What apps for handwriting recognition?

[splitpea]

What apps do you use for handwriting recognition on iPad?

I’m ideally looking for the following:

• Convert handwriting to plain text or RTF automatically on save/close
• Auto-sync text files to Dropbox
• No subscription required
• Good support for very messy handwriting

I don’t need support for drawings or rich text. Don’t care about how the app stores or organizes notes/files internally. The goal is to get notes out and into other organization systems.

 

[AutomaticApple]

What apps do you use for handwriting recognition on iPad?

I’m ideally looking for the following:

• Convert handwriting to plain text or RTF automatically on save/close
• Auto-sync text files to Dropbox
• No subscription required
• Good support for very messy handwriting

I don’t need support for drawings or rich text. Don’t care about how the app stores or organizes notes/files internally. The goal is to get notes out and into other organization systems.

I’ll take a look at some handwriting applications for you.

 

[MacNchedder]

What apps do you use for handwriting recognition on iPad?

I’m ideally looking for the following:

• Convert handwriting to plain text or RTF automatically on save/close
• Auto-sync text files to Dropbox
• No subscription required
• Good support for very messy handwriting

I don’t need support for drawings or rich text. Don’t care about how the app stores or organizes notes/files internally. The goal is to get notes out and into other organization systems.

[doublepost=1554244241][/doublepost]Nebo does exactly what you want. It is simple and it supplies the handwriting engine to some of the other apps. You do have to tell it to convert to plain text or save to Word (not RTF), and it provides automatic text recognition in the document. You can save to html (thus keeping the appearance of your handwriting) or pdf.

 

[splitpea]

[doublepost=1554244241][/doublepost]Nebo does exactly what you want. It is simple and it supplies the handwriting engine to some of the other apps. You do have to tell it to convert to plain text or save to Word (not RTF), and it provides automatic text recognition in the document. You can save to html (thus keeping the appearance of your handwriting) or pdf.

Thanks! Yeah, Nebo definitely showed up in my initial research, but it wasn't clear whether there was any automatic conversion or syncing. Too many of these apps seem to want to also organize your notes, but I really want to just convert them and sync them into the systems I already prefer for organizing - without having to constantly manually manage the convert and sync processes.

 

[Thomas Davie]

Goodnotes
-allows lasso selection of text > conversion. I've got handwriting that looks like I've got a neuromuscular disorder. It can make out ~60 of what I scribble. 90% if I write painfully slow.
-doesn't require subscription
-good organization of folders/subfolders
-Currently autobackup only to iCloud (dropbox, onedrive, gdrive and others will be added back in as options eventually)
-Manual backup works to whichever cloud storage service you want

Automatic conversion is one of the requested features.

I've also got Noteshelf 2, Notes+, Notability, Zoomnotes and a few others. Mostly though I use Goodnotes and dump a bunch of recognized text into Google Docs for cleanup and formatting.

Tom

 

[sracer]

I'm a fan of GoodNotes (4 in particular, 5 is still too unstable, IMO).

Here's why I like GoodNotes for handwriting recognition.