MyScript Nebo

Futuristic note-taking on iPad Pro

Free Developer MyScript, myscript.com Platform iPad Requirements iOS 9.1 or later

MyScript Nebo is a fairly standard note-taking app in that you can make hand-scrawled notes with the pencil, or draw sketches, or add images from elsewhere. What’s clever is that is detects your writing live as you note things down. You see a little gray line of text above your words, showing what the app thinks they say (which is usually accurate, but if it’s slightly off, you can tap a word to choose near alternatives). When you’ve done making your note, you can doubletap what you wrote, and the app converts it into clear, typed text instantly. But you can also format notes this way! Draw bullet points and they get turned into bullets in a list when you convert. Underline headings and they get made bigger and bolder during conversion. Then you can copy this text to paste elsewhere. Oh, and if you make a mistake, you just scribble over the incorrect part, and it instantly vanishes – and this works on handwriting or already converted text. And it has a diagram mode for drawing shapes and arrows that get converted to neat graphics, along with a special mode for math formulae.

It is phenomenally cool, and it really works. Mostly. It can struggle to see lines of written notes as connected, so you get two separate blocks after conversion, which is fiddly for copying. We also found it mixed words from one line into another a few times. You can’t edit text using standard text tools once it’s converted, which seems odd (though you can rewrite with the Pencil in converted blocks, which helps). It all works like magic, but Fantasia magic, where you might not be totally in control.

It’s also weak in terms of note organization. Multiple individual notes can be stored in a Collection, and multiple Collections can be stored in a Folder – but you can’t move notes around once created. You can’t give notes a name, and you can’t add tags, or search for notes (you can search within a note, which is excellent). It does have good export options, though.

The app was free at the time of writing, but is planned to have a cost later.

the bottom line. When it works, it’s brilliant. But it has foibles, and needs better note organization.

The Pencil fluidity is great, as is the palm rejection for accurate writing.

Shapes and arrows are converted easily for diagrams.