Planning out our daily lives and jotting down all the thoughts we need to keep track of can seem a little overwhelming at times, and for many of us, our favorite note-taking app or planner helps. However, only a few are platform agnostic and allow cross-ecosystem synchronization. GoodNotes, one of the most popular note-taking options in the Apple App Store, is now in beta on Android and competing for a spot in our list of best note-taking apps on the Play Store.
GoodNotes, if you’re not familiar with it, is a highly rated productivity app originally released for Apple devices. Now it turns out that the limited beta version has been tested on Android. Participants get full access to the app for free during the trial period (the iOS version has some features behind a paywall), but there are also some major limitations.
Perhaps the biggest one right now is that the GoodNotes beta only works on Samsung Galaxy tablets with an 8-inch display or larger and at least 3GB of RAM. Avid redditors point out that this is a Progressive Web Application (PWA) that can be detrimental to the overall user experience (while also requiring constant internet access).
GoodNotes plans to support more Android tablets in the future, but makes it clear that the Android app is separate from the iOS version. Unfortunately, this means that comments on the former are out of sync with the latter, which takes a lot of the breath out of this new release.
Early user reports also sound a bit mixed. Opting for a PWA can be a great way to navigate the Android ecosystem, but they may not offer an iOS-like smooth experience for features like handwriting input. One Galaxy Tab S7 user observed that the S Pen is not pressure sensitive in GoodNotes, while another said it works. Some new testers also note that the app doesn’t work well in portrait orientation. A maximum of 20 notebooks can be used during the Android beta testing period.
If all the accolades GoodNotes has received on Apple devices are any reasonable measure, we still have high hopes for its Android app — though it’s pretty basic right now. For example, there are only three pen widths, no S Pen button support, and only four main tools for jotting down ideas. If you have a Samsung tablet that meets the minimum requirements, you can check it out as well. There’s promise of good things for this app, but GoodNotes isn’t committing to a timeline just yet.
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