Handwriting for S-pen/Android

I have a Samsung galaxy active tab pro with an S-pen. Samsung's S-pen devices are, as far as I know, the best Android devices for writing (so I think most people who are writing on Android probably use an S-pen/Samsung device)

The only problem with writing on Android, though, is how tedious it is to export my handwritten notes to Amplenote to back them up/make them visible across devices (and it also takes a few button clicks and taps to even start a note). Basically, I can go through the hassle to write on it, but then I have to be sure to export what I write to amplenote, and at that point it's no longer editable, so those notes are hard to maintain, and thus lose most of their value besides as a scratch pad, which I could just use real paper if I wanted.

I don't know exactly what iOS handwriting support is like, because I haven't had a chance to use Amplenote on an apple device/iPad, but anything that lets me write directly in Amplenote on Android would be hugely appreciated (namely for Samsung android since I believe that's the main one people write on, but I'll leave the details to you or other people who have experience with this who want to comment)

I'm sure it's a given, but I also really want the ability to edit/keep writing after a pause, like what seems to be available for iPad now

I often like to write things down when working on things like:
Solving math equations
Mapping out my mental models of programs, systems, or data processing
Writing during meetings, i.e. writing on your device without having to look!

That last one I anticipate having to do/have occasion to do a lot starting a couple months from now, in particular, but is definitely a universal use case now that nobody uses flip phones anymore.

It would be nice I guess if some kind of OCR option were available too, either for real time conversion or post-processing, but since a lot of what I do doesn't involve words (ie I wouldn't want everything to automatically be treated as a word), it would be really helpful if such an option were easily toggleable (though not so easily that I might accidentally toggle it while writing without looking! Though I guess when I'm doing math and such is when I'm most likely to actually be looking at my device, and it's when I'm not looking at it that I'm most likely to be writing words I'd want OCR'd, so I guess if one assumes that while not looking at the device is when one would be most likely to toggle any kind of auto-conversion on, the risk of accidentally toggling such a feature is mainly in accidentally deactivating it, which could certainly be annoying, but not the end of the world, which would be where a post-processing option could also come to the rescue)

Suggested by weirdalsuperfan Sep 21, 2022

6 Comments

User #45127
8:50pm on September 23, 2022

I've got a Galaxy S22 Ultra, and I under-utilize the pen because S-Notes don't fit into my workflow at all. Being able to use it in AN would be amazing.

For optional extra credit (as my old mentor used to say), be able to import S-Notes in some fashion (preferably as editable handwriting notes). If you did that, I'd make use of the "write on the screen when the device is locked" feature to write things down quickly without unlocking my phone and starting a new note. The workflow I envision there is that if a new "screen off" note (or whatever Samsung calls it) is created, it would get auto-imported into AN as a handwriting note, preferably with some user-customized tag(s) assigned.

Want even more extra credit (assuming you do OCR)? Recognize handwritten tasks and bullets! If I draw a box in front of a line of text, make it a task; if I put a dot or a number in front, make it a bullet/numbered list.

OK, I'll stop now :-)

User #39880
8:17am on October 18, 2022

I also need this, I moved from IOS to Android because all of the restrictions on IOS to use only their products, and now on Android it doesn't have this feature :'(

User #48999
12:23am on January 23, 2023

it's almost as if a largely fractured market is much harder to support....

User #67925
10:09am on March 25, 2023

Big yes for me. I like writing only Samsung Tab S7 Plus and Note 9 phone. It's a fun way to write quick things down like a short todo list for the day. I am not too bothered about OCR as my handwriting sucks.

If implementing it, a fountain pen would be great, I definitely favour apps that have fountain pens over ones that don't. I use Keep and Samsung Notes and would like to completely replace them with Amplenote. Hoping it will also replace Google Calendar.

Being able to write over a background image would be nice too as I have a simple template I have got in the habbit of using for writing down a few things. I use it as an image or pdf as the background in other apps. This could open the door for people who make daily planner templates to make them for AN, which could be free promotion.

User #45127
1:03pm on September 25, 2023

I just got a Tab S9 Ultra tablet. So now, with my existing S22 phone, I've got 2 devices that could benefit from this!

2:52pm on January 16, 2024

It could be implemented by simply adding excalidraw integration

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