Sketch and take handwritten notes.

Rnote is an open-source vector-based drawing app for sketching, handwritten notes and to annotate documents and pictures. Targeted at students, teachers and those who own a drawing tablet, it provides features like PDF and picture import and export, an infinite canvas and an adaptive UI for big and small screens.

Written in Rust and GTK4.

Features

• Adaptive UI focused on stylus input
• Pressure-sensitive stylus input with different and configurable stroke styles
• Create many different shapes with the shape tool
• Move, rotate, resize and modify existing content with the selection tool
• Different document expansion layouts ( fixed pages, continuous vertical, infinite in every direction, .. )
• Customizable background colors, patterns, sizes
• Customizable page format
• (Optional) pen sounds
• Reconfigurable stylus button shortcuts
• An integrated workspace browser for quick access to related files
• Drag & Drop, clipboard support
• PDF, Bitmap and SVG image import
• Document, document pages and selection export to many formats including SVG, PDF, Xopp
• Save and load the documents in the native .rnote file format
• Tabs to work on multiple documents at the same time
• Autosave, printing

Disclaimer

The file format is still unstable. It might change and break compatibility between versions.

Rnote has a project website: rnote.flxzt.net

Rnote is available as a flatpak on Flathub:

Downgrading

Because the file format still is unstable, downgrading to a specific version might be necessary.

List all available past versions on flathub:

flatpak remote-info --log flathub com.github.flxzt.rnote

Pick the commit from the desired version and downgrade with:

sudo flatpak update --commit=<commit-hash> com.github.flxzt.rnote 

After downgrading, the flatpak version can be pinned or unpinned with:

$ flatpak mask com.github.flxzt.rnote
$ flatpak mask --remove com.github.flxzt.rnote

To update to the lastest version again, unpin and run flatpak update.

• Drag & Drop not working -
  Make sure Rnote has permissions to the locations you are dragging files from. Can be granted in Flatseal (a Flatpak permissions manager)

• Odd location for current file -
  When the directory displayed in the header title is something like /run/user/1000/../, rnote does not have permissions to access the directory. Again, granting them in Flatseal fixes this issue.

• Stylus buttons move canvas / are not functional -
  Make sure that the xf86-input-wacom, drivers on X11 and libinput on Wayland and libwacom are installed and loaded.

• While hovering with the stylus, other input events are blocked in some regions of the screen -
  Supposed to be palm rejection, but might be undesirable. If there is a left- / righthanded system tablet setting, make sure it is set correctly. Rnote can't disable this unfortunately. ( discussed in issue #329 )

• One of the stylus buttons shortcut mapping does not work as intended -
  On some devices one stylus button is mapped to a dedicated "Eraser" mode (which is the back-side on other styli). The buttons in the shortcuts settings could then be inconsistent ( the secondary / upper button is actually the primary / lower button , or reverse ). To change the tool that is mapped to this "Eraser" mode, do the following:

  • Hover over the canvas, and press and hold the button that that is suspected to be mapped to the "Eraser" mode
  • Switch to the desired pen style while keeping the button pressed
  • When releasing the pressed button, it should switch back to the previous pen style
  • The pen style in the "Eraser" mode should now be remembered

• A huge thanks to the contributors, translators and to all that donated. You are the ones that help keep the project going!
• Freesound is the source for the pen sounds. The individual sounds are credited in sounds/Licenses.md
• Rough.js provides the algorithms for implementation of Rnote's rough shapes.
• Pizarra is an innovative drawing app with advanced shaping and featuring an infinite zoom. It is a great inspiration of the architecture of Rnote. Go check it out!

A great way to contribute to the project without writing code is adding a new or start maintaining an existing translation language. The translations files are located in rnote-ui/po/.

Creating translations for new languages or updating existing ones can be done in two ways:

• take the rnote.pot file and generate a new .po translation file from it, for example with "Poedit". Add the new translation language to LINGUAS and submit a PR with both changed files.
• use weblate for an easy way to translate in the browser without having to deal with git.

If you have any questions or want to start a general discussion, open a topic in the Github Discussions section.
There is also the #rnote:matrix.org chat room.

The .rnote file format is a gzipped json file. It is (de)compressed with the flate2 crate and (de)serialized with the Serde crate.

So far breaking changes in the format happened in versions:

• v0.2.0
• v0.3.0
• v0.4.0
• v0.5.0

To be able to open and export older files that are incompatible with the newest version, look under Installation /Downgrading to install older versions of Rnote.

If you have drawn something cool in Rnote and want to share it, submit a PR so it can be showcased here. :)

Build instructions for Linux are documented in BUILDING.md and for other platforms here