Notability
Notability is a note-taking and annotation app for Mac that helps you write, sketch, record audio, and organize class or work notes.
What is Notability?
Notability is a note-taking and PDF annotation app for Mac designed for students, teachers, and professionals who want handwritten and typed notes in one workspace. It helps you capture lectures, meetings, study materials, and marked-up documents with tools for writing, drawing, highlighting, and inserting text. The app supports audio recording alongside notes, making it useful for reviewing spoken explanations with your written material. It also includes organization features such as folders, quick note access, and search-oriented workflows for larger libraries. On Mac, Notability supports keyboard shortcuts, multiple windows for working with more than one note, and desktop widgets for quick access. Ginger Labs also offers collaboration and cloud-connected workflows across Apple devices and the web for users who keep their notes available in more than one place.
Key features
- Create handwritten and typed notes in the same document
- Annotate PDFs and other imported study or work materials
- Record audio while taking notes for later review
- Organize notes into folders and quickly switch between them
- Open and work with multiple notes in separate windows on Mac
- Use widgets to create notes, access recent notes, or start recordings
- Collaborate on shared notes with other people in real time
- Search, navigate, and control common actions with Mac keyboard shortcuts
Review app leftovers with diCleaner
Inspect caches, support files, containers, and login items before cleaning.
Safety overview
Status: Mostly safe
Notability is a mainstream note-taking app from Ginger Labs, and its normal behavior is consistent with creating, storing, syncing, and sharing notes. It may access files, microphone input, iCloud or network services, and shared-note features when you use recording, import, sync, or collaboration tools. Those permissions fit the app’s purpose, but your notes can contain sensitive school, work, or personal information, so review sync and sharing settings before storing confidential material. If you use live collaboration or cloud features, confirm who has access to shared notes and whether recordings or imported documents contain private data.
Recommendation: Keep Notability if you actively use it for notes, document markup, lectures, meetings, or study workflows. If you no longer use it, removing the app may also remove local note data that is not synced or exported elsewhere, so back up important notes first. If you are unsure whether it still matters, open it once and confirm your notes are available in your preferred cloud or export location before uninstalling.
Common paths
/Applications/Notability.app
Cache paths
~/Library/Caches/com.gingerlabs.Notability
Support paths
~/Library/Application Support/com.gingerlabs.Notability
Preference paths
~/Library/Preferences/com.gingerlabs.Notability.plist
Container paths
~/Library/Containers/com.gingerlabs.Notability
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