For anyone who has spent a bit of time with Community, you will quickly realise that there are literally thousands of unique study materials for you to use learn from. But one common question we see is how do I access and use these study materials in GoodNotes?
For this, we have created a quick guide outlining the core features that you can use to study and access other user's notes in Community. To begin, below is an example of the screen you see after finding some study materials you want to read, and selecting it:
Whilst this page offers a good bit of information on the materials (such as a preview, some further information on the notes found in the description, and how useful other users have found it with Comments), it isn't the screen that most Community members will view study materials from. For this, we have the 'View' and 'Download' functions, which I will go into more detail on below.
View
Using the View function, you can access the study materials in fullscreen, without the distractions or extras that you see in the preview panel. In this window, you can view the notes in a similar way to a read-only PDF, in that you'd be unable to add annotations or change the notes.
We recommend pairing up this View option with Apple's Split View function (or their multitude of other multitasking features) to make best use of these materials - using one side to read notes in Community, and using the other to take notes in GoodNotes 5!
Save for Later / Unsave
Not to be confused with the Download option, Saving study materials will allow you to bookmark them for later access / use. Once you've pressed Save on a document, you can access this by going to your Profile (through the Community Homepage > Pressing your Profile Picture), and selecting the 'Saved' filter.
This function works in a similar way to bookmarking, or to the Favorite function within GoodNotes 5.
Download
The Download function allows for you to take another users study materials, and download them into your GoodNotes 5 Documents - allowing you to take notes and annotations over the study materials. To do this, simply press the Download button, and it will ask you to confirm where you wish to download this to.
There are two types of downloadable files - "Freebies", and non-Freebies. Freebie files are files that the user has marked as free to download for everyone - and these can be downloaded whenever. By contrast, non-Freebie study materials can only be downloaded when you have an Access Pass. For more information on these non-Freebies, and how to download them, see: Downloading non-Freebie Study Materials.
Please note: when downloading the study materials, the app will download these in a flattened PDF format (not a GoodNotes format) - meaning that there will be some limitations when editing downloaded study notes.