CollaNote — Free Note taking App
Features:
- Free — That’s it. The best way to be the better app is just by being free. The rest of the features are just a bonus
- Notebooks
- Import PDFs
- Templates
- A great variety of paper to choose from
- Good selection of pen sizes and colors — Highlighters, pens, and pencils
- Save favorite pens, pencils and highlighters for easy access
- Dark mode. Paper able to change from light to dark and the ink changes with it.
- Auto shape and lines
- Record Audio, sync with your handwriting and playback
- Real-time collaboration with others
Features Needed:
- Ability to import PDFs into existing notes
- Auto shape needs to be fix — When I draw a square it makes an hexagon. You need to be very precise in making the shapes
- Ability to duplicate text boxes without them resizing
- Ability to duplicate multiple text boxes at once
- Change text color the same way you change the pen color
With the Apple Pencil comes new apps to try. When looking for apps that work for with well with the Apple Pencil. I searched the internet and YouTube for recommendations and you know what came up, the notable three — Procreate, Goodnotes, and Notability.
I saw a lot of videos for Procreate and Goodnotes. These are the apps that every YouTuber swears by. So let’s look at note taking apps. With the recent changes to Notability, I tried it for awhile. I loved the app, it was great. But the downfall of the app was the limitations on the free version. You get a certain amount of edits per month. It didn’t look like I could reach that limit but I did, too early in the month. So it was off to use another app.
Now CollaNote come into play. This was the first app that I used and actually liked. It had most features needed for a note-taking app. I tried out Notability just to see what the hype was. But I felt that I would come back to CollaNote because of the free features that it already has.
So in the mist of going digital a little, I also wanted to get into digital planning. After searching for templates and planners, I found some that would work for me. I am just mix and matching planners because I can’t find one that I would use completely. There would be some where I want the monthly calendars and weekly layouts from others. The problem that I ran into was that CollaNote does not allow for importing PDFs into existing notes. So the next best thing is to import the pages as screenshots. The only problem with that is it can get little bury.
So I set up a digital planner and have been using it since November of 2021. I used to bullet journal and stopped because I didn’t have anything to add on to it. There were no reason to keep it up. But I wanted to keep it going because it was a good way to keep track of things. Now I combined the two things, digital planner and bullet journaling. I have been doing good to update it everyday and it’s fun to do. I can customized it anyway I want and can be lazy about it, too. With a little bit of copying and pasting, it becomes a lazy methods.
From note taking to planning your life, CollaNote does a good job. But the best part about CollaNote is the collaboration. You can collaborate with other people with the notes that you make. I don’t use this feature at all, but you can try this feature out when you get the app. The app starts with 2 notes that people from the community uses.
Download and try CollaNote for yourself:
