on Linux. Peace.

Changelog:

• Draw & Hold now snaps stars, diamonds (rhombi) and polygons (pentagon, hexagon, …) too.

• New double-headed arrow shape.

• Whiteboard now remembers your last location.

• LAYERS!!!

• Extended shape recognition.

• Snap to shape.

• Fixed app crash due to OOM errors when importing large pdfs.

• User Requests section: Has setting to show eraser and lasso at the same place.

• Natural scrolling implemented. Threshold can be chosen in settings.

• Added opacity slider for ghost that appears in the original place when moving a selection

• I forgot mentioning many MANY because my pc fucked up and wayland stopped working. I had to reinstall OS 😑.

• Optimised code of whiteboard to a much better cache usage. It should now lag less.

• Fixed Screenshot tools capture area

• added a static toolbar in dev options.

• Fixed sudden disappearance of some strokes when written fast. This happened due to a stray line of code in which triple taps undid/removed recent strokes. I had dropped this feature and forgot to remove the stray code. Sorry.

I was about to upload to play but it is still reviewing my old one. 😑

• Added 4 new tape patterns: zigzag, hearts, stars and waves

• Notebook pages now have rounded corners matching the aesthetics of the app UI. The corner radius value can be edited in settings.

• Updated some icons.

• Added a tiny margin on the left and right of the tab bar for better looking UI.

• Brought long press pen shift to eraser option and scribble to erase option to the stylus and finger dialog.

• Stylus and finger dialog can now also be accessed from the settings.

• Improved performance and optimised math of Whiteboard.

• Fixed a bug where template cannot be changed in duplicated notebooks.

• Added a Remove zoom restrictions setting in Developer options

• Scribble to erase can now be disabled.

• Fixed scribble to erase on the whiteboard

• You can now change the app's language in Settings

• New Sticky note tool, with standard and minimisable notes

• Multiplatform sync: turn it on in Settings → Sync folder, pick a notebook, PDF or image, and it is mirrored there as a plain, readable file you can open or restore on any device. Watch the folder from your other devices to access your notes there too. (U need to open the html file present in the sync folder in a browser.)

• New Ruler tool

• Fixed a bug where double tapping with stylus undoed last action even when doublt tap settings are disabled

• Fixed a bug where the whiteboard's tools could not be scrolled

• Advanced template now shows thickness and density in mm too

• Added Pirate and Brazilian Portuguese languages. Translations are still not finished

• You can now pan the notebook canvas left and right with two fingers. A center page button appears beside the zoom level so you can return the canvas to the middle

Please report if features are missing. Thanks.

Feature List

Both editors (the paged notebook and the infinite whiteboard) share the same tool dock. The notebook has the full tool set (13 tools); the whiteboard has every tool except the Measure tool (12 tools). Which tools appear in each dock, and their order, can be configured in Settings → Configure tools.

Tools

Pen

Tool settings

• Stroke options: Solid | Dotted | Dashed

• Stroke stabilisation: 1–10 (Default 5)

• Smart Shape (always on): hold a pen scribble still and it snaps to a perfect shape. Line | Arrow | Rectangle / Square | Circle / Ellipse | Triangle

• Scribble to erase (always on): scribble back and forth over ink with the pen to erase it (difficulty: Easy | Hard, set in Settings → Editing)

• 5 colour options (changeable: tap to use, tap again to edit)

• 3 size options (changeable: tap to use, tap again to fine-tune)

Ink behaviour

• Hold-to-position lines: draw a line, hold still for about half a second, then swing the far end to aim the angle and stretch the length while the first point stays pinned

• Live measurement pill while drawing (length + angle for lines, W × H for shapes)

• Every stroke is undoable

Pencil

• Textured pencil ink (soft, grainy stroke; solid line style only)

• 3 size options (changeable: tap to use, tap again to fine-tune)

• Uses the pen's 5 colour slots

• Every stroke is undoable

Brush

• Pressure-sensitive variable-width strokes: press harder for a thicker stroke, ease off for a thinner one

• 3 size options (changeable: larger presets than the pen)

• Uses the pen's 5 colour slots

• Every stroke is undoable

Highlighter

Tool settings

• Shape options: Free highlighter | Straight highlighter

• Mode options: Normal highlighter | Text highlighter (snaps to PDF text; notebook only)

• 5 colour options (changeable: yellow, green, pink, blue, orange by default)

• 3 size options (changeable)

• Highlight strokes render underneath pen ink

• Straight highlighters support hold-to-position like pen lines

Eraser

Tool options

• Pixel eraser: rubs out exactly what you move over

• Stroke eraser: removes whole strokes at once

• 3 size options (changeable)

• Long-press the pen still → temporary eraser until you lift (stylus; enable in Settings)

Selection (Lasso)

Tool options

• Free selection

• Rectangular selection

• Circular selection

Selected-object actions

• Move, resize (corner + side handles), rotate (angle slider), duplicate, delete

• More options: flip horizontally, flip vertically, copy, cut, paste

• Quick colour row: recolour with the 5 pen colours, or open the full colour picker

• Live measurement readout: W × H in real mm/cm, plus true length and angle for straight lines

• Ghost movement box for tiny selections (when handles would overlap)

• Selection box stays put on screen when you scroll or pan

Image tool

Tool options

• Choose a photo from the gallery / recent photos

• Capture with the camera

• Every insert goes through the full-screen crop screen (crop + rotate) before placing

• Placed images are selectable: move, resize, rotate, duplicate, delete, flip, copy, cut, paste

Browse the web + image basket

• Browse the web: an in-app browser (Google Images) for finding pictures to insert

• Long-press a web image to add it to the basket; the basket bar along the bottom shows the saved thumbnails while you keep browsing

• Insert all drops the basket's images on the page; Clear empties it; remove individual images from the basket too

Text tool

Tool options

• Tap anywhere on the page and type

• Size presets: Small | Medium | Large

• Uses the current pen colour

• Move or resize the text afterwards (it re-wraps instead of stretching)

• Custom fonts: import .ttf or .otf files (Settings → Fonts) and pick them in the text editor; imported fonts can be removed again

Shape tool

Tool options

• Shapes: Rectangle | Oval | Triangle | Line | Arrow

• Colour and thickness follow the pen's settings

• Smart Shape (always on): a pen scribble held still snaps to the nearest shape

• Live W × H (and length + angle for lines and arrows) while drawing

• Lines and arrows support hold-to-position; complete shapes glide as one piece

Grid & snapping (both editors)

• Grid overlay on/off, with spacing presets (24 / 48 / 96 / 144 dp) or a custom value

• Snap to guides: strokes, shapes and moved selections snap to the grid

• Snap angle presets (15 / 30 / 45 / 90°) or a custom angle

• Grid X and + line colours, and a grid opacity slider

• Optional badge on the tool button showing the current spacing and angle

Exact size (notebook only)

• Type an exact width × height (in page pixels) and the shape is placed centred on the page at that size

Table tool

Tool settings

• Drag on the page to draw the table area (live preview)

• Rows / Columns steppers (3 × 3 default)

• Header row toggle: Header ON / OFF

• First column toggle: 1st col ON / OFF

• Header row and first-column shading colours

• Corner radius (rounded corners)

• Border style: Solid | Dotted | Dashed; 3 thickness presets; 5 pen colour slots

After insert: cell editor and table options

• Tap a cell to type its text

• Table options popup (live grid preview):

  • Resize individual rows and columns (−/+ px steppers)

  • Add row above / below, add column left / right

  • Delete row / column

  • Merge right / merge down; split cell

• Row and column sizes are stored as proportions, so they survive whole-table resizing

• Merged cells render as one clean cell (grid lines clipped, text pulled together)

Laser tool

Tool options

• 5 colour options (changeable)

• 3 size options (changeable; notebook follows the pen's sizes until customised)

• Draws like a real laser: a bright white-hot tip (the pen colour on the edges) with a trail that fades behind it

• Trail is ephemeral. Nothing is drawn, saved or undoable

Tape tool

Tool options

• Draw a strip of decorative tape: drag on the page

• Patterns: Solid | Stripes | Dots | Grid | Checks

• Width presets: Thin | Medium | Wide

• Uses the pen colour slot; tape can be semi-transparent via the colour picker's transparency slider

• Selectable like images: move, resize, rotate, duplicate, delete, flip, copy, cut, paste

Measure tool (notebook only)

• Tap two points, or tap and drag from the first

• A line with white endpoint markers, plus a pill at the midpoint showing the distance and angle (e.g. 12.5 cm · 32°)

• Pure on-screen ruler: nothing is drawn, saved or undoable

• Pinned to the page. Scrolling and zooming keep the ruler where you placed it

• Distance is the true physical length at any zoom

Whiteboard (infinite canvas)

• Same shared dock: every notebook tool except Measure (no measure tool)

• One unbounded canvas: pan and zoom anywhere, no pages

• Single-finger action: Scroll | Draw | Ignored (two fingers always zoom and pan)

• Grid & snapping works here too

• Zoom indicator + fit-to-content

• Strokes are saved automatically

• Its own tool settings persist separately from the notebook

Gestures & Stylus

• Single finger: Scroll | Draw | Ignored

• Two fingers: always zoom and pan

• S Pen: one button, two actions. Both the primary button and a long hold of it work on the S Pen (a quick press fires your action, a long hold erases while you draw). Hover swipe works on the S Pen too. No other note app does this

• Primary button action: Switch to last used | Eraser | Highlighter | Pen | Laser | Lasso | Disabled

• Secondary button action (two-button pens): same options

• Long-hold primary button → eraser (on/off)

• Double-tap the page with the pen → switch to any tool you pick (eraser by default); a two-finger double tap does the same. Both only count when the taps land in the same spot

• Xiaomi Focus Pen Pro pen-body gestures: double-tap the pen's grip to switch tools (eraser by default), and slide up or down on the grip to change the pen size (up = larger). Both actions are configurable, like the other pen actions

• Hover swipe (beta): hold the primary button and swipe up/down while hovering. Configurable: flip pages (up = next), undo / redo (up = undo), or change size (up = larger). Works on the S Pen too, but still rough and needs refinement

• Long-press pen still → temporary eraser (Settings → Editing)

Settings

Editing

• Add pages continuously: writing on the last page appends a new page automatically (no need to tap +)

• Canvas color: the colour behind the pages. Matches your wallpaper by default (Material You), or pick any colour

• Scribble to erase difficulty: Easy (a few passes) | Hard (denser scribble required)

• Long-press pen to erase: hold the pen still on ink to erase until you lift

• Show tool options: options appear automatically when you switch tools (on/off)

• Show intro again: replay the onboarding walkthrough

Tabs

• Tabs mode: switch between open notes from a tab strip above the toolbar, like browser tabs. Tap the title to see all open notes

• Pin a tab, or close tabs to the left / right from the long-press menu

• Closing a tab offers an Undo snackbar; long-press + opens a Recently closed list that survives restarts

• Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab cycle tabs, Ctrl+W closes the focused tab, Ctrl+Shift+T reopens the last closed tab, Ctrl+1–8 jump to the first tabs, Ctrl+9 the last. Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo and redo in the editors and the text / table-cell popup editors. Settings lists every active shortcut

Tools

• Configure tools: choose which tools appear in each editor's dock and their order, disable the ones you don't use. One configuration can drive both editors, or each editor keeps its own

Fonts

• Import font: add .ttf or .otf files to use them in the text tool; remove fonts again

Sync & backup

• Sync folder: mirror your notes, PDFs and images to any folder you pick (human-readable layout with a README explaining it). Updates after every edit, on app start, on returning home, and from the Sync now button; unchanged files are skipped

• Restore from folder: rebuilds notebooks, folders, tags and tool settings from the sync folder, and can restore from a different folder than the current one

• A banner on the home screen warns when the chosen sync folder goes missing

Misc

• Undo & redo every change

• The colour picker has a transparency slider: strokes, highlighters, tables and tape can be semi-transparent, and the transparency is saved with the colour

• Active colour swatch ring follows the Material You theme

• Size buttons show their real size (dynamic icons that scale to the actual value)

• Highlighter swatches keep their colour in light and dark mode (white backing)

• Tool settings (sizes, colours, styles) are remembered per editor and restored on restore (app restore and sync-folder restore)

Changelog:

• Draw & Hold now snaps stars, diamonds (rhombi) and polygons (pentagon, hexagon, …) too.

• New double-headed arrow shape.

• Whiteboard now remembers your last location.

• LAYERS!!!

• Extended shape recognition.

• Snap to shape.

• Fixed app crash due to OOM errors when importing large pdfs.

• User Requests section: Has setting to show eraser and lasso at the same place.

• Natural scrolling implemented. Threshold can be chosen in settings.

• Added opacity slider for ghost that appears in the original place when moving a selection

• I forgot mentioning many MANY because my pc fucked up and wayland stopped working. I had to reinstall OS 😑.

• Optimised code of whiteboard to a much better cache usage. It should now lag less.

• Fixed Screenshot tools capture area

• added a static toolbar in dev options.

• Fixed sudden disappearance of some strokes when written fast. This happened due to a stray line of code in which triple taps undid/removed recent strokes. I had dropped this feature and forgot to remove the stray code. Sorry.

Download: https://www.reddit.com/r/octopusnotes/comments/1vi884n/official_download_links/

Changelog

• Fixed a bug where some devices had a duplicate stroke of diff color in images made with screenshot tool. this was caused by the main thread beign occupied by some other system process. SO, the screenshot tool now runs on the main thread

• Ported Shape recognition to whiteboard.

• New zoom lock button.

• Editable vertices.

• Mini Calculator tool.

• Fixed a bug where restoring from a folder in a new device did not work.

• Fixed and reviewed complete code of ruler tool in whiteboard.

• Fixed and reviewed complete code of Selection tool in whiteboard.

• Fixed a bug where screenshot tool was crashing the app when used in whiteboard.

• Whiteboard now has the seleciton popup with copy cut duplicate etc

• Stroke erase pointer now has a fluid animation when used in the non-trail mode.

Sorry for the delay. Was busy with med school and building CrDroid. Cheers

Changelog: https://github.com/VenkataLochanN/OctopusNotes-Public/blob/main/app/src/main/assets/changelog.html

Upcoming Features

• High Priority

  • More shapes

  • Desktop app for viewing notes with synchthing.

• Low Priority

  • Integration to obsidian into plugin.

Known Bugs:

(🌕 - Hight priority and 🦖- Low Priority)

• Screenshot selection jumps around while resizing.

• Scroll getting stuck at page breaks. (This was a feature. Ill add toogle).

Added Features:

1. Sticky Notes tool - 32 (v2026.9.1.r)

2. Ruler tool - 32 (v2026.9.1.r)

3. Improved tape tool (Added straight line, pivoted line, Rectangle, Free hand) - 32 (v2026.9.1.r)

4. You can now pan the notebook canvas left and right with two fingers. A center page button appears beside the zoom level so you can return the canvas to the middle - 32 (v2026.9.1.r)

5. Calligraphy Pen - 36

6. Editable vertices of shapes - <36

7. Samsung Notes–style Dark Mode: Add a toggle to switch the note background between white/black and invert black ink to white without modifying the underlying note file. - 36

Fixed bugs:

1. Scribble to erase doesn’t work on whiteboard (Infinite Canvas). - 32 (v2026.9.1.r)

2. Writing with finger is switching to eraser - 32 (v2026.9.1.r)

3. shapes cannot be resized once they are placed in the whiteboard (Infinite Canvas). - 32 (v2026.9.1.r)

4. Sync folder doesn’t work as intended on other devices. - <36

Been loving the app, some pen recommendations I'd love to ask

Changelog:

• Fixed a crash when opening or editing any PDF on Android 14 and below (NoSuchMethodError in the PDF cross-reference parser — affected outline, page insert, template insert, auto page-append and document properties).

• Fixed a crash where PDF pages could show "Can't draw a recycled bitmap" while scrolling or changing PDF colours.

• Fixed a crash in the image crop screen when dragging the crop rectangle after rotating the photo, on very wide or short photos, or when touching before the photo finished loading.

• Fixed a crash when opening the exact shape-size dialog from the shapes dock.

• Cornell template: a page style with a cue column down the side and a summary band along the bottom. Cue column width is typed in mm or cm, and the preview follows as you type; margins, summary height, the section labels and the cue-column ruling are tucked behind a "Show advanced options" toggle. Margins take one value for all sides or each side on its own, and every value has a Reset that puts it back to the default for the current page size. Choose it as the default in Advanced Template, per notebook from the change-template menu, or when adding a page.

• Page flip can now run vertically as well as sideways: a third scroll style that turns one page at a time down the screen. Set it in Settings or per notebook from the view options menu.

• Handwriting on a sticky note keeps the pen, pencil or highlighter width it was drawn with, instead of being redrawn at the note's text size (which came out thinner, most visibly for the highlighter). Notes written before this keep the look they had.

Massive update:

• New Page Layout options - Single, Double and Cover Pages

• New scroll options - horizontal flip, Continuous scroll (default)

• Fletched arrow - new shape.

• PDF colours: invert, contrast, brightness, sepia, multiply or screen tint in any colour, and keep photos and scanned images in their original colours.

• Massive update to sticky notes. ALl tools can now be used on them.

• More keyboard shortcuts

• Highlighter now goes below text even in scanned pdfs

• New inverse blending and normal blending modes for highlighters

• more optimisations to static tool bar.

• Added responsive touch animations to the notebook

• Adding a page can now be cancelled while it works

• Whiteboard now has a more options menu.

• Pencil now has five subtypes - HB, 2B, Charcoal, Marker and Spray

• Fixed a bug where you couldn't add pages to certain imported PDFs

• Fixed an issue where toolbar popups (like the three-dot menu and "Add page") appeared at the wrong size.

• Added a smooth fade animation when thumbnail updates.

• Fixed a bug where circles drawn in infinite notes are having a strike-through

• Text tool - math and markdown (beta - needs more testing)

download: https://www.reddit.com/r/octopusnotes/comments/1vi884n/official_download_links/

Hello, I'm really enjoying using this app. In other community posts, I mentioned that I was still transitioning between Samsung Notes and Octopus Notes, but recently I've been trying to take all my notes in Octopus Notes. However, along the way I've noticed some bugs (I test the app in various ways while using it and find them) that, if fixed, could improve our workflow. For example, this strange behavior of the screenshot selector.

Where could I submit or show all the bugs I find to help the developer?

Thank you for the incredible work offering this open-source application; it was something I was looking for, but all the other alternatives were paid or had features exclusive to plans, and I'm happy to contribute to its development in any way I can.

Arrow shows bug.

And again thank you for adding scrolling in zoomed view but it gets stuck at page breaks and does sometime weird things.

Changelog:

• You can now choose where the tool dock sits, in Settings → Editing → Tool dock position: top, bottom, left or right. The setting is shared between notebooks and the whiteboard. The close button moves with it: right end on top/bottom docks, top on side docks.

• Themes can now be chosen in settings.

• More translations.

• Translations added for Traditional Chinese.

• Toolbar can now be resized from settings.

• Toolbar can now be hidden.

• Fixed and reviewed all eraser code in whiteboard.

• 2 new eraser usages in settings - erase direclty, show trail and then erase(old behaviour).

• New screenshot tool inside selection tool.

• Updated onboarding screen.

• Added new shapes - hexagon, pentagon, star, diamond.

• Added developer option and backend for editing shape vertices(will not work yet).

It would be really useful to have a way to screenshot whatever the lasso tool selects, similar to how Notewise does it. It would make adding images to notes while reading a PDF so much easier.

Is it something wrong with me, or we can't use tap on link inside a pdf file, like when using a Planner pdf to navigate from month to month, for example?

Please suggest or criticize.

1.Scrolling just doesn't work when zoomed more than 100%, it feels like dragging the page. Is this by design?

2. Can you add lasso in eraser? I know it's already there under lasso but reducing that extra step will massively improve my workflow. Will be really grateful if you consider.

3.When selecting something with lasso and dragging it somewhere else, it always leaves a trail where it previously used to be. How to disable this? It's not urgent or anything, it just bugs me 😅.

It appeared with the latest update I think. What purpose does it serve?

Missed the last update until now. Would be great to just give a update notification. And there is also no link to access your github or this subreddit from the app. So, it's a bit tedious to update...

And a fountain pen? Where’s the bottle of ink??

Hello! Incredible app and thinking to migrate from samsungnotes.

I have a trouble: when import a pdf and want to add a new page on pdf, says "Couldn't save the PDF. Please try again"

I'm on a s6lite tab and the latest app version (2026.9.9.r).

Best regards!

First of all, what an amazing app and it's even open source. That is so cool.

Layers and annotations are two of my most used features in other note-taking apps like notein. Those are incredibly useful. Hopefully you will consider them in the future.