Paper
Paper is a digital sketching and creative notebook application designed for iPhone and iPad that allows users to capture ideas visually through drawing, painting, diagramming, and collage creation. It provides a clean, distraction-free interface with responsive drawing tools that replicate the feel of sketching on paper while allowing users to work entirely within a digital workspace. Its drawing engine includes a collection of finely tuned brushes and tools that make it easy to sketch concepts, create illustrations, annotate photos, or build visual notes directly on the screen. The interface relies heavily on natural gestures rather than complex menus, allowing users to stay focused on their creative flow while navigating pages and editing content. Users can also combine multiple photos within a single canvas and manipulate them by cutting, moving, or layering them alongside drawings and handwritten elements to create visual compositions or mood boards.
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Kilonotes
Kilonotes is a digital note-taking and PDF reading app designed to support students and professionals with an intuitive handwriting experience and versatile study tools. It allows users to record class notes, mark up PDFs, complete exercises, study online lessons, and organize reading notes in one place, positioning itself as a reliable study partner. The handwriting function mimics the natural feel of writing on paper, while customization options let you personalize notebooks and layouts. Kilonotes also includes a variety of photo editing tools and a split-screen function so you can take notes while watching videos or lectures. Its recording feature makes it easy to capture spoken content alongside notes for later review, and the app provides tools to quickly extract key points from study material. A unique card-based learning mode allows users to transform notes into flashcards to reinforce knowledge retention.
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Nebo
Turn handwritten notes into professional documents with the world's best write-to-text conversion. Add PDFs to your notebooks, mark them up and export to PDF with your annotations in place. Write and draw freely on an infinite canvas, then copy content for reuse on other pages or in other apps. From boardroom to lecture hall, project plan to daily diary, Nebo makes note-taking smarter, more efficient and more enjoyable. Take your notes with you everywhere. Download the new companion app for iPhone to read, search and share content on the go. Download and enjoy Nebo on Apple silicon devices! Available free from the iPhone and iPad apps section of the App Store. You can now add highlights to titles as well as colored, bold and underlined text. Touch and hold with the marker to change the color of highlights, words, strokes, diagram shapes and math symbols.
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Noteful
Noteful is a digital note-taking and annotation app optimized for handwriting on iOS devices that blends fluid pen input with powerful document tools. You can write naturally using Apple Pencil or touch input; its custom ink engine records strokes as scalable vector ink, and you can switch between three brushes (ballpoint, fountain, highlighter), sizes, and colors. Beyond handwriting, Noteful supports importing PDFs and Office documents, annotating with typed text, images, and shapes, and layering multiple paper templates within a single notebook. Notes can be organized flexibly via hashtag tagging (including nested tags), rather than rigid folder structures, and you can browse content by tags or pin important pages. It offers a layer system so you can annotate without altering base content, hiding or reordering layers as needed. Editing tools include a precise eraser, lasso selection for moving or resizing content, unlimited undo/redo, and split-view multitasking.
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