Notability is making it easier to capture meetings and lectures with a new calendar-based note-taking feature. The app can now connect to a user’s calendar, allowing scheduled events to become starting points for recordings and notes.
The new capture-and-organize feature is available now on Windows and Mac desktops. Notability says tablet and phone support will follow at a later date, giving users on larger screens a new way to manage scheduled meetings, lectures and other events without having to set up each recording manually.
Notability Brings Calendar Events Into Notes
Notability is a long-running digital note-taking app developed by Ginger Labs. It has been used extensively by students for taking handwritten and typed notes, annotating information and recording audio, while its note-taking capabilities have also made it useful for professionals.
The company says it has more than 10 years of experience building audio capture technology. Its latest update combines that recording experience with calendar organization, creating a workflow where users can move from a scheduled event to a recording and note in a single process.
“Your calendar tells you when. Notability now shows you what happened. We built it to work as one system, whether you’re in back-to-back lectures or back-to-back meetings,” said Marc Provost, Notability’s chief product officer. “We built Notability to do both at once for students in back-to-back lectures and professionals in back-to-back meetings, using the same workflow.”
The approach is aimed at people who frequently have back-to-back lectures or meetings and may not have time to manually create a note, start a recording and organize the resulting information afterward.
How Notability Calendar Recording Works
Users can connect their calendar to Notability, after which their scheduled events appear as tappable rows. Tapping a calendar event starts a recording while opening the corresponding note, which is ready for the user to add information.
Every new note also defaults to a recording. This removes the need to manually enable recording each time a new note is created.
For a student attending a lecture, for example, the calendar event can be used to start the recording and open the note at the same time. A professional can use the same process when joining a scheduled meeting.
The calendar connection is designed to keep the recording associated with the event it belongs to, helping users organize captured information around their existing schedule.
Notability Combines Transcripts And Typed Notes
Once a meeting or lecture ends, Notability combines the recording’s transcript with the typed notes created during the session.
Instead of having a transcript and manually written notes stored separately, the information is brought together into one comprehensive note. This gives users a single place to return to when reviewing what was discussed or taught.
For students, Notability says the feature can help capture lectures in subjects ranging from economics to political science. Professionals can use the same system for meetings and later review the resulting notes to find information they may have missed during the discussion.
Recording Does Not Require A Meeting Bot
One of the key differences in Notability’s approach is how it captures meeting audio.
Some note-taking services rely on API-integrated bots that join online meetings as participants to record or transcribe conversations. Notability says its system instead accesses the computer’s microphone and audio output directly.
This means a separate recording bot does not need to join the meeting as another participant. The system is designed to capture the audio directly from the user’s computer while the Notability note remains part of the workflow.
Notability Is Adding Syllabus Import
Notability also has another calendar-related feature in development for students. Syllabus import will be able to automatically structure an entire academic term into lectures, study sessions and exams.
The company has not announced when syllabus import will launch, so it is currently listed as a coming feature rather than part of the functionality available today.
Once available, it will extend the same organizational approach beyond individual calendar events and into an entire academic schedule.
Notability Offers A Free Tier
Notability is also providing a free tier that allows new users to try the capture-and-organization features before reaching a paywall. The new functionality is available through Notability’s existing Plus and Pro tiers and follows the app’s existing usage-quota system.
The capture-and-organize feature is available now in Notability’s desktop apps for Windows and Mac. The company says versions for tablets and phones will arrive at a later date.
