HandNote — Apple Pencil handwriting and document annotation for Obsidian

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1

Disclaimer

Is this plugin open source? Yes (MIT)
Is this plugin completely free? Yes
Is this plugin vibe-coded beyond the author’s ability to comprehend how it works? Partly
Community Directory: HandNote

https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/handnote

I built HandNote because I wanted handwritten notes that live in my vault as ordinary files, next to my Markdown notes, instead of in a separate note-taking app — written on an iPad with an Apple Pencil, and usable on the desktop too.

A PowerPoint slide imported into HandNote with handwritten annotations
A PowerPoint slide imported into HandNote with handwritten annotations1200×800 126 KB

Main features:

  • Apple Pencil-first input (pressure, palm rejection); one finger pans, two fingers zoom or undo. Mouse, pen tablet and touch screen work on desktop.
  • A4 / A5 / A3 / Letter pages with blank, ruled, grid or dotted paper; pens, highlighter, shape pen, text boxes, images and shapes
  • Lasso → Convert → Text: Chinese and English handwriting becomes editable text in place, with candidates and Restore ink. Recognition runs on your device; the models (15.8 MB Chinese, 7.5 MB English) are downloaded once, only when you press Download.
  • New in 0.9: import PDF, Word (.docx/.doc), PowerPoint (.pptx) and Excel (.xlsx) and write on their pages. The original stays unchanged in your vault; macros never run and nothing is uploaded.
  • Formulas typed as LaTeX with a live preview
  • Every note is a .handnote file in your vault; embed a page in Markdown with ![[Lecture 3.handnote]]
  • No account, no telemetry, no server of its own

Known limitations:

  • No on-device handwritten-math recognition (type LaTeX, or use MyScript with your own keys)
  • Word / PowerPoint / Excel are laid out by HandNote, not Office: page breaks can differ; charts, SmartArt, animations, headers/footers and footnotes are not shown. Excel shows the formula results saved in the file.
  • Phones are untested
  • main.js is about 6.2 MB (the recognition runtime is built in); Obsidian Sync Standard does not sync files over 5 MB, so install the plugin on each device

The current release is 0.9.0.

Video tour (about 1.5 min; iPad clips are real Apple Pencil recordings, desktop handwriting is played back by a script):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuCaMYtpDbQ

Source, issues and privacy details:
https://github.com/Pilgrimagecoding/obsidian-handnote-public

Bug reports, feature ideas and examples of handwriting it reads badly are very welcome (please don’t attach private notes).

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0.9.1 is out.

  • Desktop pen tablets (Wacom, Huion, XP-Pen…): holding Space and dragging with the pen now pans the page, on notebook pages and imported documents. Before, only the mouse could pan this way and the pen drew a stroke. Without Space the pen writes as before.
  • If your tablet driver maps a pen button to the middle mouse button, holding it and dragging pans too, so you don’t need the keyboard.

Notes, writing on the iPad and recognition are unchanged. Update from Settings → Community plugins → Check for updates.

Release notes: https://github.com/Pilgrimagecoding/obsidian-handnote-public/releases/tag/0.9.1

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0.11.0 is out (Settings → Community plugins → Check for updates; the directory may take a little while to show it).

  • Infinite whiteboards: the HandNote ribbon icon now offers Handwritten note or Infinite whiteboard. One canvas without edges, dotted by default, zoom out to 10 %. A note with pages can be turned into a whiteboard (its pages become page frames that move with the lasso; one undo brings the note back). Export the whole board or the current view, or embed it in Markdown.
  • Ink stays where you wrote it: strokes are saved exactly as they were drawn, so nothing jumps when you lift the pen and a reopened note looks the same. New strokes are smoother without lagging behind the pen, corners stay sharp, edges are one smooth outline, and you can zoom in to 2400 %.
  • Shape pen: casual lines (also drawn slowly and lightly), U / V / S / J curves, tilted ellipses and rectangles, and regular pentagons, hexagons…
  • Highlighter: a nearly straight stroke becomes a straight line (can be turned off).
  • Navigation: a hand tool (H), hotkeys for every tool and page action, go to page from the page counter, a contents tab for PDFs with bookmarks, and pull past the last page to add one.
  • Settings are regrouped; recognition / AI and advanced options are folded away.

Whiteboards use a newer file format, so please update HandNote on every device that edits them (0.10 and older open them read-only).

Release notes: https://github.com/Pilgrimagecoding/obsidian-handnote-public/releases/tag/0.11.0