Notability
Handwriting-first note app with PDF annotation, linked audio and AI study tools.
Operated by Ginger Labs, Inc.
Where your files are processed
Reported to stay on your device
Claimed by the vendor. Not yet independently verified. This covers the web service. We have not checked desktop app processing, and we do not extend the finding to it.
It depends on the edition. The native Apple apps annotate local and iCloud documents, which is the offline work the product is known for, while Notability Cloud and the web access on Windows and Android are separate surfaces and AI or transcription features have their own processing. Offline annotation on an installed edition does not prove that a web service uploads nothing. US residency would need a feature-specific storage or processing source rather than the company location.
What it does
A handwriting-centred note app for iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows, Android and the web. You write or type on a page, import PDFs and other documents to mark up, and record audio that stays tied to the moment you were writing. Paid tiers add unlimited notes, live transcription, handwriting recognition and AI features that turn notes into summaries, quizzes and flashcards.
Best for: Students and professionals who want one app for handwriting, lecture or meeting audio, and marking up imported PDFs on a tablet.
Worth knowing: The free plan stops at five notes, and most headline features need a subscription. Audio transcription and the AI study tools upload your notes and recordings to the vendor's servers, so it is not a purely local workflow. The current pricing page supports five free notes, while the March 2026 support FAQ describes unlimited Starter notes with a monthly editing allowance, so the current pricing statement is kept with its date and the version and account conflict is explained rather than the two being combined into a plan that does not exist. Exports follow the official sharing guide and do not imply editing original PDF text.
Details, and where each comes from
Vendor statements, our own reading of their pages, and the things nobody has established yet, each answered separately. Where we have not confirmed something it says so rather than guessing, and a row nobody has established is greyed out.
- Versions covered
- iOS · Android · macOS · Windows · Web
- Website
- notability.com
- Requires an account
- Not verified
- Free tier
- Yes
- Watermark on the free tier
- Not verified
- Maximum file size
- Not verified
- Batch processing
- Not verified
- Data residency
- United States
- Open source
- No
- Self-hostable
- No
- Licence
- proprietary
- Redaction
- No redaction feature
- Programmatic access
- None
- Last availability check
- Responded in 319 ms 16 October 2026
Checked automatically by our own runner, not reported by the vendor. 100% of our last 30 checks got a response.
What the redaction verdict rests on
From the vendor's own documentation, read 22 September 2026. Not tested by us.
What that does not establish: The vendor’s own site was read on 22 September 2026 and contains no mention of redaction, sanitisation, blackout or whiteout. Absence from a vendor’s own material is not proof that a feature does not exist — it may be undocumented, or on a page the reading did not reach — but for a NEGATIVE claim it is the strongest evidence available, and it is weaker than a positive quote. Recorded as such rather than presented as certainty.
What the vendor says
Claims are labelled rather than repeated as fact. Where we have checked something ourselves, it says so and shows when. Checked means we read the vendor's own page and it says what we recorded — not that we tested the behaviour, unless the note says we did.
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“Stop just taking notes. Start learning from them.”
Checked by us — the source says this Read 22 September 2026
Confirmed verbatim: "Stop just taking notes. Start learning from them." is the homepage strapline. It is an instruction rather than a claim about the software, so there is nothing in it to check, and the finding is recorded mainly so the index does not present a slogan as though it were a capability. The page carries no statement about where notes are stored or processed, which — given the retention and locality claims recorded elsewhere in this index for note-taking apps — is a gap a reader would notice. Recorded as the vendor's wording; nothing on this page was verified.
Standing: Re-read and matched byte for byte
Check it yourself: the source, the SHA-256, and how we checked
- From
- the text a browser renders
- SHA-256
- d2966c88ad96a5b2ce9d8b37523fb5d5ec2207dfae5777acf91b640f76e2a226
How we checked: Re-verified verbatim on 2026-09-22: https://notability.com/ re-rendered in headless Chrome with scripts/render-page.mjs and the claim's wording found in the rendered text. Originally verified on 2026-09-21. sourceHash is the SHA-256 of the re-rendered text, held as rv-notability-com-f3594717.txt.
Each claim is quoted from the vendor's own pages. This section describes what we have and have not checked — it is not a judgement about anyone.
Sponsorship is distribution, not an endorsement or a promise of search rankings, AI citations, traffic, or sales. This listing is a free entry, compiled from published sources.