Noteshelf - Notes, Annotations

Review by eFreeware

Noteshelf 2 is a note-taking app for Android from Fluid Touch, sold for $7.99 with no ads and no in-app purchases attached to it. It has been on the Play Store since December 2018 and picked up more than 100,000 installs along the way, with a 4.3 average across 16,834 ratings. The pitch is straightforward: write by hand, mark up documents, record what you hear, and keep all of it organized and backed up.

What makes it worth a look is the breadth of that package. Handwriting, PDF annotation, audio capture, template journals and handwriting search normally show up in separate apps, and here they sit in one place with sync and backup built in. The developer is upfront that a newer version exists: Noteshelf 3 is a free download, and Fluid Touch recommends it for anyone starting fresh. Noteshelf 2 remains supported, and the latest update added a path to move notebooks, pens and custom templates across through Settings.

Writing by hand, with the tools to keep doing it

The core of the app is handwriting, and the developer leans on how natural it feels, with a set of pens and highlighters meant to behave like their physical counterparts. Color, shapes and images can be dropped into a page, so class notes or meeting memos do not have to stay monochrome text. A range of styluses is supported, and on Samsung Galaxy Note devices the S-pen button doubles as a quick eraser.

Pages themselves are configurable rather than fixed. You can work on lined, dotted or grid paper in different colors and adjust the line spacing to suit your writing size. Covers come in packs if you want notebooks to look distinct on a shelf, and typed text is an option too, with its own styles and formatting for the moments when a keyboard makes more sense than a stylus.

Two smaller touches round out the writing experience. Rough strokes can be converted into cleanly drawn shapes, or you can pull from a set of ready-made shapes when building flowcharts and diagrams. Notes can also be shared as images, which is a simple way to hand a page to someone who does not use the app.

PDFs, forms and documents you can write on

Importing a PDF or an image turns the app into a markup tool. Highlighting, underlining and annotating happen with the same formatting tools used elsewhere, which keeps the workflow consistent whether you are working on a blank page or a document someone sent you.

The developer lists the practical uses directly: editing school notes, grading papers, filling out forms and signing documents. That range says something about the intended audience. A teacher working through a stack of submissions and a professional signing a contract are both doing document work, and both can do it without printing anything.

Because PDFs and images come in as pages you can write over, the same notebook structure applies to them. That matters more than it sounds. Marked-up documents live alongside handwritten notes instead of in a separate viewer, so a semester of readings or a set of client files can sit in the same place as your own pages.

Search, conversion and the AI assistant

Handwriting is searchable, which addresses the usual complaint about digital ink: that it is quick to write and slow to find again. The app recognizes handwriting in 65 languages, and handwritten notes can be converted into typed text when you need something you can copy, paste or send.

Noteshelf AI goes further. It is described as an assistant that reads your handwriting and helps with tasks, and it can generate handwritten notes on a topic, summarize a full page of your own notes, translate text and explain complicated terms. For students working through dense material, the summarizing and explaining functions are the parts likely to earn their keep.

I would treat the AI features as a convenience rather than a reason on their own. The developer presents them as a way to move faster through study notes and terminology, and that is a reasonable framing. The search and conversion tools, by contrast, are the kind of thing you notice missing the moment you switch to an app without them.

Audio, organization and templates

Recording audio while you write is one of the more useful combinations here. During lectures and meetings you can record as much as you like, then play it back at any time, even while you are writing by hand. A lecture becomes a page of notes with the sound attached rather than two separate files you have to reconcile later.

Organization is handled through groups and categories, with drag and drop for moving notebooks around, so personal and work material can be kept apart. Important pages can be bookmarked, named and colored, which effectively builds a table of contents for a notebook. Anyone who has scrolled through a long journal looking for one page will see the appeal.

Templates are the other half of that structure. There are more than 200 of them, covering student notes, lesson plans, to-do lists, health trackers and bullet journaling, alongside a collection of digital diaries and journals. Starting from a template removes the blank-page problem, and the range suggests the app expects to be used for planning and tracking, not just writing.

Sync, backup and the version question

Notes sync through Google Drive, so the same notebooks can be opened on any Android device signed into that account. Automatic backup extends to OneDrive, Dropbox and WebDAV, and notes can be published to Evernote automatically for access from elsewhere. Between them, these cover the realistic ways people move notes off a single tablet.

The trade-offs are worth stating plainly. This is a paid app at $7.99, and it is an Android app, so the device ecosystem is part of the decision. Sync and backup are handled through cloud services, which is a reasonable arrangement.

The bigger consideration is the version itself. Fluid Touch has a newer app, Noteshelf 3, and recommends it for new users because it carries the latest features. Noteshelf 2 is still supported, and the most recent update is from January 2025, which added the ability to bring notebooks, favorite pens and custom templates over to Noteshelf 3 from Settings. That migration path is a sensible safeguard for anyone who buys now and later decides to move.

A good fit for stylus-first note-takers

The people this suits best are students, teachers and professionals who already work with a stylus and want one app to cover handwriting, documents and audio. A student marking up readings and recording lectures, a teacher grading and annotating submissions, a professional signing forms and keeping meeting notes: these are the workflows the feature set is built around.

It also fits anyone who wants their notes to look like a notebook rather than a text file. The templates, covers, paper styles and shape tools all point in that direction, and the search and conversion features mean the handwritten approach does not cost you findability. If you keep journals, planners or trackers, the template library is likely to be the part you use most.

For someone who intends to write on a tablet regularly, that is easy to justify. The main question to settle first is which version to start with, given that the developer points new users toward Noteshelf 3.

Whether Noteshelf 2 is the right purchase for you

Noteshelf 2 is a capable, well-established Android note-taking app, and the 4.3 average from more than 16,000 ratings suggests it has found a settled audience. The combination of handwriting, PDF markup, audio recording, handwriting search in 65 languages and a 200-plus template library is broad, and the cloud sync and backup options make it practical for daily use.

My recommendation comes with one clear piece of advice: check Noteshelf 3 before buying. The developer recommends the newer app for new users, and it is a free download, so there is little reason not to look at both. Noteshelf 2 makes sense if you want this specific app, if you are already invested in its notebooks, or if the migration route in Settings appeals as a way to move across later.

Buy it knowing that the developer's own preference now points to its successor.

What's new in version 9.0.10

Bring all your notebooks, favorite pens, and custom templates to Noteshelf 3! Simply go to Settings and tap on “Migrate to Noteshelf 3”. ~ Noteshelf—Digital Note-Taking, Simplified! ~