Best OCR app for note taking with pen

Another vote for MyScript Stylus. Many of the self-contained apps allow you to take notes but either require a separate step to convert to text or they export as (uneditable) pdfs. Such apps may be adequate if you're happy with keeping all your notes in one ecosystem. But if your notes combine text and sketched graphs or charts, for example, and you want to be able to open/edit them in any platform, none of the the self-contained apps really do the job. Because MyScript Stylus is really a separate keyboard, it's app- and ecosystem-agnostic. I used it with Google Keep. In one note, I was able to sketch and write, and export the note directly into Google Docs as a fully-editable document. Only work-arounds have been that 1) while the text is editable, the sketches are not (they export as images within the note), and 2) all the sketches appear at the top of the note, so if you want them to correspond to specific points in your text, you'll need to do a little rearranging in the g-doc. But even with those issues, it has been by far the easiest and most flexible solution I've found.

A related App is MyScript Stylus - it does on the fly OCR by replacing the ipad soft keyboard with a stylus window. After an hour of testing I found it as good as the handwriting Input (not Ink which is limited outside of OneNote) support in Windows 10. It was marginally less accurate at first but made up for it by being more intuitive to correct and edit mistakes.

Testing was done on the Office 365 versions of Word - Windows and iOS respectively.

This was in an iPad Air 2 with dumb stylus. In theory it should be better with an Apple Pencil and a Pro. Possibly the best free app I have downloaded.

Search in the App Store for handwriting recognition apps (e.g. Notes Plus, 7Notes, WritePad, etc).

Since I last posted in this thread, I've gotten my iPad Pro and Pencil. Both GoodNotes and Notes+ will convert your handwritten notes to text. You select a section of handwritten notes and convert them. I'm not sure if that's "real time" enough for you. The results are highly dependent on the legibility of your handwriting.

In re: Evernote. Evernote itself does not support handwritten input on iOS (last I checked). However, handwritten notes added to the app as jpegs or pdfs or through an app such as Penultimate or by using a Livescribe pen are OCR'ed in the sense that they are searchable. They are not converted to type, though.

cima33 wrote:

I just got a pro and pencil. Just to confirm. MS OneNote does not support the pencil for writing, just for drawing?

I have no idea. I don't use it. Why don't you download it and try it out?

What's best is a matter of opinion. Search the app store, read the reviews and form your own conclusion.

Evernote sort of has OCR. Handwritten notes put into Evernote are made searchable but are not converted to type. Depending on what you want to do, that may be enough.

Sorry, tried OneNote a while back and couldn't stand it. I've never felt the need to try again.

My Script Memo is free and has good OCR support. It allows you to copy to clipboard and paste in another app. In fact, I used it to write this reply and my handwriting is terrible:)