The digital notebook for students and teachers
Free · Privacy-friendly · Developed with teachers
Handwritten notes with Apple Pencil®, PDF and Office import, real rulers and set square, shared notebooks and direct integration with school cloud providers like BayernCloud Schule, Nextcloud and NetMan for Schools — all in one app, without subscription, without ads.
Coming soon to the App Store®
NiblyNotes is developed in Germany — together with teachers. We took care to include every function needed without overloading the app. Privacy-friendly school cloud providers are integrated directly. The app is completely free, with optional support for the developers.
Developed in Germany. No dependency on third-party servers for your notebook content.
Every function was tested in real classroom use — enough features for school needs, without unnecessary bloat.
BayernCloud Schule, Nextcloud and NetMan for Schools are available directly in the app — no detours.
No ads, no subscription, no tracking. The app has a supporter area where users can buy the developers a coffee. We are also actively seeking public funding to keep the app free in the long term. Even without funding, our promise stands: NiblyNotes will remain free for at least 5 years.
All notebook content is stored locally on the device. Cloud connections are optional and only use the accounts you set up yourself.
The entire interface is available in both German and English, and follows the system language automatically.
The start screen of NiblyNotes is a bookshelf: every notebook gets its own cover colour and is clearly displayed. Create folders for subjects, classes or courses and sort the notebooks into them.
Four different pen variants, each available in many colours and thicknesses:
The lasso selects an area, which you can then move, scale, rotate, delete — or paste somewhere else. Perfect for adjusting drawings later.
Draw a shape freehand — NiblyNotes detects and corrects it automatically:
Lines and arrows are not just drawn — they can also be edited: endpoints are draggable, and multiple lines can be joined into polylines.
Every page in a notebook can be zoomed freely — no matter the page format. Whether portrait or landscape, A4 or custom: pinch to zoom in, pan with one finger to move around. This makes detail work just as comfortable as overview work — perfect for corrections, fine drawing or showing things on the projector.
Pinch with two fingers to zoom in or out — the page enlarges smoothly. Zoom works dynamically in any page format; the previous app version was limited to a single fixed level. Writing with the Apple Pencil® stays active while zoomed, so even tiny details can be edited precisely.
Zoom writing opens a magnified writing panel at the bottom of the screen. Whatever is written there at a comfortable size lands neatly and small on the notebook page. Ideal for students with large handwriting — and for clean notes inside narrow rulings.
A selection rectangle on the page marks where the text will end up. The bottom panel shows that exact spot strongly enlarged. The Apple Pencil® writes there at a relaxed size — on the notebook page, the writing lands precisely scaled.
The curtain fully covers the notebook page. A handle at the top edge of the curtain lets you pull it downwards step by step — revealing the content from the top down. Like a classic blackboard with a flap.
The teacher has prepared a notebook page with tasks or a step-by-step solution, but only wants to show parts of it at a time. With the curtain, the whole page is hidden first. Using the handle at the top edge of the curtain, the curtain is pulled downwards smoothly whenever the class should see the next step.
The line and grid patterns in NiblyNotes aren't arbitrary designs — they follow the standardised spacing for school notebooks. Measure on the Apple® iPad® with a real ruler and you'll see: the distances are 100 % accurate.
Ruler, set square and compass in NiblyNotes work just like the real tools from your pencil case. Draw along the edge, rotate with two fingers, and combine the tools for more complex constructions.
When you draw with the pen along the ruler or set square, your stroke snaps to the edge — just like in real life. Perfectly straight lines and precise angles.
With two fingers you can move and rotate the ruler or set square at the same time — just like you would with a physical tool. No need to switch modes.
The ruler can be attached to the set square. This enables the classic parallel shift: the set square slides along the ruler, and every drawn line is exactly parallel — just like in geometry class.
In addition to the ruler and set square, a compass is available. Set the radius, place the centre point, draw a circle or arc — like a real compass from the maths toolbox. The circle can then be turned into a permanent stroke with a tap on “Lock in”. It then becomes part of the page and can be erased with the regular eraser — perfect when guide lines should disappear later.
In addition to handwriting, you can add text boxes anywhere on the page. Ideal for headings, task descriptions or table labels. Formatting can even be applied per word.
Photos from your library or taken straight from the camera — every image runs through the built-in photo editor where you can crop, rotate and adjust before it lands on your page.
The built-in scanner lets you capture worksheets, blackboard photos or pages from a book directly with the iPad camera and add them as notebook pages. The app detects the document edges automatically, corrects the perspective and delivers a clean, straight image — no shadows, no distortion.
Worksheets, task sheets or presentations can be added directly as a page background. Multi-page documents are automatically spread across multiple notebook pages.
Microsoft Word and PowerPoint are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. NiblyNotes is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft. Conversion uses the document handling capabilities available on your device.
Teachers can paste video links directly into a notebook page. The video appears as a neutral placeholder — the connection to the provider is only established when the user taps "Play". NiblyNotes uses the most privacy-friendly embed mode each provider offers.
Inserting a video link merely creates a neutral placeholder with a play symbol on the notebook page. At this point no connection is made to the provider. The iPad only opens a connection to the video provider when the teacher actively taps "Play". NiblyNotes uses the most privacy-friendly embed mode each provider offers — no tracking cookies are set before active playback.
Note: A detailed description of the data flows when external videos are played is available in the privacy policy.
Smart page management: new pages appear where you want them, and nothing gets lost by accident.
The page overview opens as a sidebar on the right and shows every page of the notebook as a thumbnail. Tap a thumbnail and the editor jumps straight to that page — no more swiping through the whole notebook.
NiblyNotes saves you the detour through "Share". Print, send, save and upload directly to your school cloud — all from one app.
Print or send entire notebooks, or selected pages, with a preview that lets you decide what really gets shared.
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When sending or saving, you can choose to export the page unedited. Perfect for teachers: the master solution you wrote on the worksheet doesn't need to be shared with students — they get the clean, empty template.
The highlight: upload notebooks or individual pages directly from NiblyNotes to a school cloud and, if wanted, share them with a person in one go. The detour "save file → open cloud app → upload → share" is gone.
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When the iPad is mirrored to a projector or Apple TV via AirPlay or cable, NiblyNotes automatically switches into presentation mode: the external display only shows the notebook page, without the toolbar or any menus. On the iPad itself, everything stays fully usable.
As soon as an external display is detected, an extra button appears in the toolbar. Use it to switch any time between presentation mode (only the page, no menus) and standard mirroring (everything is mirrored, including controls) — depending on whether the class should follow along or a colleague needs to demo something.
One tap on the freeze button locks the image on the projector while the teacher carries on working on their iPad. Ideal for preparing the solution on the next page or quickly looking something up — without the class seeing it.
In fullscreen mode the entire toolbar, the notebook title and the top navigation bar disappear. Only a small floating mini-toolbar with the three most important tools stays visible: pen, tool switch and eraser. The whole screen is now available for the page itself.
With Classroom mode, teachers can hand out worksheets to the class and collect student submissions — entirely locally, over the school's Wi-Fi. A QR code, a four-digit password, done. No server outside the classroom, no cloud, no login credentials.
The teacher opens a session in the Classroom menu and selects a notebook and the pages to share. NiblyNotes shows a QR code along with the local IP address and an automatically generated 4-digit password.
Collecting student submissions is just as easy. The teacher selects a submissions folder beforehand; all incoming files land there automatically and can be processed immediately.
If the teacher closes the Classroom window between two lessons, the app automatically offers to resume the last session next time it's opened — with all previous settings: notebook, pages, format, submission folder.
The green "Classroom" button on the home screen and inside the notebook editor opens a menu with three clearly separated actions:
The built-in cloud browser shows the files in BayernCloud Schule, Nextcloud or NetMan for Schools. A worksheet can be opened directly, with the choice to create a new notebook from it or append it to an existing one.
Share a notebook and collaborate — for group work, class projects or teacher collaboration. Synchronisation runs through your personal iCloud® — no third-party servers.
There are two ways to invite participants:
The shared notebook function exclusively uses Apple®'s iCloud® as infrastructure. There is no publisher server in between that could see the content.
iCloud and Apple are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. NiblyNotes uses the iCloud infrastructure through the developer interfaces provided by Apple (CloudKit).
All participants work in their notebook as usual. There's just one difference:
When a sharing session ends — whether the owner stops it or a participant leaves the session — everyone keeps their current state. The notebook moves back into the participant's own notebooks and can be used as normal.
Teachers can see their students' notebook pages directly on the iPad — without a cloud account, without sign-in credentials, fully end-to-end encrypted. Students decide for themselves which notebooks they share, and they can pull a teacher's annotations straight into their own notebook.
The teacher opens "Student notebook viewing" and creates a class. NiblyNotes generates a QR code that the students scan to sign in. Already signed-in students appear in a list on the right with the time of their last activity. The number of pages that can be viewed is configurable per class — typically the last 5 pages, so only the current work is visible.
The class detail view shows the QR code for sign-in, the list of signed-in students with the time of their last activity, and the class settings. From here you can change the number of viewable pages, regenerate the QR code or delete the class entirely.
From the class overview, the teacher opens a student's notebook and sees every shared page. With the Apple Pencil®, hints and corrections can be drawn directly on the page. The annotation appears shortly after in the student's own notebook.
Ticks, corrections, a "Very good" with a smiley — the annotation is drawn straight onto the student's page and transferred a moment later automatically to the student's iPad. Digital correction now feels like the familiar marking-up of a paper notebook.
Students scan the teacher's QR code — the class is connected. Per notebook they decide whether it becomes visible to the teacher. Note: only the last X pages are shared (X is set by the teacher), all other pages stay private. Sharing can be revoked at any time.
Teacher annotations appear automatically in a central overview. Per notebook the affected pages are visible — including the annotation as a red layer over the student's own page. With one tap on "Insert into notebook" the annotated page can be pulled in as an image — the integrated photo editor opens, and the desired area can be cropped before it is inserted into the student's own notebook.
The feature is built around privacy from the ground up. Pages and annotations are encrypted on the iPad with a class-specific key before they ever reach the server. The server only ever sees encrypted data — class names, student names, notebook titles and images do not appear in clear text. Even the hosting provider cannot do anything with the stored data. Only the teacher and the students who scanned the QR code of the same class can read the content.
Schools can run the server on their own school website — a simple PHP web hosting is enough. The (encrypted) data then stays entirely in the hands of the school. Anyone who does not want to run their own server can use the NiblyNotes server we run — hosted in a data centre in Germany.
NiblyNotes can back up your notebooks automatically to your school cloud. Set it up once in the settings — the backup then runs daily in the background.
Three privacy-friendly cloud providers for educational use are integrated directly in NiblyNotes.
The school cloud offering of the Free State of Bavaria — specifically for Bavarian schools. Login is handled via your school's official ByCS sign-in procedure.
The free, open-source cloud solution many schools self-host. NiblyNotes uses the official Nextcloud login with app password — secure and standards-based.
The school network solution by H+H Software. User and teacher drives as well as exchange shares are supported directly. (Supported from NetMan for Schools version 6 onwards.)
Trademark notice: The integration with BayernCloud Schule, Nextcloud and NetMan for Schools is provided without support or official partnership from the respective providers. NiblyNotes uses only the publicly available interfaces of the cloud providers.
"BayernCloud Schule" is an offering of the Free State of Bavaria. "Nextcloud" is a registered trademark of Nextcloud GmbH. "NetMan for Schools" is a trademark of H+H Software GmbH. All product names, logos and trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. They are named here solely for the purpose of describing compatibility.
NiblyNotes is coming soon for Apple® iPad® on the App Store®. Free, no subscription, no ads.
Coming soon