GoodNotes 5.9.8 Mac

GoodNotes runs on any Mac with macOS 10.15 or newer, with native support for both Intel and Apple Silicon machines. It is a note-taking application built for creating, editing, and organizing documents that mix typed text, handwriting, and freeform drawings.

What the app handles

• Typed text, handwritten notes, and drawings in a single document
• An eraser that removes entire strokes or only the parts you scrub over
• A Shapes tool that snaps rough sketches into clean lines and forms
• PDF and image import for annotation
• Export of documents or individual pages as PDF files by drag and drop
• Drag-and-drop import from the Mac hard drive
• Folders and subfolders for organizing documents
• iCloud sync across Macs, iPad, and iPhone

A companion for the iPad, not a replacement

The Mac version is a companion to the iPad app, letting you view, edit, and arrange your notebooks on a larger screen. Students who mark up lecture slides, professionals who sketch meeting notes, and anyone who mixes typed and handwritten material will find the desktop experience useful. Changes sync through iCloud, so a page started on an iPad appears on the Mac without extra steps.

Turn off auto-backup to make it feel like a desktop tool

The defaults are sensible, but a few switches make the Mac version feel less like a port and more like a desktop tool. The first stop is Disable Auto-Backup — leave it off. It keeps a rolling copy of your library outside iCloud, which has saved more than one notebook from a botched sync. The backup location can be any local folder, though an external drive works if the library gets large.

Next, check the Handwriting Recognition language. It defaults to English even when the interface runs in German, Spanish, or Japanese. Setting it to match your actual handwriting makes search results far more useful, since recognized text is what the search field reads.

Two smaller options deserve attention. Zoom Window Auto-Advance controls whether the writing area scrolls automatically as you reach the right edge — handy on a trackpad, annoying with a mouse. And Palm Rejection works better set to a higher sensitivity if you rest your hand on the desk while using a drawing tablet.

Hold the eraser icon instead of opening a submenu

Most people find the obvious tools within minutes. The quieter shortcuts take longer to surface.

• Hold the eraser icon to switch between stroke eraser, pixel eraser, and marker-only mode without opening a submenu.
• Double-tap a page in the thumbnail strip to jump to it without scrolling through a long document.
• Drag a page thumbnail onto the desktop to export just that page as a PDF — no export dialog involved.
• Select handwriting with a lasso, then drag it across pages by dropping it on the next page thumbnail in the sidebar.
• Click the page number to open a quick navigation panel instead of scrolling or using the table of contents.

The custom table of contents is another overlooked feature. Any page can be added to it with a right-click, which turns a 200-page notebook into something you can navigate by section names rather than page numbers.

Dragging a PDF from the Downloads folder into an open notebook

A typical afternoon starts with a PDF arriving in the inbox. The file gets dragged from the Downloads folder straight into an open notebook in GoodNotes, where it lands as new pages at the end of the document. From there, the first pass is annotation: highlighting key passages with the marker, circling deadlines with the pen tool, and dropping a few typed comments in the margins.

Once the PDF is marked up, the Shapes tool turns rough margin notes into clean diagrams. A shaky line becomes a straight arrow. A wobbly square snaps into a neat box around a paragraph. The lasso selects a hand-drawn chart, resizes it, and moves it beside the related text.

Next comes organization. The annotated pages are added to a folder for the current project, and two or three key pages get marked as Favorites so they appear in the Favorites list on the left. A custom table of contents entry is created for the section that holds the summary page.

The session ends with housekeeping. A quick pass with the stroke eraser removes stray pen marks. The marker-only eraser cleans up highlights that bled over the text. Then the finished document is exported by dragging its thumbnail to the desktop as a PDF, ready to send off. The whole thing syncs through iCloud in the background, so the same notebook is waiting on the iPad when the desk is cleared.

• macOS 10.15 or later
• Apple Silicon and Intel 64-bit