OneNote on iPads Now Supports Apple Scribble

Microsoft seems to have begun public rollout of a very demanded request from its iOS users. OneNote on iPads now joins its sister Office apps in supporting the Apple Scribble feature.

What is Scribble?

Scribble is a handwriting-to-text technology Apple introduced with iPadOS 14 in 2020. It allows users to turn handwriting into text with an Apple Pencil on a supported iPad. Scribble supports several gestures to amend text already written such as scratch to delete, touch and hold to add a new word, etc. You can read more about other available gestures here in the official apple documentation.

Scribble in OneNote

OneNote on iPad now supports Scribble and it works in OneNote like it works in any other application. In my brief time with it so far, Version 16.65 (22090503) I faced only one weird behaviour where the font size changed on its own. I tried replicating it but couldn’t. You can activate scribble by switching on the new Scribble toggle available as a separate pen with “A” written over it.

The feature came first across the entire suite of Office Apps on iOS, but OneNote was conspicuously absent.

How to Activate

On your iPad, first make sure as a rule your system and apps are all up to dat. Next: –

1. Open iPad Settings app
2. Scroll down to Apple Pencil Settings. It’s in the same block as General, Control center, Siri, etc.
3. Inside Apple Pencil Settings, make sure the toggle Scribble is ON.
4. Now Open your OneNote app. The Scribble Pen should appear. Select it and start writing!

Out of Beta- Finally

The feature first came to the beta version of the Office app a couple of months ago and finally made it to public builds as well. But OneNote did not get any such features, that is until now. Well like the saying goes, better late than never. As an avid OneNote user, I for one am incredibly happy about this new feature. I was personally looking forward to it for a long time, ever since i first heard of Apple Scribble. It may not be earth shattering change at once, but little improvements in functionality like this over time is what makes an app or program great.

Issues so far

As i said above, the font size seems inconsistent. You can see it in the gif as well. Personally, it was not a big deal because i wasn’t looking forward to scribble to draft an extensive article or academic note in the first place. It was a nice way to make quick notes, in text format, making it easier to copy paste and share. Still, it might be an annoyance for some users understandably. I don’t know if Microsoft or Apple is the one who needs to fix this, after all the core technology is from Apple whereas Microsoft simply enabled it. I will keep looking into it and if something comes up, I will be sure to update this article with it.

Until then, what do you guys think about this new update? If you use OneNote on iPads, how is this feature going to help you? Share your thoughts in the comments below and subscribe to the newsletter if you want an easier way to keep track of my posts!

Until then, see ya!

Bye Bye!

Peace!

✌🏻