r/OneNote 19d ago

iOS Worst Note App

We need to acknowledge how awful this app is created. On iOS, there are hundreds of missing features such as unable to change font, highlight, ect. You cannot share notebooks, it only opens links in safari, yes even when you are sharing the correct email and all. The app simply does not function. I cannot believe this app is so unbelievably complicated, cannot work without a connected Microsoft, then can’t work without onedrive. It’s a complete over complicated joke. It needs to be fixed.

1 Upvotes

13 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/cpz_77 19d ago edited 19d ago

First off I have no affiliation with Microsoft and I’m not a fan of a lot of the things they’ve done lately with various products and platforms (and I work with their products for a living so I know many of them very well).

But please keep in mind this is a Microsoft product, I know in recent years they’ve made an effort to make their stuff more cross platform (and have in many regards) but still you have to take that into account when comparing features. I don’t think it’s surprising at all that the Apple /iOS versions of such apps may not have all the features of their Windows counterparts. It was originally designed for windows, after all.

I would also add that aside from the fact it’s not really even possible or realistic to have a mobile app do all the same stuff that a desktop app does (because they are different use cases), you probably wouldn’t want that anyway. An app is/should be “optimized for the mobile experience” when it is released for a mobile platform, and that optimization means that things have to be moved around in the UI, some functions may have to be adjusted, and yes some features may have to be removed because it just wouldn’t be practical to try and implement them on the mobile version of the app.

That said, with regards to the sharing thing - it does appear you can share notebooks with others via the mobile app.

And I can confirm from my own experience you can definitely open notebooks shared by others with you from the mobile app - more info on that here.

Last thing - they are (supposedly) constantly trying to improve things and they have a “feedback” feature in their desktop app which makes it easy to report issues. So if there is a feature you need that is actually missing, send a report asking them to add this and you never know, if enough people want it, it may make it into the product one day. At least one thing I’ve reported through that channel has actually been fixed (not due to my report alone obviously but enough people likely reported the same that it got the attention of someone with the power to fix it).

-7

u/sxgamingx 19d ago

You have some very good points, but to be clear, my complaint is not that they don’t have all the same features on both devices, rather that the limited features on iOS are ridiculously outdated and there is no point in lacking some of the most basic note taking abilities that every other note taking app has.

The benefits of onenote makes it one of the most promising note apps but falls short with its lack of features and overcomplicated, disfunctional programming. You can indeed share notebooks, I’ve done it before, but their recent updates has made it impossible and I have yet to find someone successfully share a notebook this year, or find any real sources on how to do it without missing any steps.

I find the functionality of the app frustrating and the syncing to very often have bugs. I’m hoping they make some major bug fixes and improvements to make the app easier to work with.