...

- All of it, do it all.

- All of it at the same time, which is a little bit easier

on the Pro, I'm not gonna lie--

- Yeah, it really is.

- But you can indeed do an audio recording,

open up the magnifier, have two things open at the same time

and still use iPad-level multitasking.

So let's say you had a really important piece

of reference material that was in Safari,

you also had class slides that you were referencing ||||diapositivas de clase||||haciendo referencia a

and you still wanted to take notes,

and you still wanted that audio recording,

you can do all those at the exact same time,

which is kind of awesome, I'm not gonna lie (laughs)

- Yeah, and again, I'm following along

and I'm using the smaller 7th Gen iPad

that isn't as big as his,

but I'm still able to keep up with his

so the idea is you can do so much with this app

regardless if you're using older hardware

and still keep up the pace with everyone else.

- So let's talk about the differences

between the base model and the Pro.

Obviously the Pro is a bigger screen,

so it's more screen real estate,

it's gonna be easier to write on,

but you're gonna have to spend a lot more money

to get the Pro.

Now this is my Pro and this base model

is actually on loan from Apple so we could do a review of it

and we've got some other videos coming in the near future.

In fact you did a full review of this on your channel.

- Yes, so if you're interested, feel free.

- And I'll put that in the description down below.

But yeah, what are the main differences

besides just the screen space?

- I mean, so in reality what you're gonna be paying for

is on this one as opposed to this one,

is you're getting an OLED display on here. ||||pantalla OLED|||

On the base model you're also getting a processor

that is three years old,

so imagine having an iPhone 7 processor in this tablet.

It's not horrible, so keep in mind that no matter

what though, Apple really has a good reputation

of having processors that last a long time ||procesadores duraderos|||||

and never once using this did I feel like a hiccup ||||||||||contratiempo

there slowed me down.

- Now I do have a screen protector on this

which is called the Paperlike and my friend Ali Abdaal ||||Paperlike|||||

is the one who told me about this thing.

It's essentially a screen protector

that tries to create a paper-like texture

and I think it does a pretty decent job.

Again, I would prefer to write on regular paper but--

- I think we all agree with that, yeah.

- This is, you know, this is actually better

than writing on the glass itself.

Okay, I have to issue a small correction

since we filmed yesterday.

I've taken a lot more notes with the Paperlike protector

in Notability and honestly this thing rocks.

It is almost as good to me as normal notebook paper

and may make me take a lot more notes

on my iPad going forward so keep that in mind.

Now one thing that I like to do on my iPad

in addition to note-taking,

and possibly even more than note-taking,

is drawing especially since there's an app on here

called Procreate and I know both of our girlfriends

that use Procreate.

I think my girlfriend uses a different one now

but I use Procreate on occasion to make illustrations

for this channel and I actually made one

for the digital file organization video,

which was a lot of fun. - Yeah.

- So Procreate is definitely an app that I would get

if I was going to be using an iPad on a daily basis

and if you wanna learn how to use it,

and subsequently improve your drawing skills as well,

there is a great class on Skillshare

all about how to draw with Procreate

and how to get kinda good at it.

It covers all the fundamentals,

and since it's on Skillshare you're also gonna have

unlimited access to thousands of different courses

that can improve your skills and also your ability

to compete in the job market.

There are tons of courses on the platform

including courses on video editing, on marketing,

on analytics, animation, photography,

tons of different stuff

and you get access to all of it

for less than 10 bucks a month.

And there're also productivity courses |hay|||

including one from my friend Francesco |||||Francesco

on the basics of Notion, which is, I think

over two hours long, (Tony whistles) |||||silbido

so there's plenty of content in there.

And my course which is all about how to build

an entire productivity system.

And T Something that's coming up in the near future,

I actually have a new course launching on Skillshare

in January so you're gonna want to keep your eyes

peeled for that, pelado||

and the best way to do it

would be to sign up at the link down below

which is gonna get you a two month unlimited free trial

of access to their platform

and there's a heck of a lot that you can learn

in two months.

So sign up at that link down below,

get that two month free trial

and as always thanks to Skillshare

for sponsoring this video and supporting my channel.

Thank you as well for watching,

hopefully you found something useful here

and if you haven't subscribed yet

click the picture of me that is over my face

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I don't wanna cover your face up with my face,

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- For once. - Otherwise you can check out

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I am gonna cover your face.

- Yeah, that's fine, whatever works (laughs)

- (laughs) Also go subscribe to Tony's channel |||||Tony|

and I will see you in the next video.

- Take care.