Introducing GoodNotes 5

An all-new GoodNotes version — now available on the App Store

GoodNotes
GoodNotes Blog
Published in
11 min readJan 17, 2019

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Today, we’re excited to announce the release of GoodNotes 5.

A modern GoodNotes version with tons of new features and improvements is now available on the App Store and marks our biggest release ever.

We took everything that made GoodNotes 4 great and brought it to the next level. Search across the whole library, vertical scrolling and the addition of folders are only some of the new features that we added to GoodNotes 5. While implementing all these improvements, we made sure to preserve the unique characteristics of GoodNotes and its clean, minimalistic look.

The fresh, modern design is rounding the new app off and makes sure that it is much easier and more delightful to use than ever before. Long story short, we’re happy to give you an introduction to what we’ve been working on for the past 2 1/2 years:

Search Across All Documents, Folders, Favorites, & Vertical Scrolling

When you first open the new app, you’ll notice three tabs at the bottom of the screen: Documents View, Search View, and Favourites View.

These views are the core elements of the new file management system in GoodNotes.

Documents View

This is the central place for folders, documents, and notebooks.
We replaced the concept of categories of GoodNotes 4 with unlimited nested folders and subfolders. The system now adapts to your needs instead of restricting the way how you want to organize your documents. Here is how it looks like:

Search View

In GoodNotes 5 it is now possible to search for your notes across all your documents and folders. Since GoodNotes supports infinite levels of folders and subfolders, we rewrote large parts of the app’s code so that information can be found no matter how deeply it is stored in a subfolder.

Search View is the central way to find and retrieve any piece of information, no matter where it is stored in your library.

Every written word is indexed in GoodNotes and can be found by typing in keywords:

  • handwritten notes
  • document & folder titles
  • texts in PDF documents
  • typed text in text boxes
  • document outlines

The search view also shows a list of recently opened documents so that you can reopen them faster without having to navigate to them manually.

Favorites View

Chances are high that you will often need to open a particular document - say your daily journal or a timetable. The Favorites View is your one-tap stop for accessing important information no matter where it is stored in your library.

Every folder or document has a star symbol that you can tap to quickly add it to your Favorites. But what if you want to open a particular page? In GoodNotes 5, you can add a bookmark to a page and it will show in the Favorites View as well, allowing you to jump to the exact spot with a single tap. Of course, bookmarked pages will also show in the respective document.

Continuous Vertical Scrolling — Flip Pages the Way You Want

We’re happy to finally introduce “vertical scrolling”. In GoodNotes 5, you can set a default scrolling direction for your documents. Both, horizontal and vertical page scrolling, are supported.

QuickNote — The Fastest Way to Start a New Note

The new QuickNote feature lets you create a blank new document in the open folder in an instant to dive right into writing.

A new QuickNote is created by double-tapping the Add button. To save time, the new page is created with your default paper template selection, which you can change in the menu.

Save or discard QuickNote — Keep your library clean

We’ve designed QuickNote similar to how screenshots work on iOS: A QuickNote will be stored as a preliminary draft in the currently opened folder and when you’re done with it and tap the back button, you can decide if you want to save or discard it. This keeps your library clean from notes or scribbles you never planned on saving.

We already fell in love with the versatility of QuickNotes and we hope that you will too. Here are a few use cases, where we used QuickNotes as a team:

  • To jot down a phone number or email when someone calls you. Then, discard the note after you copied the number into your phonebook
  • As a scratchpad when you need to write something down in order to sort the thoughts in your head
  • For random cute doodles that you want to send to someone else😊
  • As the paper napkin you would use in a bar to pitch someone your next great idea

All New Toolbar — Everything Right at your Hand

When we were exploring ideas for the GoodNotes 5 toolbar, we asked ourselves this question: “How can we make using GoodNotes faster?”

The new toolbar design is all about reducing the number of taps to a minimum and offering a better visual separation between editing and navigation actions.

Contextual area

The right side of the toolbar is reserved for what we call the “contextual area”. Every tool has a few quick actions that can be selected with a single tap right from the toolbar.

  • Pen Tool: Change color and thickness
  • Eraser: Change the thickness
  • Highlighter: Change color and thickness
  • Shapes Tool: Change color and thickness
  • Image Tool & Camera Tool: Access to recent images in your photo library that can be dragged and dropped onto the page

New color wheel

The three colors and line thickness selections in the contextual area can be modified by double tapping on them. A third option besides the presets and the color pallet is now available: The color wheel.

“Higher accessibility of all tools without sacrificing the minimalistic design GoodNotes is known for.”

Every tool now has its own dedicated icon in the toolbar and features like adding images or text boxes are no longer hidden behind long-press gestures or a plus button. Thus, editing existing objects on a page is simpler and more intuitive.

Say you want to resize some photos you’ve added to a page. All you have to do is to select the Image Tool in the toolbar and as soon as you tap on the photo, it will be editable.

Brush Pen — Make Artistic Sketches and Notes

In GoodNotes 5, we introduce a new pen style: The Brush Pen.
It is made for everyone who wants to add a special touch to a note. To change the pen style, tap on the pen icon twice. This new pen is highly pressure-sensitive and allows the creation of stunning notes like the one below.

A Large Selection of Papers and Covers

Notebooks are something very personal. Individual taste greatly varies and so does the preference of paper templates and notebook covers.

In GoodNotes 5, you can make use of an even larger template library than the one you knew from GoodNotes 4. We added papers for (almost) every situation: An expanded essential paper selection with all common standardized sizes, as well as device-specific templates, monthly planners, Cornell note paper, dotted paper, legal pad paper, checklists, and much more. You can choose between landscape and portrait orientation to match your personal preference.

Notebook covers allow you to easily distinguish one notebook from another. We wanted to go the extra mile and design sets that are truly unique and outstanding. We’ve collaborated with some talented designers and asked them to design sets of notebook covers, exclusively for GoodNotes 5. The results turned out to be beautiful.

Of course, you can still customize your template library. Much faster and more conveniently than ever before.

New Shape Tool — Fill Shapes And Make Lines Snap

The abilities to draw perfect shapes and make lines straight became indispensable in any proper digital note-taking app. So we thought about how we could improve this feature in the new version of GoodNotes.

The Shape Tool receives its designated spot in the toolbar and gets two improvements: Color filling and line snapping.

Line snapping allows drawing multi-stroke shapes. A line that is drawn close to another line with the Shape Tool, will now snap to the other line. Great for drawing tables or graphs.
Shapes can now automatically get a semitransparent filling with a selected color if you activate the option in the Shape Tool settings.

We found that people often use the Highlighter tool to highlight sentences in a PDF or an ebook. The Highlighter now supports the option to “Always draw a straight line”. You get to benefit from the directness of pen-input and the power of a computer.

An entirely new codebase as our investment in the future of GoodNotes

When we decided that we wanted to release a new version of GoodNotes, we were facing two alternatives: Either update the existing app or rewrite the code from scratch and build a completely new app. We went with the latter for many good reasons. The codebase and the new internal architecture is now significantly more flexible and solid, which allows us to build new features a lot faster in the future and support completely new use cases. Core-elements of GoodNotes 5 like full-text-search across all folders wouldn’t have been possible in the old app because the code wasn’t written for it.
The new code and the new app architecture are part of our investments in the future of GoodNotes.

More improvements and new features

In addition to these major new features, there are a lot of under-the-hood-improvements that make GoodNotes 5 more powerful, stable, and delightful to use. We want to point out a few things in particular that are new to the app:

  1. The lasso tool now allows you to rotate handwriting and text boxes for better subsequent reordering
  2. Images can now also be resized freely and are not limited by a fixed ratio
  3. We added more fonts and better text editing
  4. The iPhone app gets an overhaul with easier one-finger usage and a faster way to add and annotate photos. Of course, it fully supports the latest iPhone models and looks beautiful on the thin-bezel screen.
  5. Editable PDF” can now be selected in the export options. This will export a non-flattened PDF version that can still be edited in other apps. Also, structures like the document outline, bookmarks, and hyperlinks will be preserved after exporting.
  6. Documents in your library can now be displayed as a list
  7. GoodNotes 5 supports Siri Shortcuts. Siri will suggest documents you frequently open and lets you use Spotlight Search to access your notebooks. You can also build your own shortcuts, using the Shortcuts app.

GoodNotes 5 is available as a free upgrade to all customers that paid the full price for GoodNotes 4

Update — January 2020: The free upgrade is no longer available as GoodNotes 4 and the “Upgrade Bundle” have been removed from the App Store.

OUTDATED: Oh, before we forget it: GoodNotes 5 is a free upgrade for everyone who paid the full price of GoodNotes 4 😊. If you bought GoodNotes 4 for a lower price, you will only have to pay the price difference between the two apps to purchase GoodNotes 5. To upgrade for free or at a discounted price, use “Complete my Bundle” on the App Store. The detailed instructions can be found in our FAQ.

Visit our new website for a look at all the new features or download the app to experience them first-hand. As you can see, we’ve already put a lot of work and passion into GoodNotes 5. But we’re far from being done. Expect many things to come in the future.

Last but not least we want to say Thank You to everyone who gave us feedback or suggested new ideas as well as for your patience and loyalty. GoodNotes 5 would not have been possible without your support.

Thank You!
From the whole team behind GoodNotes ❤️

FAQ

Which system requirements does GoodNotes 5 have?

GoodNotes 5 requires iOS 12.0 or higher.

I have already paid for GoodNotes 4. How can I download the new app for free?

Update — January 2020: The free upgrade is no longer available as GoodNotes 4 and the “Upgrade Bundle” have been removed from the App Store.

Outdated:

To download GoodNotes 5 for free or at a discounted price, look for the “GoodNotes 5 Upgrade Bundle” on the App Store and then use the button next to “Complete My Bundle”. It will either state “Complete”, which means it is a free upgrade or displays the price you will still need to pay to upgrade to GoodNotes 5. The bundle includes both GoodNotes 4 and 5.

If you paid the full price (the current price on the App Store) for GoodNotes 4, you can complete the bundle for free. If you purchased GoodNotes 4 for a price lower than the full price, you’ll need to pay the price difference to get GoodNotes 5.

How can I migrate my notes from GoodNotes 4 to GoodNotes 5?

First, please make sure that the latest version of GoodNotes 4 is installed on your device. GoodNotes will suggest the best way to migrate your notes to the new app when you first open it. Just follow the instructions shown on screen. GoodNotes 5 needs to stay open during the data migration and you can already start using it. The migration can always be restarted in the GoodNotes 5 menu if you need to pause it or use another app. For more information about the migration or if something is not working correctly, click here.

Something is not working in GoodNotes 5

Bugs are something that can rarely be avoided in software development. Our team is already working on a lot of fixes that will appear in following updates. If you experience a bug or a crash of the app, you can help us fix it by sending the exact steps to reproduce the problem to support@goodnotes.com. You can export the diagnostic data for your device in the GoodNotes menu > About. This helps us identify the issue faster.

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GoodNotes
GoodNotes Blog

We’re the makers of GoodNotes. We help people note down, shape and share their ideas with the world’s best-loved digital paper.