Apple Notes lag when taking handwritten notes on iPad Pro with Apple Pencil

If you try to break up the handwritten notes into multiple smaller sections, the lag disappears.

To do so, just make a section with normal text. This worked for me, i know it's annoying, but i think it's the only option right now. Here's what i mean:

Hope this helps you :)

yeah, I am having this problem as well, right after update to iOS 16.2. I depend on this for law school. Apple needs to fix this garbage right now; unacceptable. I will stop investing in apple products if this isn't fixed soon

I figured out the issue was related to how often Notes was updating or “fetching data.” Go into your settings and find “Notes.” What worked for me was changing the setting from push to fetch and setting it to fetch data every 15 minutes.

This has to do with your iCloud saves. If your notes are synced across multiple devices and you’re actively using them all, that’s when the frequent fetching occurs. I’ve got my notes set up across three devices myself.

Hope this tip sorts it out for you.

Why would Apple care😂 you’ve already bought their products. Having the same problem over here and it’s ridiculous. The only thing you want to do with the combination of notes and pencil is write text and it doesn’t work. I’m waiting for the day when some other company just overruns Apple. I would gladly sell all this crap and buy somewhere else.

I have the M2 iPad as well. Can you tell me what notes app did you finally settle on? My semester starts in a week and I intend to take notes on the iPad, due to the lag nature of notes I can’t use them ofc.

Same issue here! Adding a section resolved the issue. Thanks!

Hopefully this gets fixed though... so we avoid doing this trick

Sadly I am experiencing the same issue. I thought at first it was because I had an old iPad. So I bought a new one and I’m still having the same issue. I need an iPad for my cellular research class. I don’t want to have to start all over in my notes with a regular notebook. Nothing has worked. I have no apps open other than notes. I’ve forced restarted my iPad. I disconnected and reconnected my pencil. This is ridiculous.

Haven't you noticed degrading quality of Apple made apps? It is basically worse and worse every new release. Guess good developers don't want to work there anymore. Such bug is ridiculous, where are testers in this company???

I am in the same boat. Additionally, my laggy handwritten notes on ipad don’t sync with my iphone and the page just appears blank on iphone.

I tried multiple things as well and even tried syncing the note on another older gen ipad pro, but the problem remains. I think this might be a software issue since other ipad has a different chip altogether.

Experienced this problem too after updating to IpadOS 16.2. Apple Notes start to lag after certain amount of handwritten text added. Ipad also started loosing batery charge significantly faster, and sometimes Notes app just crashes (I lost some portion of note content, probably cause the cache was cleared).

To me, app in its current state is not usable. I am reverting to IpadOS 15 until this issue will be fixed. This is boggling that we pay so much money for this company products and they just don't work and don't get fixed after 3 months!

I’ve had the same problem on a brand new M2 IPad Pro using a 2nd gen Apple Pencil. At first i thought it was the IPad’s software fault, so i tried handwriting on every single app just to verify it. No lags at all. I feel relieved that it is “just the Notes app”, but i hope Apple will fix it with future updates.

When restarting your iPad, did you perform a forced-restart - or instead just a shut-down and restart?

If you haven’t already done so, a forced-restart may clear an isolated performance issue. After a simple restart, the ipad will resume in its previous state - whereas a forced-restart will reinitialise/restart all system processes.

• On an iPad with a Home button: Press and hold the top button and the Home button at the same time. When the Apple logo appears, release both buttons.
• On other iPad models: Press and quickly release the volume up button, press and quickly release the volume down button, then press and hold the top button. When the Apple logo appears, release the button.

Done forced restart as said above, tried toggling the iCloud on/off, tried deleting the notes app and reinstalling it. Nothing worked. What can be done next? This is so annoying and as the OP said that particular note becomes unusable because of the lag. I have to create a new note which works for some length and then the lag comes. What else can be done?

I have been experiencing same issue with 7th gen IPad after upgrading to 17

I have been having the same problem! I am so glad there is another person with it. I love apple notes but this is a really unappealing bug. More attention to the problem would greatly be apprieated! I believe something changed, maybe a global variable or a "notes" specific change with IOS 16. A possible memory leak created in each note maybe? More testing on this bug and a better answer/fix will help your company!

Also for me specifically, when exporting notes (when I open it in macOS) it doesn't export to a pdf properly and there are blank pages and not all the content is there. I found a work around from another post by using markup (on iPadOS) and then sharing that to my computer (running macOS). But I really shouldn't have to do this and it isn't perfect aswell! I'm running iPadOS 16.1 and am about to update to iPadOS 16.1.1 since I probobly should have done that first before posting this lol. Please bugs if you haven't already!

Thanks!