#21

It’s a great idea!

I would second OneNote as a fantastic program. I use it all the time for my school and my personal work. OneNote works great with a pen tablet. I use my XP-Pen ( https://www.xp-pen.com ) drawing tablet constantly throughout the day. It is a huge improvement over trying to write or draw with a mouse.

2 Likes
#22

I think the easiest solution just copy - paste function. Apple allows it, you copy in one device and paste to another one (macbook → ipad or ipad->macbook).
So if you draw a diagram or you found a template but wanted to fill/annotate just copy from mac paste to ipad and when you done place to obsidian with same process.

#23

I’m using GoodNotes on my iPad to take handwritten notes and make drawings. I can then do a handwriting to text conversion of the written stuff with about a 90% accuracy that I can save or send to other apps. I can then pull those text notes into Obsidian. Or I can save them as PDFs directly. The drawings portions can be saved out as PDFs and I think also images for inclusion as attachments. I don’t do as much drawing so I’ve not tested that as much.

GoodNotes has replaced my clipboard and notepaper for almost all cases except when I’m outside with the sheep. Don’t want to risk my expensive iPad getting stepped on by curious lambs or try to clean sheep nose prints off the screen. :grin: It’s bad enough when I’m using LambTracker in the field with the Kindle Fire tablet but at least it’s relatively cheap to replace when sheep play with it.

5 Likes
#24

I definitely want and need a handwriting feature for many reasons. A basic one already mentioned by @irasanchez is the possibility for free flow brainstorm style writing that includes words, drawings, and doodles.

Is there a plugin that enables some basic handwriting?

I’m not here to argue if it is possible to do it somewhere else and import it into Obsidian. Of course that is possible and I am using an iPadPro with Apple Pencil to write notes in Noteshelf, Apple Notes, Craft, OneNote, and MarginNote. Each has their strengths where and when they shine and so I use them accordingly. I’m not looking to replace the other apps but I want to be able to effortlessly create handwritten notes as the situation arises within Obsidian without having to leave it and continue my work somewhere else only to then having to export it and import it to Obsidian. That would be fine if the notes are complete and won’t change but having to repeat the process every time I make a change to my handwritten notes just wears me down too much.

It is very clear to me that the little frictions in workflows often determine the longevity of an practice I try to keep up. So even though I can move anything into Obsidian, I can see that unless I can create it directly in it or if I can pull in the data in an automated way, I end up not moving it over as much.

As a tool striving to be my second brain, I’d expect it to have a path towards handwritten note creation at least in some basic form.

3 Likes
#25

It may not be the most ideal solution, but I use my ipad for handwritten notes that are synced to my Obsidian vaults as pdfs. Notepads 10 on iOS does that quite nicely, but I suppose you don’t necessarily need that. Whenever I want to squiggle down something, I open the Notepads 10 app and it opens right at my “handwritten notebook” page. When I close it, it syncs through Dropbox and the file shows up in Obsidian.
The only limitation is that the resulting handwritten note is a pdf, so I cannot edit it in Obs.

#26

Logseq can do this with the /draw command which uses Excalidraw inside the editor. Although I don’t use Logseq.

The basic sketch function in iOS Notes is superb (used to be better before zoom was removed). It’s much simpler to handwrite a maths equation than to type it out if you want to be fast. Same with diagrams – it’s more natural and quick to just draw them so you can focus on other stuff.

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#27

Putting my vote in for this one too. Having recently required the use of a more flexible thought processing workflow (diagrams, images and text all on the “table”) I forgot how wonderful the infinite canvas of OneNote was allowing me to draw between typed text and images and move things around to organize ideas. OneNote is truly great at helping to break down complex topics and get clear. It sucks at the things Obsidian is incredible at like linking, tags, file security etc. Having a WYSIWYG experience like OneNote with the power of Obsidian would be a dream come true but I suspect never a reality.

5 Likes
#28

+1! Sometimes I miss GoodNotes for this reason.

#29

+1 from me, it would be great for sure!

#30

Is there a way to get that notes copy/paste to not include a giant white background? I’m thinking like a transparent background so that the drawings from Apple notes just show up in Obsidian without a large obnoxious background.

#31

+1. A really great integration for a free thinking mind is a physical pen/stylus with the note-making capabilities of Obsidian.

#32

Also a +1 from me! A frictionless way to add a non-white background drawing in obsidian would be a gamechanger for people in physics/maths backgrounds who need to draw diagrams quickly and easily.

1 Like
#33

+1.
It would be great to add some simple drawing functions to Obsidian on tablets. The drawings created in Obsidian might be automatically converted to an image of a pdf attachment.
Though apps like good notes offer a great drawing experience, inserting the images to Obsidian would take extra steps.
Why not just add some simple and quick drawing functions to Obsidian while leaving heavy and complex drawings to other apps?

#34

Have you tried the Excalidraw plugin? I find it more than meets my needs.

#35

I have used Excalidraw, but it is not intuitive on the iPad. The Apple Pencil doesn’t work as a stylus but a weird mistargeted finger input.

1 Like
#36

No. I just tried. The apps work very well on my laptop. However, it’s a bit sluggish on the iPad. Thanks for your suggestion.

#37

Yes. You are right. Hope there to be a more smooth drawing experience on the iPad in the future

#38

For those that use obsidian on their macs and have an ipad, I found out that this workflow works well for easy drag and dropping.

  • have the notes app open on both Mac and IPad.
  • start sketching
    • If you use the iCloud sync you can wait till it shows up in your notes app on the mac. From there you can easily drag and drop your drawing into the Obsidian.
    • If you do not use iCloud, if it works bad for you or you just don’t want to use it, you can also just easily airdrop yourself the notes when you are done with them

One Problem I encountered with this method is that the the drawings are not pngs, this means that when you drop them into obsidian all your drawings get a white background (if you made your sketch in Darkmode, the background will still be white but your black strokes will be converted into white ones). This is annoying if you use darkmode, but at least it’s compatible with PDF Exports.

It does not work fantastic, but it’s simplistic enough.

#39

Great idea.

#40

Use case or problem

When using Obsidian on mobile devices (smartphone or tablet like iPad), it would be a great addition for Obsidian to be able to handwrite a note (alongside typed text, as in Apple Notes).

Proposed solution

Adding support for handwritten notes.

Current workaround (optional)

A workaround is to use Excalidraw. But this is far from what we could accomplish if Obsidian had built-in support for handwritten notes.

4 Likes