IT Blog

For those who prefer taking digital notes by hand instead of typing, Notability has long been an iPad must-have.

The app lets users take handwritten notes on an iPad, ideally with an Apple Pencil. It supports an array of brush styles and paper formats, and it has a killer audio recording feature for lectures and interviews: Recordings and written notes are synchronized, so you can tap on what you wrote and hear the audio from that exact moment. (The app is also available for iPhones and Macs, where it’s mostly helpful for reviewing existing notes.)

But after 11 years of selling the app for an up-front price—most recently $9–developer Ginger Labs is leaving that model behind. Notability is now free to download, and will require a $15 per year subscription—or $12 per year for a limited time—to unlock all of its features.

Non-paying users will have limits on how many times they can edit a note and how many brushes they can save as favorites, and they’ll no longer be able to…