Highlights

  • New Widgets, configurable to show Due Tasks, Favorites and Inbox.
  • Improved Insert Location options.
  • New dialog for selecting photos from album.
  • New user interface for choosing text and background colors.
  • Using menus throughout, including a title menu for books and documents, summarizing the most important actions.
  • Shortcuts to toggle list style in plain text and Markdown.
  • Notebooks 12.3 requires iOS 14 or above.
  • Many further improvements and fixes.
  • For all the details, please read on.

Notebooks 12.3 is available on the App Store. If you have any questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Changes in Detail

New Widgets

  • A new set of widgets is available in notification center, on the home screen and – on iOS 17 – on the lock screen.
  • In the widget’s configuration you can set them to show due tasks, favorites or the content of your inbox.
  • The widgets are available in three sizes, and you can add multiple of them to your home screen or notification center. This way, you always have the most relevant documents at hand.

Insert Current Location – Improvements

  • When adding a location, Notebooks adds an Apple Map snapshot instead of Google Maps as preview, and adds name, address and coordinates of the location.
  • You can now add the current location from a book’s + menu, without creating a new document first.- The option to add the location to the current document is still available from the ••• menu.
  • Drag and drop (or copy paste) locations from Apple Maps into a book or document.
  • To convert notation and appearance of locations you inserted in earlier versions of Notebooks, just copy its link and use “Insert Object from Link” from a document’s ••• menu, or use a book’s “Insert from URL”.

Interface Improvements

  • Insert Photo from Album uses a new selection dialog which provides more flexible access to photos and albums.
  • Improved dialog for selecting text and background colors with access to a new color picker. This dialog also saves custom colors so they can easily be reused.
  • On iOS 16 and later, Notebooks uses menus instead of “alert sheets” whenever possible.
  • Books and documents now provide a title menu which, when tapped, provides the most relevant actions. The Process and Action menus still remain available.

Document List

  • The action Create PDF compiles multiple selected items into a single document and converts that to PDF. So this action no longer creates a PDF for each selected item.
  • Tasklists show the number of done tasks in the section title when Hide Done Tasks is active. Formerly, this number was presented in the footer only.
  • When copying multiple items in Notebooks or another app, Notebooks‘ New from Pasteboard correctly inserts all items as expected.

Formatted Documents

  • Pasting a URL shortens and “beautifies” it only if it is a link to a Notebooks document. In other cases, Notebooks inserts the URL as it is.
  • Fixed a glitch which accidentally inserted a space after the first character on a line when “insert closing characters” is enabled.
  • Addressing a rare case where formatted documents may fail to save text due to a memory issue.
  • More precisely open documents at the last viewed position, especially in long lists.

Markdown and Plain Text

  • There is a new option to toggle the list style for the currently selected text. Notebooks provides a dedicated extra keyboard button (with a checklist icon) and adds a keyboard shortcut ⌘L. The list style rotates between bulleted, numbered, Markdown task and none.
  • After using the action Inserting Markdown Link, Notebooks inserts the link and automatically selects the text in brackets so it can easily be edited.
  • New option to duplicate OPML documents as Markdown.

iCloud

  • The list of Recent Items now synchronizes across all devices when using iCloud sync.
  • Avoid local iCloud conflicts (conflicts where both versions have been modified on the current device) on iOS 17.

Additions to Revert to Previous…

As usual, Notebooks creates an invisible autosave copy of the current document the moment you start editing. When you dismiss the keyboard, you find a Revert to Previous… option in the document’s ••• menu. Here is what’s new in Notebooks 12.3:

  • From Revert to Previous… you can replace your document with the autosaved version (Revert), but now you can also choose to Keep both Versions. This is convenient when you are unsure about what has changed since last time you edited the document. (Choosing either of these options removes the autosave copy).
  • Notebooks no longer clears autosave copies at regular intervals, but instead leaves them at your disposal. Whenever you start editing a document, Notebooks replaces the autosave copy with a copy of the current document.

Notebooks 12.3 requires iOS/iPadOS 14 or Above

  • As we are continuously adopting new iOS technologies in Notebooks, it is necessary to drop support for older iOS versions from time to time.
  • Notebooks 12.2 continues to run on iOS 12/13.

Fixes and Corrections

  • Address the issue that the smart book Favorites may disappear when using iCloud.
  • Fix crash when using Remove from current Context.
  • Evernote importer detects and handles non-standard date formats.
  • Jumping to a document no longer accidentally opens the first pinned item in a book (iPad).
Notebooks 12.3 for iPhone and iPad