Daily Journal for Apple Pencil?

[Tuttle]

I am looking for a convenient app that I can use to record daily expenditures and record items like service work done on my car, and the like. But I want to use my Apple pencil and handwrite things.

I know there are various memo-type apps that do this, but I want to be able to organize all these notes by date, like with a calendar.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[twerppoet]

Most notes apps will sort by date; if that is all you need. Here is a quick run down of the various note taking apps I have that allow hand written input.

Notes:

Yep, the good old standard. Tap that squgly line icon when a note is open and it gives you a sheet to doodle (or write) as you like. The tools are decent. I use Notes for a lot of my day to day note taking, and often use the writting feature; mostly when I'm taking meeting notes, or jotting down a message from the answering machine.

Notes can sort by the creation date or the revision date; but it is not convinient to switch back and forth since the switch is in settings.

Penultimate:

If you have a paid Evernote account, Penultimate might be the notebook for you. It sorts by creation date and has a crazy number of template backgrounds to help you organize your notes. You can even create your own. The notes exist on a grid, rather than a one dimensional list.

Notability:

This one has the most features (and complexity) of the bunch, way more than handwritten notes. It can sort notes by creation date, revision date. It's easy to switch between them by choosing the appropriate tab at the head of the list.

Paper by 53:

Doesn't really sort. Instead each note is presented as a large thumbnail in a grid, which can get complicated if all the notes aren't the same. It's first come first serve, so they are more or less in order of creation date; howeve you can easily drag them to other possitions.


Nebo:

This is my latest note taking toy. It is all about handwritting recongnition, and it does it live; while you are writing. There are editing strokes so that you never need a keyboard, matter of fact there is no support for a keyboard. You just start writing, and the text is intepreted as you go. You can leave it looking like handwritten text, or you can convert it for easy export (or viewing). Can't go backwards though. Once converted, it's text (but you can add to and edit that text)

It sorts by creation date by default. Unlike the other apps new notes are added to the bottom of the list, not the top. You can also re-order the list by simply draging the notes around (so it will only stay in creation date order if you don't mess with the list).

The biggest advantage to using Nebo is searches. Since the handwriting is being converted in the background (whether you change it to text or not), everything in the note is searchable.

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None of these apps have a calendar like view or the ability to change the dates on the notes (other than the revision date, by revising of course). Most of them are at least free to try.

Another category to look into would be journaling apps. These would be more date oriented, and some might support handwriting. I don't have any apps in this catagory, so I can recomend anything.

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P.S. Notes is the only note taking app I use extensivly (since I stopped using Evernote). That's not to say the others are not good, just that my real life note taking needs are easily met by Notes. I just play around with the others because I like seeing what new and cool; and incase I ever need a more powerful tool.

 

[Tuttle]

Thanks for the tip on NEBO! I don't know if it will work for the specific tasks I have in mind here, but it sure looks promising from an all around handwriting point of view.

What I want here is something like a calendar that I can view by year/month/weekday, drilling down to get notes from a particular day. But most calendars seem oriented toward a schedule: I need to do this task at this time. I just want a blank page for the day that I can fill with various reminders and records of what I did on that day.

 

[twerppoet]

Penultimate has several day/week/month planner templates. But they aren't any more useful than a paper planner. You can't enter something on a day, and expect it to show up in a month view. They are just backgrounds, not actual item entries.

Notability will let you write on top of a PDF background, which would be similar to useing the Penultimate templates, only with Notabilities better feature set. However the same search and view limitations apply.

I did something similar with PDF Expert and this calendar generation site a while back. Not for a journal (though I played with the idea) but for a local event calendar.

While several calendar apps (including Apple's) have a notes field that shows up in day view, I don't know of a single one that will let you use the Apple Pencil to make entries. Also, the notes view is usually an extra step away. You have to start editing the event before notes field can be typed into.

If you were just talking about a car maintenance app, those exist. Though, again, I don't know of any that take hand written notes.

Another possibility is a general database app. You can create different fields and views to giver yourself more flexity. The only one I know off the top of my head is FormConnect. It does have the ability to handwrite text in a field, but it is clumsy, and in no way optimized for the Apple Pencil. Other database apps may work better for this.

And that's probably about all the (little) help I have to offer.

Myself, I'd just create a folder or two in Notes for those subjects and depend on searches to find the items later. It did this for a while in Evernote. Each time I went to the gas pump I'd take two pictures. One of the odometer and one of the pump's readout (after pumping); then add a brief searchable title. Combined with keyboard shortcuts (or a third party text expander keyboard), those can be really quick to enter.

A limited, but truely lazy way to log.

 

[twerppoet]

Sometimes I just can't let a problem go.

Anyway, I realised that Pencil by 53's grid layout actually gives you at limited overview if you use it right. All your pages in a folder/grid are layed out in a readible, if small, format. This means you could set up single day entries, and see them all in on big scrollable view. Or you could go by weeks, months, or simple journal entries as they come up.

I've set up a few examples below. Hold in mind this is the middle, grid view. Top view is a list of folder/notebooks where you see a list of grids, and a preview. Bottom view is a single page view, where you do your writing.

Please excuse the duplicate image at the bottom. The forum doesn't let you delete images you accidently add. At least not from Safari on the iPad.

 

[Tuttle]

Many thanks, twerppoet. I will check Pencil by 53. I knew about Paper, but not pencil---.

 

[twerppoet]

Many thanks, twerppoet. I will check Pencil by 53. I knew about Paper, but not pencil---.

Ah, that would be because there is no Pencil by 53. It's Paper, and I made a booboo.

Well, actually there is a Pencil by 53, but it's a stylus that is made for the Paper app. Not as good as the Apple Pencil, but worth checking out if you have an older iPad and use the Paper app.

Sorry for the confusion.