What you need to know
- Penbook is an app that allows people to take notes in all kinds of different ways.
- Almost 1,000 different note stationery can be used depending on someone's needs.
- Live Paper adds dynamic data to notes.
If you're someone who uses your iPad and Apple Pencil to take notes you really ought to take Penbook for a spin.
There is no shortage of note-taking apps in the App Store and plenty of them are built for use alongside an Apple Pencil. But Penbook comes with almost 1,000 different types of stationery to ensure that there is one that's perfectly suited to your needs. Looking for ruled or graph paper? Penbook has it. Something more specialist like chemistry or perspective paper? No problem!
Some examples of the types of stationary offered include:
- Blank stationery, with an optional date and configurable margin
- Ruled paper with variable density
- Graph paper with four options for square sizes
- Dot stationery, either squared or isometric (offset)
- Cross stationery with configurable margins and density
- To Do pages with four layout options
- Monthly habit paper for tracking streaks, habits, and goals
- Day planner paper with a live updating timeline and calendar, and three layouts
- Weekly planner paper that highlights the current time and date
- Monthly planner paper that keeps track of the current day and shows you what's coming next
- Yearly stationery for getting a complete overview of your next 365 days
- Cornell paper for taking perfect study notes
- French ruled (Séyès) paper
- Penmanship practice paper
- Table stationery for hand-written spreadsheets
- Polar graph paper for plotting radial data
- Semi-log and loglog paper for data with exponential growth or decay
- Isometric stationery with equilateral (60-60-60) or isosceles (75-75-30) triangles
- Perspective paper, configurable with one, two, or three vanishing points
- Developer stationery with device stencils and configurable note-taking areas
- Storyboard paper with 3 frame aspect ratios
- Engineering paper with variable density
- Chemistry paper for easily sketching molecules
- Staff (music) paper with optional linked staves
- Tablature paper with vocal parts and chord charts
Penbook even supports something called Live Paper, with dynamic stationery that uses the "smarts of your iPad" to add data that your iPad already knows. Your iPad has the date and time, for example, and Penbook can automatically enter that data when you want it to.
While there are apps that let you draw and write with an Apple Pencil already, Penbook offers such a huge collection of paper options that it's unlikely you won't find the one that fits your needs — no matter how special they are. If you're looking for the best iPad app for taking notes you should at least take Penbook for a spin.
Penbook is a free download from the App Store and you can grab it right now. An optional annual subscription is available with additional functionality, too.
