Notebooks for iPad and iPhone comprises the functionality of a set of different apps: it is a Note Taker, a Word Processor, Markdown Editor, HTML to Markdown converter, a Task Manager, a File Organizer, a Clipboard manager, PDF converter and PDF Reader, an eBook Creator, a Document Converter and much more.
Having all that in a single app avoids cluttering your iPad or iPhone with countless apps, but what is even more important: it allows you to stay focussed on your work and remain in a consistent environment rather than switching between apps and contexts. And that makes you and your workflow more efficient.
What’s New in Notebooks 11
iCloud Drive Support: you can now use iCloud to sync your documents between iPad, iPhone and Mac (Notebooks for Mac 2.4).
Manage separate sets of documents (local and on iCloud Drive) and switch between them anytime. – With an optional in-app purchase you can select custom storage locations, work on other app’s documents and even store your documents on connected drives or USB sticks.
Solarized user interface style, as an alternative to the iOS standard colors.
Colorized syntax highlighting for Markdown.
Create flowcharts using Mermaid in Markdown.
New editing functions in plain text (move lines up and down, sort selected, etc.)
Performance improvements, corrections and user interface refinements.
Notebooks 11 for iPad and iPhone is a major upgrade and comes with many changes, improvements and additions. It runs on iOS 12 or higher, and it is a free upgrade for all users of Notebooks 10.
If you are still using Notebooks 8 on a device running iOS 14 you probably notice that opening formatted documents or Markdown documents causes Notebooks to close. This is a known issue with Notebooks 8 which we are unable to fix, because Notebooks 8 has been discontinued in early 2020. You find a guide how to work around that on a dedicated blog entry.
Migrate Documents from Notebooks 8 to Notebooks 11
Notebooks 8 and Notebooks 10 provide a convenient method for migrating your documents directly on the device, without duplicating it. A detailed guide is available on this site.
However, you can also set up Notebooks 10 without migrating documents from Notebooks 8, and instead import the documents from your Dropbox or a WebDAV server by setting up the same sync method that you have been using in Notebooks 8.
Notebooks 10 does not support the optional PDF Reader any more (it was available in Notebooks 8). The main reason for this move is that you can now have free PDF editing apps which are much more capable than our PDF Reader ever was. Still, we want to provide our users with the same functionality we had and offer equivalent alternatives:
Notebooks 10 supports the PDF annotation tools that are part of iOS 13. So you have basic PDF editing tools available simply by tapping a PDF document once. (Notebooks' PDF handling capabilities will grow with the next releases).
In Notebooks 10 you can use the "Open in…" menu to open PDF (and other) documents in external apps without duplicating them. So you store and manage your PDFs in Notebooks, but use external apps to open, view and edit them. All changes you make are stored in Notebooks. If you need a recommendation for a PDF editing app - and if Apple Books is not capable enough - you could look at the free app PDF Viewer, which is the more grown up version of Notebooks’ former PDF Reader.
By the way: if you tap and hold a document’s action button, Notebooks immediately displays the “Open in” dialog. So with just two taps you can open a PDF in an external app, and that is really just one tap more than it used to be.
