Penbook icon

Penbook

Penbook is a free and open-source note taking app designed for handwritten notes. It allows users to write notes naturally with a stylus, with features like pressure sensitivity, palm rejection, and customizable pens and paper. Useful for taking quick handwritten notes on a tablet.

What is Penbook?

Penbook is a free and open-source note taking application designed specifically for handwritten notes. It provides a simple but powerful interface for writing notes with a stylus, with robust support for pressure sensitivity, palm rejection, and customizable pens and paper.

Some key features of Penbook include:

  • Natural writing experience with a stylus, including pressure sensitivity and palm rejection
  • Variety of pen types (ballpoint, pencil, brush, marker) with customizable size, color, and opacity
  • Multiple paper templates to choose from with customizable lines or graphs
  • Intuitive gestures for selecting, moving, and resizing elements
  • Add images and text easily to supplement handwriting
  • Export notes to PDF or PNG format
  • Cross-platform support for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android

Overall, Penbook excels as a nimble note taking app focused on the handwriting experience. Its simple UI stays out of the way while providing powerful customization options for pens and paper. An excellent choice for students, teachers, meeting notes, or quick sketches where the emphasis is on writing or drawing by hand.

The Best Penbook Alternatives

Top Apps like Penbook

Paper by WeTransfer, Notebook PEA, Memrey, Scrble, Cryptee, Quillnote, Noted., Passfindr, Steno Notes, GitJournal, Shine - Plan Tomorrow, Today are some alternatives to Penbook.

Paper by WeTransfer

Paper by WeTransfer is a popular free sketching and note taking app available for iOS, Android, and web browsers. It features a minimal yet functional interface that allows users to capture ideas and thoughts through typing text notes, drawing with pencil/pen tools, adding photos from their camera or device...

Notebook PEA

Notebook PEA is a free and open-source note taking application available for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. It provides a simple yet powerful platform for creating rich text documents, sketches and notebooks to organize all your ideas, research and notes in one place.With Notebook PEA, users can format...

Memrey

Memrey is a free, open-source, cross-platform note taking and organization app. It provides a simple yet powerful way for users to capture and organize ideas, to-do lists, notes, and more.Some of the key features of Memrey include:Rich text notes with support for formatting options like bold, italics, highlights...

Scrble

Scrble is a free, open-source note taking application available for Windows, macOS and Linux operating systems. It provides a fast, minimalist interface for jotting down thoughts, ideas, to-do lists, meeting notes and more.Some key features of Scrble include:Quick note creation - easily create text, lists, checklists and moreNotebooks...

Cryptee

Cryptee is an privacy-focused online service for securely storing, sharing and viewing photos and videos. It employs end-to-end encryption to ensure only you can access your content.When you upload content to Cryptee, it is encrypted on your device before being sent to Cryptee's servers. The encryption keys remain solely...

Quillnote

Quillnote is a free, open-source note taking and to-do application available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. It provides a simple yet powerful interface for creating notes, checklists, and longer documents.Some key features of Quillnote include:Clean, distraction-free interface for writing notes and documentsSupport for checklists and to-do...

Noted.

Noted is a free, cross-platform note taking app suitable for basic note taking needs. It is open-source software available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android operating systems.With Noted you can create rich text notes using options like bold, italics, highlights, hyperlinks and more. You can organize your notes...

Passfindr

Passfindr is a free, open source password manager and generator designed to help you create and manage strong, unique passwords for all of your online accounts. It allows you to securely store passwords encrypted behind one master password, so you only have to remember one strong password instead of many...

Steno Notes

Steno Notes is a free, open-source stenography software designed specifically for stenographers. It allows real-time translation of steno strokes into regular text, making it easy for court reporters and captioners to quickly transcribe speech.Some key features of Steno Notes include:Built-in dictionaries for automatic word suggestions and stroke translationsOptions...

GitJournal

GitJournal is a note taking and journaling application for desktop and mobile designed for programmers and technical writers. It utilizes Git repositories to store notes, allowing for built-in version control of all journal entries.Some key features of GitJournal include:Storage of notes as Markdown files in a local Git...

Shine - Plan Tomorrow, Today

Shine is a personal productivity and planning app designed to help users organize their life and meet their goals more effectively. Its key features include:A daily planner for scheduling tasks and eventsCustomizable to-do lists to capture all your tasks in one placeGoal setting tools and trackers to define objectives...