[Sep 2025 Launch] New Toolbar Suggestions
Thread for feedback on the new toolbar.
Feel free to share any bugs or suggestions for improvement regarding the updated toolbar.
Thank you so much for sharing your feedback on the toolbar updates. Over time, we’ve addressed most of the points raised, and all the toolbar improvements we’ve shared and released are listed here.
Since this thread includes multiple ideas, some of which have already been addressed, it’s challenging to respond to each one individually or determine which topics need further attention. To keep the forum organized, we’ll be closing this topic for now.
If you have multiple ideas and would like them to be actionable, we recommend sharing them in separate threads (1 feature request = 1 thread). This helps other community members discover, discuss, and vote on ideas, and allows us to better understand which improvements are most important to you. We also recommend checking for similar existing ideas and adding your vote to strengthen them.
Please also review the forum for existing similar ideas and add your vote to consolidate feedback.
Once a feature goes live, we’ll update the relevant thread, and you’ll receive an email notification from the portal.
We look forward to hearing your ideas!
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Goodnotes Team
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Jacob Halka commented
Completely agree. It’s so annoying and distracting and offers less functionality than before, it needs to be an option to toggle on or off.
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Mujiboy commented
Looks like a cheap note taking app with this new toolbar. I am begging, bring an option to restore to the original toolbar. I hate having a giant bar in my peripheral vision when taking notes. This was the only reason I bought the subscription of good notes. I will not be renewing next year if this is how it is. This is something urgent for me, my life is changing so majorly as an frequent note taker on ipad.
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Johannes Steffen commented
The new toolbar completely compromises my experience of Goodnotes. If this is not resolved quickly, I am considering switching to a different note taking app.
If I could choose between the old and the new one I would apreciate it very much!
(It would also be nice if I could collapse the entire toolbar with a button or sth similar while using the Apple Pencil)
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Jim Bezdan commented
There needs to be a way to make the floating toolbar optional. Now I have to move the document up and down when referencing previous sections.
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Иванна Иванова commented
Please bring back the old version of the toolbar. Or at least be able to switch between versions, as the new one doesn't work for me. Thank you!
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Elyse Arseneau commented
100% agree. The new toolbar is FAR WORSE. I wanted the option to have MORE in the toolbar, not less or needing to navigate a second toolbar. This has added a lot more clicks to get to the features I want. This like, ruins the app for me, it's very disappointing. The only good thing is the option to draw lines with arrows easily - that's literally the ONLY positive thing I can find about the new toolbar. Idk if this was a change just for the sake of changing/updating but that's a terrible philosophy - if it ain't broke, don't fix it
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Emily McCauley commented
I would love the option for the original toolbar or new one because the typing feature is extremely difficult when forced to use the text boxes. Taking notes that need to be typed has become near impossible as what I’ve written seems to disappear after I’ve typed it. Middle of the term and using this app to take note it has been difficult to adjust and I’m beginning to use google docs as well for the typed note which sucks because I liked having everything in one place I don’t want to have to import all of my notes to good note when I could just type directly into the notebook before.
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Emily McCauley commented
I would love the option for the original toolbar or new one because the typing feature is extremely difficult when forced to use the text boxes. Taking notes that need to be typed has become near impossible as what I’ve written seems to disappear after I’ve typed it. Middle of the term and using this app to take note it has been difficult to adjust and I’m beginning to use google docs as well for the typed note which sucks because I liked having everything in one place I don’t want to have to import all of my notes to good note when I could just type directly into the notebook before.
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Jahzara Jones commented
It takes me a long time to get used to changes in general, but especially when they're this drastic. I'm a music major and I use goodnotes for my sheet music as well as all of my note taking for every other class. It's definitely the most used app on my ipad, and since paying for the full version, I've recommended it to almost everyone I know because I believed it was much more user friendly than competing apps (both for notetaking and reading music). This update to the layout of the home page-- AND most importantly the toolbar-- has only made it more difficult for me to find my documents, bookmark pages, and edit in any way. I understand that some people might like the floating toolbar more, but I personally hate everything about it and would love the option to toggle it back to the previous, more compact version. After this, I'm seriously considering switching apps because it's taking me so long to find what I need. I simply don't have the time or energy to completely relearn how to use one app every time there's an update.
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Maeve Khan commented
I completely agree. I understand that it’ll take some getting used to, as all new features do, but I think it should be more customisable. For example, I never use the pencil or tape features, so if I could hide them to only keep the ‘pens’ that I often use, it would make the user interface much better!
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Catherine Hoang commented
im actually mad and pissed off. it's literally mid semester of school and i'm in the middle of midterms. i literally can't do anything on the goodnotes app right not with this new useless update. I had to literally switch to typing on google docs. I'm already overwhelmed with midterms, and this really had to put the cherry on top.
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Erin Noel commented
nobody asked for this. let us change the toolbar color! customize the layout! not this crap.
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Erin Noel commented
this toolbar update is beyond frustrating. considering switching apps after using goodnotes for 6+ years. so so so annoying. PLEASE at least give us the option to use the old toolbar. i'm begging
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Paulina Sicińska commented
I need an option to reverse back to the previous toolbox. This update is awful and makes app almost unusable. I do all my uni notes on this and the need for functioning toolbox is critical!
Just give us option to switch back please. -
Paulina Sicińska commented
Please bring back the old toolbar!
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Paulina Sicińska commented
Please bring back old layout or at least the function to have old toolbox!
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unholy empire commented
Let us change the tab color please. The current blue one doesn’t fit my taste.
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Belva Wong commented
Completely agree! Since I use my GoodNotes to journal and schedule the most, the zoom window is the most pressed button. Not I can’t get to it quickly and it truly disrupts my flow. Considering changing to another app just because of this change.
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Germany No commented
Agree, the new toolbar is blocking the notebook's view (no matter top, left, right or bottom), and icons are tightly packed together, which makes it harder to use (and causes quite a nuisance)
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Matthew Wong commented
I don't get what the point of this update was. It fixed literally nothing and seems to have caused a lot of problems for others and myself. Please add a way to at least toggle it back to the old toolbar layout!