Looking for a Goodnotes alternative on PC? Goodnotes already runs on Windows, and even in the browser. The real question is somewhere else: the tool under your fingers when class starts.
Goodnotes on Windows: an app made for a stylus
Goodnotes was born on the iPad, for handwriting with the Apple Pencil. On Windows, it keeps the same idea: it’s made for a tablet or a touchscreen PC, with a stylus.
The free version lets you create and edit up to three notebooks. Exports carry a watermark, and sending a link to a notebook takes a paid plan. For a full year with six or ten subjects, you hit the three-notebook limit fast.
The real problem: on a laptop, you have a keyboard
Picture it. You’re in a lecture hall or a meeting, laptop open. If the screen isn’t a touchscreen and you don’t have a stylus, an app made for handwriting loses most of its point.
Writing with a mouse or a trackpad? Forget it. Nobody keeps up with a class that way. Buying a compatible stylus means having a screen that takes one, so sometimes a different computer.
And if you type faster than you write, a stylus would slow you down anyway.
What you want comes down to two things: the speed of a keyboard, and notes that look like a notebook. A word processor gives you the first. It takes away the second: a Word or Google Docs page looks like every other page, and it’s hard to find your way around when it’s time to study. We go deeper in Notebook or laptop for taking notes in class?.
Type and keep the look of a notebook: what Cayer does
Cayer starts from the other end. You type on your keyboard, and Cayer shows your text in handwriting, on real ruled paper: Seyès, Large grid, Small grid or Blank.
Accurate ruling, down to the millimeter
The sheet is an A4 page ruled like a real one. On Seyès paper (the ruling of French school notebooks), each square is 8 mm (about 5/16 in), split by three thin lines spaced 2 mm apart, with the margin on the left. Every line of text sits on a bold line, and your lowercase letters take up one of those 2 mm spaces, just like in a French school notebook.
It reads like a notebook, and you find your way at a glance. If you want to know where this grid comes from, read Seyès ruled paper: what are all those lines for?.
The keyboard to write, the mouse for the rest
You type the text. Everything else works with the mouse, your finger, or a stylus if you have one: highlight a sentence, draw an arrow, add a rectangle, a triangle or a set of axes that snaps to the grid.
You can also insert a table. Its rows line up with the lines on the page, and you jump from one cell to the next with the Tab key.
What you get compared to paper
- Type a word in the search, and Cayer takes you to the page where it’s written.
- Every page saves as you go, and follows you from one device to another as soon as you sign in.
- Print your notebook or export it as a PDF, for free.
- Cayer opens in the browser, on a computer or a tablet: nothing to install, nothing to update.
What it costs
The free plan gives you Seyès paper, two subjects and thirty pages, with no ads. Cayer Pro costs €24/year, or €2.99/month. It opens up the three other papers, unlimited subjects and pages, every handwriting style and the whole pencil case. The details are on the pricing page.
Stylus or keyboard
Goodnotes starts from a hand holding a stylus. Cayer starts from fingers on a keyboard. If you take notes on a laptop, without a stylus, the keyboard is the fastest way. Cayer is made for it: you type, and your page looks like a notebook.
Try it in ten minutes
Take a class you already have on paper, and copy the same page into Cayer, on your keyboard. Then look at three things:
- How long it took you to copy the page.
- How much you enjoy reading it again the next day.
- How fast you find a specific idea with the search.
And to type fast without losing track, these five methods will save you time starting with your next class.
In the end, the right tool is the one you open without thinking when the teacher starts talking.