Notebooks

Notebooks are for writing and drawing by hand: class notes, sketches, your week's planner. You write with a stylus (with pressure and tilt), your finger or a mouse; you type when that's easier, paste images and link to what you have in Tylode. Everything saves on its own.

#What notebooks are

• They're personal. A notebook belongs to you, not to a workspace: it goes with you to every workspace you switch to, and nobody else sees it.
• They live in My drive, next to your files and your Studio designs, and you can keep them in your folders.
• They show up in search (Ctrl+K, or Cmd+K on Mac) by name and by what you've typed in them.

Open Notebooks in the Workspace group of the sidebar.

#The library

The library shows your notebooks with their covers. At the top you choose what to see: All, Favorites, Recent or Trash, and you can search by name.

#Create a notebook

Click New notebook and choose:

• Name, for example "History notes".
• Paper: the paper of its first page (see Paper).
• Background: Light or Dark.
• Size: A4 (210 × 297 mm), Letter (216 × 279 mm), A5 (148 × 210 mm) or Infinite, a page that grows downwards as you write.

Click Create notebook and it opens, ready to write.

#The notebook menu

Each notebook has a ⋯ menu with:

Delete forever erases the notebook with all its pages and images, and can't be undone.

#Tools

When you open a notebook, the bar at the top holds the tools and the rest of the screen is paper. Next to the tools you get what the chosen one uses: ink and thickness, or the kind of eraser.

A mouse or a finger has no real pressure: the stroke imitates it from speed (faster means thinner).

#Ink, thickness and your colors

Pick the ink from the colored circles and the Thickness with the slider. Each paper background remembers its ink: on dark paper you write in a light color, and vice versa. The highlighter has its own light colors so the underlined text stays readable.

The circle with the arrow opens Colors and thickness: the standard inks, Other color (any color) and Your colors. Save to your colors saves the color you're using; they're stored in your account (up to 12) and follow you to any device.

#Settings for each tool

Tap the tool you already have selected again to open its settings (tools that have them show a mark in the corner). They're saved to your account: the same in all your notebooks and devices.

• Pen, pencil and highlighter: ink, thickness and your colors, plus:
  • Stabilization (0 to 10): smooths the stroke and removes hand tremor. Higher is smoother, though the ink trails the stylus a little more. When you lift it, the stroke ends where you let go.
  • Pressure sensitivity (pen and pencil, with a stylus): at 100% the stroke gets thicker with pressure; at 0%, always the same thickness.
  • Straight stroke: each stroke comes out as a straight line from start to end. Made for underlining with the highlighter.
• Arrow: ink, thickness, One head or Two heads, and the shape: Follows your stroke (straight or curved, depending on how you draw it) or Always straight.
• Eraser: the type, the size and Highlighter only, which erases highlighting and leaves your writing.
• Text: the font and size new text starts with.

#Shapes

Draw a shape and, when you finish, hold the pen still for a moment without lifting it: the stroke turns into the clean shape. It recognizes lines, triangles, rectangles (and quadrilaterals), circles and ellipses. If what you drew doesn't look like any of them, it stays as it was.

#The eraser

• Whole strokes: erases every stroke it touches.
• Areas: erases only where it passes, splitting a stroke if it goes through the middle.

The slider changes its size. If your stylus has an eraser (the other end, or a button), it erases whole strokes without changing tools. Each eraser pass is a single Undo step.

#The lasso

Circle what you want to select (strokes, text, images, stickers, links). A tap on something selects just that. With a selection you can:

• Move it: drag from inside the frame.
• Resize it: drag a corner.
• Rotate it: drag the circle above the frame. With Shift, in 15-degree steps.
• From the menu below it: change the color (ink and text), Copy, Cut, Duplicate, Delete, for a single text, Edit text and, if there's handwriting, Transcribe to text.

#Transcribe to text

Circle your handwriting with the lasso and press Transcribe to text: in a few seconds it becomes a text box in a handwritten font, in the same place and the same ink. It keeps headings, lists (with their numbers), underlined words (as bold) and the breaks between ideas, and you can then edit it like any text. Anything illegible comes out as [?].

Highlighter strokes stay where they were. Undo (Ctrl+Z) brings the handwriting back exactly as it was.

Transcription is done by AI and counts toward your monthly transcription limit: one page each time you transcribe.

With a keyboard: the arrows move it (with Shift, 10 at a time), Del deletes it and Esc deselects.

#Text

With Text, tap where you want to write. The box grows as you type and, when it reaches the paper's right margin, wraps the line: it never runs off the page. On lined paper each line sits on a rule, just like handwriting.

Above the box you get the font (Sans, Serif or Handwritten), the size, the indent and the color, plus formatting: bold, italic, underline, heading (each tap switches between heading, subheading and normal text) and bulleted or numbered lists. Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U work too. Tab indents the text and Shift+Tab outdents it; Esc or Done finishes. To change a text, tap it with Text. What you type saves on its own and search finds it.

#Images, stickers and links

The Insert button (the picture) has:

• Image: choose one or several. You can also paste them (Ctrl+V) or drag them onto the page. Large photos are reduced before uploading. They count toward the storage of the workspace you're in, like the files in My drive.
• Sticky note: a post-it for margin notes. It appears in the right margin of the page you're looking at and you type straight into it; while you do, the text bar also shows its colors: the eight soft tones of the palette (new notes start in wheat). You can write on it by hand and move it with the Lasso. The × in its corner removes it with one tap (and Undo brings it back). When converted to a Tylode page, it comes out as a quote.
• Sticker: large emojis to mark, cheer on or decorate.
• Link: search for a page, a board, a whiteboard, a Studio design or another notebook. On the page it shows as a tag; tap it to go there.

Images and stickers sit on the paper, so you can write on top of them. Move, rotate and resize them with the Lasso.

#Undo and redo

Undo and Redo have no limit and undo the last thing you did, whichever page it was on. The history lasts while the notebook is open.

#Copy and paste

Ctrl+C copies what the lasso selected and Ctrl+V pastes it into the page you're looking at, even in another notebook. If you paste text from elsewhere, it becomes a new text box.

#Pen only

With Pen only on, only the stylus writes: your finger scrolls the page and a resting palm leaves no marks. It turns on by itself the first time you write with a stylus, and you can turn it off whenever you like.

Even when it's off, any other touch is ignored while the stylus is writing.

#Getting around the notebook

Pages turn sideways, one at a time, like a paper notebook. Drag the page to one side (with two fingers, with one finger if Pen only is on, or sideways on the trackpad) and let go: if you moved it at least 40%, it turns to the next one; if not, it springs back. Within a page you move freely when zoomed in.

At the bottom center you have ‹ 3 / 12 ›: the arrows turn the page and, if you tap the number, you can type which page to go to.

If you prefer pages one below the other, continuously, switch with the two-sheets button (next to the thumbnails one). It's saved to your account.

#Read-only

The lock at the start of the bar makes the notebook read-only: you can look, turn pages and zoom, but the stylus, finger and mouse don't write or erase anything (for reviewing without fear of marking it). Tap it again to write. It's remembered per notebook.

On a phone, a notebook always opens for reading, because scrolling with your finger would also draw. Tap Edit (or the lock) to write and Done to go back to reading, just like whiteboards and Studio. On a computer it opens the way you left it.

#Keyboard shortcuts

? opens the full list. The most used:

On Mac, use Cmd instead of Ctrl.

#Pages

• Pages (the panel button) opens thumbnails of every page, with what you've written. Click one to go to it.
• The n / total counter tells you which page you're on.
• New page adds a page right after the one you're looking at, with the same paper.

#Organize pages

In the panel:

• Drag a thumbnail to move the page.
• Its ⋯ menu has Page title, Bookmark, Duplicate, Move up, Move down and Delete page.
• At the top you choose what to see: All, Bookmarked or Index (the pages with a title, like a table of contents).

Deleting a page shows a notice with Undo in case it was a mistake. A notebook always keeps at least one page.

#Paper

There are seven papers, each in light or dark:

Change paper changes the paper of the page you're looking at. What you've already written stays where it is.

#PDF

Open a PDF in a notebook and write on it: lecture notes, a book, a form. The PDF itself is never touched; what you write goes on its own layer.

#Open a PDF

• A new notebook: in the library, click From a PDF and choose the file. The notebook takes the file's name and has one page per PDF page, at the same size.
• Inside a notebook: in Insert (the picture button), choose PDF, or drag the file onto the page. Its pages go right after the one you're looking at.

When you pick the file, it asks how to import it:

• As a PDF: each PDF page, exactly as it is, to write on.
• As text: the PDF's text becomes formatted text boxes (headings, paragraphs, lists) in a neutral font, on blank sheets of the same size, so you can edit or rework it. The PDF's images (photos, charts) come along in their place, and two-column pages keep their columns. It doesn't use AI: a scanned PDF has no text to bring over.

Every tool works on a PDF. New page after a PDF page adds a blank sheet of the same size for your notes. Change paper isn't available on a PDF page: the PDF is its paper.

PDF text is included in search (Ctrl+K). PDFs count toward the storage of the workspace you're in, like images.

#Export

Export (the down-arrow button) downloads the notebook:

• PDF, of The whole notebook or Just the page you're looking at. It's vector: your writing scales without pixelating, pages that came from a PDF come out exactly as they were (their text can still be searched and copied), and typed text goes in as text. Links can be clicked.
• PNG: an image of the page you're looking at.

#Share a notebook

Your notebooks are private until you share them. Open the notebook and, next to its title:

1. Click Share.
2. Choose the Permission (Can edit or Can only view), how many Uses the link has (Once, As many as you say… or Unlimited) and when it Expires (In 1 day, In 7 days or Never). The default is can edit, once, 7 days.
3. Click Create link and copy it and send it to whoever you want.

Whoever opens the link with their Tylode account goes straight in to the notebook. If they're not signed in, they sign in or sign up first and come back to the link automatically. Each new person uses up one use; opening it again when you already have access doesn't count. An expired or used-up link says so and gives no access.

The same panel lists the Links that are still active, with their uses and expiry, so you can Copy them (on a phone or tablet, in the browser, also Share…, which opens your device's share menu) or Revoke them, and the People with access, whose permission you can change or Remove. Revoking a link doesn't take access away from people who already joined with it: do that under "People with access". Only the owner can share.

With Can edit, you both write in the same notebook and each sees what the other draws or types right away, including pages being added or deleted. With Can only view, the notebook opens read-only and the lock can't be turned off. Notebooks shared with you appear in the library, under All, in Shared with you, and in My drive. Only the owner can move it, send it to the trash or delete it.

#Convert to a Tylode page

Turn what's in the notebook into a workspace page, to edit, share or link like any other. The Convert to page button sits at the start of the notebook toolbar, and each notebook in the library also has Convert to a Tylode page in its menu.

Choose Whole notebook or Only page you're looking at, and the new page gets everything in the order it has on paper, top to bottom:

• Handwriting, transcribed to text with its headings, lists and bold.
• Typed text, as is, with its formatting.
• Images, in their place.
• The text of pages that come from a PDF, turned into headings, paragraphs and lists (without repeated headers and footers), like the importer does.

If you convert several pages, each one starts with its title (if you gave it one) or with a divider.

Before starting, the dialog tells you how many handwritten pages it will transcribe and how many transcriptions you have left this month. Only pages with handwriting count: typed text and PDF text don't. If you don't have enough, convert just the page you need or wait until the 1st.

#Saving

Everything saves on its own, stroke by stroke. The right end of the bar shows the status:

• Saved: everything is in the cloud.
• Saving…: the latest changes are uploading.
• Offline: will save when you're back: there's no connection; keep writing, and what's pending uploads as soon as the connection returns.

If you try to close the tab with something not yet uploaded, the browser warns you.

#Limits by plan

Pages per PDF: 20 on Free, 500 on Pro and 2000 on Premium.

Transcribed pages per month (with Transcribe to text or when you convert to a page handwriting): 30 on Free, 500 on Pro and unlimited on Premium. They reset on the 1st of each month.

Notebooks in the trash don't count, but restoring one needs a free slot. Images and PDFs count toward the storage of the workspace you're in. See Plans to compare plans.