If you take notes by hand on your mobile device – either with your finger or a stylus – you know there's no substitute for a solid handwriting recognition app to make all your scribbles legible.
Handwriting recognition has been around for decades, starting with the PalmPilot and the Newton MessagePad from the 1990s. These popular PDAs recognized character input with a stylus. You had to write legibly for the Newton to recognize lettering, and you had to learn the Graffiti language for the Palm to do the same. Cricket captain download.
Ink: Handwriting Recognition In the same way that your grandmother turned yesterday’s dinner into today’s sandwich (and tomorrow’s soup), Apple recycled the handwriting technology of its failed Newton handheld and - Selection from OS X Yosemite: The Missing Manual Book.
Many mobile apps let you draw letters, strokes and shapes onscreen with iOS and Android devices, but only a few recognize, translate or digitize that input.
The following apps can automatically recognize and digitize your handwriting. Some of the apps are free, some operate with integrated keyboards, while others have in-app purchases or fees, or rely on the MyScript AI handwriting recognition and digital ink management engine.
MetaMoJi Note ($7.99)
Credit: MetaMojiThis colorful notebook, sketchbook and scrapbook app supports voice input, PDF annotation and handwriting-to-text conversion with the Mazec helper app.
The app offers a large assortment of pens, calligraphy pens and inks, graphics, and layouts for writing and sketching. You can edit and tag voice memos to visuals or documents – or import a PDF file, mark it up and save it back out as a PDF. You can share notes via email, Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr, or store and share files with Google Drive, Evernote and Dropbox. You can sync all folders to the MetaMoJi Cloud, which saves and manages up to 2GB documents for free and password protect your notes.
A Gold Service for $29.99 per year, or $4.99 per month, gives you additional flexible features, including a shared drive for coediting documents, interval-based auto sync for backing up notes, more cloud storage, access to additional inks and papers, and the ability to customize the navigation bar.
Notes Plus ($9.99)
Credit: Notes PlusNotes Plus is a gesture-based writing app for iPhone and iPad that supports more than 50 languages and delivers fluid handwriting capabilities, complete with ink effects, palm rejection, shape recognition and a close-up writing mode. The interface is stylish, fun, and responsive, with plenty of options to scale or move elements around the page – and it offers variable ink styles, colors, thicknesses, and writing implements.
Combined with the MyScript engine, Notes Plus translates your scribble into text, accepts text input and export notes as PDF or images to email, Dropbox, Google Drive and Evernote. You can import PDF and Word documents and insert images from the photos or camera app. Audio input lets you record notes. The app is compatible with styluses from Wacom, Adonit and Apple Pencil. A recent update supports the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil 2 and iOS 12.
Google Handwriting Input (free)
Credit: GoogleGoogle Handwriting Input, an Android-only app, translates your scribbles directly onscreen as you write. Upon installing the app, you get a few setup panes where you can choose your language and an optional keyboard, which lets you use the utility with other text input apps. In addition to supporting over 100 languages, it allows easy input of ideographic lettering and voice, and recognizes emoji-style drawings.
This app understands the sloppiest scrawl quite well and offers predictive text at the top of the window to let you tweak its interpretation – or you can correct spelling directly on the text output.
An online feature sends information to Google to decipher your handwriting to improve the recognition engine, but you can opt out of this in favor of more private local device translation. While there is no specific iOS version, you can enable Google Handwrite in mobile Safari or Chrome to search with finger or stylus.
MyScript Nebo ($7.99)
Credit: MyScriptMyScript Nebo is specifically designed to use with the Apple iPad Pro and Pencil or the latest versions of Android with an active stylus, like S Pen or a Wacom pen.
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The app is now compatible with the iPad Pro 2018 and the second-generation Apple Pencil. Nebo uses its interactive ink tech to facilitate writing, drawing and formatting notes in addition to converting text into shareable documents.
New updates facilitate better performance with math objects as well as overall improvements to note management. A new library lets you view notebooks and collections in a side panel, which allows for rearranging documents via drag and drop. An enhanced search engine covers your whole library.
In addition to editing and formatting in 65 languages, you can sketch; annotate images; create editable equations; adjust type size and device orientation; organize notes in pages, notebooks, and folders; and search, store, or sync with Dropbox. You can export documents as text, Word, PDF or HTML. You can also copy, paste and edit diagrams to PowerPoint.
WritePad for iPad ($4.99)
Credit: WritePadIf you prefer to write longhand but need to see your text in digital format, consider WritePad for iPad. You can configure a host of options to recognize input forms and predefined commands, or you can input lettering with your finger or a stylus.
When you're done with a word, the app automatically converts your scrawl to text. The app learns your writing style to reduce mistakes. Gestures let you select, cut, copy, paste and insert special characters. Four recognition modes let you enter cursive, print, numeric text for phone numbers and internet language for email addresses and URLs. Updates include a new invert toolbar colors option and better integration with the file manager. It is now optimized for iOS 12 and the third generation iPad Pro.
The Android or iOS app supports a dozen languages and can translate back and forth between them. It also has a spell checker with a custom dictionary, a context analyzer, auto-corrector, and a shorthand editor that accepts frequently used words and phrases. It syncs with Evernote, Box, Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive and iTunes. You can even tweet or post Facebook updates directly from the app.
Mazec ($12.99)
Credit: MazecMazec is a keyboard app that provides handwriting conversion to text in a variety of apps like email, notes and social posts. Semantic databases, combined with the MyScript engine, let you search, browse the web and complete online forms. You can choose font size, auto-scroll area width, word spacing and more. Updates improve the built-in dictionaries and streamline Apple Pencil usability.
As you begin to write, Mazec displays predictive suggestions and phrases to choose from so you usually don't have to write out an entire word before the app completes it. Mazec intelligently detects your choices, learns specific phrases and even offers emojis – if you write 'emoji' or a recognized emoji category name. Mazec supports 12 languages, but you must buy a language pack if you want to use any other than the one you signed in with. It works on Android or iOS.
GoodNotes 5 ($7.99)
Credit: GoodNotesIf you seek a powerful note-taking and PDF annotation app with handwriting recognition, check out the updated GoodNotes 5 for searchable notebook and document creation.
The app's pen tool offers a choice of letter colors and thicknesses. Shape recognition automatically creates recognizable shapes from freehand drawings. Work with text boxes and images and move items around as well as zoom, scroll and turn pages.
Version 5 adds features like horizontal and vertical flexible scrolling, the ability to create an unlimited number of folders and subfolders, and search capabilities via handwritten notes, typed text or document and folder titles. The new version also features shortcuts to various pages, documents, or folders; a QuickNotes feature that gets your notes started quickly; and an option to display documents as lists.
An improved ink algorithm eases the writing experience. Updated brush pen and shape tools offer more colorful and creative notes while a new template library offers distinctive covers and pages. GoodNotes now supports the new iPad Pro and the second-generation Apple Pencil. With iCloud, you can sync your notebooks across all your iOS devices.
Pen to Print (free)
Credit: Serendi LTDIn a variation on the handwriting recognition concept, Pen to Print reads scanned handwritten documents and converts them into editable, searchable digital text that can be stored on your device or within a cloud service.
The app's handwriting OCR (optical character recognition) engine extracts text from paper documents, like letters, school notes, meeting notes, and grocery lists, allowing those who prefer to write in longhand the freedom to continue.
The handwriting recognition system works with block letters, cursive and script.
A premium monthly and yearly subscription plans let you save your text to a file, copy, email, add to Notes, or share on Message, WhatsApp, Hangout, WeChat, Messenger, and Telegram. You can transfer the text to word processors like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, or export to Evernote, OneNote or Google Keep. The app works with iOS 9 or later and Android 4.4 and later in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Nebo is a digital notetaking app that was created by MyScript to showcase its handwriting recognition technology known as Ink. The app is iPad-only because it requires an Apple Pencil for input. Nebo can also convert hand-drawn diagrams and mathematical equations and embed photos and sketches within notes. I’ve been using Nebo to research this review and the accuracy of its handwriting recognition is remarkable. Nebo is a solid notetaking tool. It lacks a few features that would make it more competitive with notetaking apps that have been around longer, but the handwriting recognition is so good, that Nebo has become my default notetaking app.
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Like many other notetaking apps, Nebo is divided into a series of notebooks. The screen is divided into two parts. On the left side is a sidebar for navigating from top-level folders, to notebooks, to individual pages within each notebook. On the right-hand side is the currently selected page.
Unlike some notetaking apps where a page is limited to the viewable screen, a page in Nebo can scroll endlessly. The flexibility is nice, but one page on an iPad Pro 12.9-inch screen in portrait is usually enough for me. Additional pages are added from the sidebar by tapping the plus icon.
Nebo’s Ink handwriting recognition system is the standout feature of the app. Its accuracy is truly astounding given that it doesn’t require you to alter your handwriting. In fact, in the example notebook/user guide that comes with the app, most of the handwriting is written in cursive. I don’t write in cursive, but over the years my handwriting has evolved to where certain letter combinations run together. Even when I wrote in a deliberately sloppy way, I had a hard time fooling Nebo.
In addition to recognizing your handwriting, Nebo has formatting smarts. It can create bulleted lists with a variety of bullet symbols. Double-underlining a line creates an H1 heading. Underlining part of a line makes it bold and drawing a box around text highlights it in yellow. There are even gestures for splitting and joining lines and words by drawing a vertical line in the right place.
Editing notes.
Converting handwriting to text is simple. Just double tap and the conversion is nearly instantaneous. The process is fast because Nebo is doing the recognition on the fly. As you write, the words Nebo detects are displayed in light grey text above the line of the page on which you are writing. The grey text allows you to monitor Nebo’s accuracy as you write. If Nebo does get something wrong, tapping the grey text brings up a popup with other possible words which makes corrections fast and easy. The real-time recognition of your handwriting also means that you can perform searches of your handwritten notes without converting them to text.
After text has been converted to text by double tapping, you can double tap it again, which makes the text bigger and editable. Editing is done in handwriting even though the text has been converted, which I didn’t expect, but makes sense because you are already using the Apple Pencil.
Mac Handwriting Recognition
The tools and features of Nebo are accessed from a custom tab bar found in the navigation bar of the app. The Pen section includes a pen in eight colors of ink with six stroke widths and an eraser. Erasing text can also be accomplished by simply scratching words out with the Apple Pencil, which is faster than switching tools for making small changes.
Adding and marking up photos.
The ‘Add’ section lets you add photos, sketches, diagrams, and math equations to your notes. Photos can be annotated, but not resized or otherwise edited, so if you need to edit one, do it before bringing an image into Nebo. Sketches create a resizeable rectangle in which you can draw with any of the pen tools.
Diagrams and Math Equations are another great showcase of the Ink technology. Tapping either creates a resizable rectangular canvas. With a diagram, you can draw shapes, connect them with lines or arrows, and add handwritten labels. When you’re finished, double tap and the diagram transforms your handwriting into neatly drawn shapes, straight lines, and text. Math Equations does the same thing, but can handle complex equations and math symbols.
Converting math equations.
Handwriting Recognition Programs
Despite the excellent handwriting recognition, Nebo falls short in a few places as a notetaking app. I’d like to be able to swipe between pages instead of going back to the sidebar. There should also be a way to create sub-bullets in a bulleted list with proper indentation. Currently, Nebo creates bulleted lists with only one level that is even with the left hand margin of the document. Finally, I would like to be able to pick a custom ink color and use a slider to pick a specific stroke size. With the possible exception of proper indentation in bulleted lists, which is important when taking notes, I wouldn’t really consider any of these criticisms misses for a version 1.0 product. Instead, they are things I would like to see added as refinements as the product is updated.
I am blown away by the quality of the handwriting recognition in Nebo. It’s by far the best I’ve seen in any app. I could easily see writing some posts for MacStories in Nebo. What’s remarkable is that the limiting factor in doing so is not the handwriting recognition, it’s that I can type faster than I can write and prefer handwriting for shorter pieces, which is why Nebo is wisely positioned as a notetaking app and not a text editor. Instead, I find myself sketching out ideas in Nebo and appreciate the ability to take any part of what I write, copy it as text and use it elsewhere. If you take notes and have ever wanted to search or copy them as text for use in an email or other documents, give Nebo a try.
Handwriting Recognition Applications
Nebo is available on the App Store as a free download for a limited time.