GoodNotes — Mac download

Paper notebooks are easy to start but hard to search, rearrange, or keep in sync across devices. GoodNotes gives you the feel of a notebook with the editing power of a Mac. Create digital notebooks, drag in documents from your hard drive, and organize everything with folders and subfolders.

Tools that earn their place

• Handwriting control — Move, rotate, resize, or recolour anything you write. The eraser removes a whole stroke or just the part you scrub over.
• Shapes tool — Draw rough circles and lines; the app snaps them into clean, precise shapes.
• Favorites — Pin the files, folders, and pages you return to most so they sit one tap away.
• iCloud sync — Changes appear on your iPad and iPhone without extra steps. Start a sketch on the iPad, refine it on the Mac.

Filing that fits how you think

Drag and drop brings documents straight from the Mac hard drive into a notebook. Folders and subfolders keep projects separated, and iCloud sync means the same structure shows up on every device. No import wizards, no duplicate files — just a clean, searchable library that stays current.

Where GoodNotes sits in your setup

GoodNotes plays well with the tools you already have open. Drag a PDF out of Mail or Safari straight into a notebook, mark it up, then drag the finished page back to Finder as a PDF. The same works with images from Photos or screenshots from the clipboard. Nothing forces you through an export dialog when a simple drag does the job.

macOS features slot in without friction. The share sheet sends a webpage or document into GoodNotes as a new page. Live text in imported PDFs keeps hyperlinks tappable, so a syllabus with links to readings stays useful after import. And because the app is a universal purchase across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, the same library follows you without paying for the Mac version separately.

• Finder — Drag files from any folder into a notebook; drag pages out as standalone PDFs.
• Mail and Safari — Attach a PDF or article via the share sheet, then annotate immediately.
• Photos — Pull in images for visual notes, diagrams, or quick reference boards.
• iCloud — The backbone for syncing. No separate account, no export step between devices.

Smoother Stroke Rendering Mid-Task

Version 5.9.8 keeps the experience stable on macOS 10.15 and later, with support for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Recent builds have focused on the details that show up mid-task: smoother stroke rendering when you move handwriting after the fact, more reliable eraser behaviour with marker ink, and fewer sync hiccups when a notebook is open on two devices at once.

For anyone who keeps a custom table of contents inside long documents, the navigation stays snappy even after importing a multi-hundred-page PDF. That matters more than it sounds when you jump between lecture notes, project briefs, and reading annotations all afternoon.

• macOS 10.15 or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel 64-bit processor