Stay organized with our digital planner and enjoy an exclusive discount on your first purchase—shop now!
Stay organized with our digital planner and enjoy an exclusive discount on your first purchase—shop now!
When you use a digital planner, you want to do just like you would with a paper planner (or maybe beyond). You want to scribble, squiggle, add shapes, highlight, underline, add notes, and what’s not! Best digital planners like Print Magic Studio X also give digital perks like customisable templates, audio notes, the ability to add stickers and images and create hyperlinks.
But you need the right annotation app to make the most out of the best digital planner. Such apps are a fun and paperless way to keep up with all your to-dos and stay productive as planned.
Let’s check out 6 tried-and-tested annotation apps for digital planning.
Image credit: Goodnotes
The app ranks at the top of this list because it has everything you need for fun and effective digital planning. The standout feature is its abundance of organisational and customisation tools that make the lives of super-messy users like me a whole lot easier.
Choose customisable templates, customise the toolbar, create lively drawings with Pencil, the Eyedropper colour picker, and scribble to erase handwriting. You also get a powerful search function, AI-enabled tools, onboard handwriting recognition, and much more.
The experience doesn’t stop there.
The natural handwriting experience makes it popular among those who prefer jotting down notes by hand. Apple Pencil makes notetaking feel even more natural and intuitive, making GoodNotes a prime choice as the best annotation app for digital planning.
Did you know GoodNotes work online, making it the best for on-the-go planning?
| Likes 👍 | Dislikes 👎 |
| Natural handwriting experience | Clunky text conversion (handwritten to typed text) |
| Navigate digital planners through hyperlinks | Limited templates |
| Search and text conversion | |
| Create subfolders in folders to sort planners | |
| Cross-platform compatibility |
Image credit: PAT Research
Notability is a multimedia-rich annotating experience. Besides basic annotating tools like highlighting text and using text boxes, you can also use a stylus or your fingers to handwrite or hand-draw just about anything on your planner.
What’s more impressive about Notability is that you get a huge collection of customisable digital planner templates across all aspects of life: fitness, home chores, weekends, office, and more. Have fun adding GIFs, sticky notes, web clips, images, and even video clips to your digital planner.
Notability is well-known for audio syncing with handwritten notes, but other apps have got this feature, too. Notability’s differentiator is audio transcripts — time-stamped text of your recordings.
| Likes 👍 | Dislikes 👎 |
| Add voice memos to your planner pages | Not for Android users |
| Math conversion — converting handwritten calculations into mathematical expressions. | Limited organisation tools |
| Pencil tool for pressure sensitivity and tilt-activated sketching and drawing | |
| Create neat planners using straight lines and a ruler tool |
Image credit: Softonic
With Penly, you get hyperlinked pages for daily, weekly, and monthly calendar views, and for each page, you can choose among plain, lined, dotted, and grid styles. The app also supports annotating PDFs and text files, even with stickers and images.
You can annotate your digital planner using the keyboard or a Bluetooth stylus. Plus, you can draw, highlight, and even convert handwritten notes into typed text.
| Likes 👍 | Dislikes 👎 |
| Make your planner more fun and more colourful – import lots of stickers and use them on the planner. | Doesn’t support large PDFs |
| Customise the look of your planner – choose from different colours, thicknesses, and styles of the pen. | Not for Apple devices |
| Personalise your planner – add your favourite photos |
Image credit: Facebook
Nebo boasts the world’s most accurate AI-driven handwriting recognition ability. This means it can convert handwritten notes into editable text, taking your digital planning to the next level.
Next, you get everything you need – weekly schedules, monthly calendars, quarterly plans, and yearly overviews, allowing you to plan your year smoothly.
Also, navigating the planning is easier with clickable links; you can jump between sections.
| Likes 👍 | Dislikes 👎 |
| Use pen gestures to add and edit notes and reminders (also supports styluses) | Lacks customisability |
| Pick pen type – felt, fountain, brush and highlighter. | Formatting can be tedious |
| Customise your planner with drawings, hand-drawn diagrams, and images |
Image credit: YouTube
If you’re new to digital planning and looking for an absolutely free annotation app, Xodo can be the perfect pick. With this app, you get many tools to annotate your digital planner.
Most important is Xodo’s handwriting tool! You can use a touch pen or a Bluetooth pen, but it also works with your fingers. You can add sticky notes, images of your choice, and digital stickers to your planner. Then, you have the collection of markup tools – highlight, strikeout, underline, and squiggly annotation.
It doesn’t stop here. With Xodo, you can highlight written text and add different shapes to make your planner more organised.
| Likes 👍 | Dislikes 👎 |
| It’s completely free | Limited annotation options |
| Hyperlinked tabs make it super easy to navigate your planner | Handwriting doesn’t feel as natural |
| Accessible on all platforms and devices | Clunky user interface |
| Lacks advanced planning capabilities |
Image credit: Medium Noteshelf Blog
You can think of Noteshelf as an affordable version of Notability. Noteshelf has plenty of customisation options, from templates and pen types to font colour and size. You can even customise the toolbar for frequently used features.
You can add stickers, create hyperlinks, and even attach audio recordings to notes on your planner. Then, you’ve got lots of organisational capabilities, Noteshelf AI, Focus mode, and advanced customisation options.
But the app stands out for the Zoom Box. With this feature, you can zoom in and write smaller text easily.
| Likes 👍 | Dislikes 👎 |
| Affordable and multi-device compatibility | No cross-platform compatibility (You can’t hand off your notes between Android and Apple devices) |
| Customisable toolbar | Moving notes is tedious |
| Zoom Box loads the tool interface on the magnification bar, so you can quickly switch between tools while working. |
Now that you know all your options, it’s time to pick the best annotation app for digital planning.
Choose an app that gives you all the customisability and organisation tools you’d frequently use while planning. Don’t forget to consider the compatibility. If you’ve never used a planner, we’d recommend trying out our all-in-one digital planners, which are easy to use and available at the best price. Our digital planners are compatible with iPad, reMarkable, and Android devices, making them suitable for all users.
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