Turn your messy scrawl into easily readable text

If you prefer taking notes with a pen and are looking for an easy-to-use handwriting recognition app, MyScript Smart Note could be just what you’ve been waiting for.

An app for people who still enjoy writing with a pen

With MyScript Smart Note, you can either use a stylus or your finger to write notes, which are then automatically recognized and turned into interactive text. You can change the color, size, font and language of this text, as well as draw pictures, adjust the backgrounds and margins, and insert images and sounds.

The different commands (write, draw, erase, lasso text selection, and settings) are at the top of the screen and it’s a simple press-and-hold to select the different options. There are only ten workbooks available with the free version and you don’t get much text on each of these workbooks.

The gestures feature is a great addition – especially the scribbling over a word to delete it and drawing a vertical line to insert a space. They do need to be made more obvious and accessible though, as I kept forgetting what the gestures were but didn’t want to go through the whole tutorial again just to access them.

At the moment you can export to other note-taking applications, social media, Dropbox, as a PDF or via email, but a nice addition would be the ability to save as a word document.

Easy-to-use and simple interface

It’s a simple process to get started with MyScript Smart Note: after you go through a simple tutorial, you can immediately start writing. The commands at the top of the screen are clear and self explanatory. The gestures make this app a lot easier to use, with simple deletion of words, letters, spaces and lines.

But MyScript Smart Note is still better for taking a few short notes than writing any kind of lengthy text.

A lot of potential

There is loads of potential with MyScript Smart Note and, while at the moment it’s still better for short notes and it certainly isn’t perfect, with some improvements this could easily become one of the most useful apps on your device.