A Free note-taking App that is actually free? (Freenotes Review)

So there’s a free note-taking app I happened to come across while doom scrolling on Instagram aptly named Free notes app. I decided to check it out on the App Store. I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be funny if an app that literally has free in the name had to be paid for or worse, needed a subscription for premium features. So I decided to venture into the abyss. Just as I thought, it was……..free? Wait….and no…in-app purchases? Is this a scam? Well stick around and let’s go over the free note-taking app that costs $0.00.

Interface:

When you open the app, the interface is quite simple. You have a folder section to the left. You also have a tab called stationery center. You can download custom fonts on there although not every font there is free. I was able to make 4 new notebooks, 1 higher than what most paid note taking apps allow you to get away with ….ahemmmm….moving on. But actually it seems unlimited :)

You get to choose the style and design of your cover. There are some basic templates and you can actually import your own template as well. Neat.

You can also change the colours of your pages (there’s literally a color wheel so the sky is ….well your page colour now).

Tools:

Now we come to the exciting bits. On the side we have our tool bar. We have the pen tool obviously which you can adjust to what stationery you want at the bottom. You can customize the size, sensitivity, tip and concentration (opacity basically). You can also add or remove a specific tool.

We have got the tape tool that helps you hide and reveal text. This is useful for when you want to memorize. You can add pictures as well. There’s a freehand and rectangle cropping feature. The text box works fine. I don’t personally use it but at least it’s there. There’s a read-only mode that you can easily switch from by hitting the pencil icon that shows up on the bottom left.

Now for the top toolbar.

WE HAVE LAYERS!!! Who would have thought, something like layers is in an app like this for free. However, they don’t exactly work as layers for example in a drawing app. They act more like pages in increments of 3 by default. You can add more pages to your layers with the rectangle that has a plus icon. So I believe you can use the layers as different notebooks or for different topics. This method would get take some getting used to.

Next we have audio recording. You can record your lecture as you take notes. You can search for words but only written in text. It doesn’t support handwriting search features. When you hit the plus button there are a plethora of other customization options which is really nice. You can add and remove toolbar functions that you need and don’t need respectively. This review would be quite long to go through them all so here are some screenshots of what you can do.

User experience:

The ease of use would be at a 7/10. I would say if you are just jumping in as a beginner with no experience note-taking digitally, you would discover things as you go. It’s a clean and simple workspace with not a lot of tools, gadgets and gizmos that can be overwhelming. Here are some rapid-fire features:

-You can tap with two fingers to undo and three fingers to redo

-You can scribble to erase

-You can also write with your finger if you ever want to lol.

-You can import and annotate pdfs

-Oh and there’s dark mode….sweet!

Overall I am pleasantly surprised by how much you can do in this free app and I do hope it continues to be free. If you don’t want to commit to any paid or subscription based Note-taking apps, try the FreeNotes app. Let me know your experience :) Thanks for reading.