by Marcel Dufresne
April 10, 2023
Notebooks is a multifaceted application that works as a word processor, text and markdown editor, file organizer, task manager, eBook creator and more. Create documents with styles, attachments, tables and checklists. Creating a task list or simple checklists is super easy. Since a writing task often leads to another, Notebooks might become your go-to app for document creation. A few text fragments, randomly created, can be combined into a chapter of a novel and output as a PDF or an eBook. Use it to make quick notes which might result in a set of tasks, which in turn require the collection and organization of research material. Notebooks easily handles all these jobs from the one place and allows you to focus on your work and remain creative. You can drop any kind of document into Notebooks. The ability to file them in nested books lets you structure your projects and details to your liking. By dividing large projects into nested sub-projects, it makes it easier for you to handle and cross-reference. Notebooks for Mac could become the central repository for the many documents you have stored or hidden away on your computer.
When you first launch Notebooks it will prompt you to set a Home folder. This is a regular folder on your Mac where Notebooks stores its documents. You can select any folder on your hard drive, a connected drive or a USB drive, and you are not required to select a new or empty one. It is okay to pick a folder which already contains documents. You can change that folder at any time from within Notebooks’ preferences without compromising your documents and data. This enables you to use multiple sets of documents and switch between them. So you could, for example, keep confidential documents on an encrypted disk image and other documents in your Documents folder. By changing the Notebooks Home you can switch between the sets on demand. I now have two Home folders. One is located on my computer and the other is set up to use Dropbox.
Notebooks stores your documents as regular files and books as folders on your hard drive. This is done so that your documents are always accessible from the Finder and other apps, and there is no need to ever worry about how to export your document at some later time. Items you delete from Notebooks are deleted from your hard drive and are transferred to the Trash. There are multiple options to add documents and folders to Notebooks: drag & drop files and folders from Finder or other applications into a book in Notebooks, copy or move the selected files and folders to the book in Notebooks, or use the Sharing… menu which is part of many applications and store documents, snippets and texts directly into Notebooks.
Notebooks can act as a note taker. It provides a clean area to add notes of any kind. You might see this as similar to the free Notes application that comes with MacOS. It has all the same features of Notes including tables and adding bullets. But it adds highlighting text and lets you use Markdown and plain text as well as formatted text. I was able to transfer the Markdown document I made in Notebooks to another Markdown application that I usually used for my reviews.
It is a simple but efficient word processor. It has most of the features of the more complex word processors like Pages. But being simpler in design, it is a lot easier to work with. I rarely use most of the menu items found in Pages and finding exactly what I want takes longer because of all the choices offered. The choices in the menu bar at the top of Notebooks formatted text window has almost everything I need for a document.
With all the different bullets available, you can use Notebooks to keep your ToDo lists on track. It will make a separate type of file called a Tasklist which has a number associated with the number of files in the book. You can also create a scheduled date for the completion of the task.
It is a PDF reader and convertor. This might appear as an emulator of the free Preview application but that would be missing the many extra features not found in Preview. A very useful one is the ability to convert PDF into simple text. That way you could edit the text content.
The most distinctive feature of Notebooks is the ability to create eBooks out of your documents. This feature is not one to be found in Notes or simple word processors. It is what definitely sets Notebooks apart from the rest. It also allows you create a table of contents for your work.
Notebooks easily lets you switch from a variety of text formats including plain text, markdown, PDF and HTML. For instance, I was able to use a saved URL web address and drop it into Notebooks. This book then acted as though it were a web browser. I could click on the links and move from one area to another without having to leave the Notebooks environment. I was able to copy the text to create a new document and then edit it.
With the Notebooks application, you can synchronize the contents of Notebooks between your iPad, iPhone and your Mac. This works almost instantaneously and so seamlessly that you can work on your documents on any device. You can sync your work using external servers such as Dropbox or WebDav or you can synchronize documents between Notebooks on your Mac and iPad or iPhone directly. Notebooks for Mac has a server built-in for that purpose. And starting with Notebooks for Mac 2.4 and Notebooks 11 for iPad and iPhone you can use iCloud to synchronize your documents. Of all these methods, I preferred using my Dropbox account. It was the least complicated to set up. If you use Notebooks on an iPad or iPhone and synchronize its contents to Dropbox, it is not difficult to pick up and work on the same documents with Notebooks for Mac.
Notebooks can act as a repository of your finished work. I have put a copy of all my reviews into one project. Now I can quickly search for any text that I used in the review to quickly locate the one I am trying to find. The search feature is a double-step process. First, you have to put the text you are looking for in the search field and tap return. Next, you must choose whether it is located in the title or the contents or both. After so many reviews, I sometimes forget which application does what.
Notebooks comes with a few other features. I like having a running word and letter count showing up at the bottom of the window. If you swipe right across an entry in the list (or right-click) you can mark it as favorite. You can make documents “stick” at the top of the list in regular books, independent of the selected sort order. Pinned documents are always listed first, with the most recently pinned item at the top.
Whether you’re a student, a professional writer, or someone looking to stay organized, Notebooks will work for you. With its intuitive interface and powerful features, you can easily create and organize notes and documents, set reminders, and with the ability to sync across all your devices, you can work from anywhere. Click here to obtain more info about this app. At around $50 this application is meant for the more serious user. Download a free trial and see if this applies to you. When trying out this application take a look at the menus and context menus of the outline, document list and the documents themselves (right-click or ctrl-click). It is also worth examining the options and settings in Notebooks’ preferences. It is a powerful application that incorporates many useful features of many other applications into one. Utilizing Notebooks will save you time. You no longer have to switch from one application to another and then back to what you were working on. You can stay on one window because Notebooks does it all!
Mause Reviews 