The Pen Tool is the core tool in Goodnotes and can be accessed from the Handwriting Toolbar. With this tool, you can write on the page with a stylus or your finger just as you would do with a pen on paper.
Change color, style and thickness
The Pen Tool is the first tool in the Handwriting Toolbar. When selected, you will see the contextual menu on the right-hand side displaying thickness and color options. These preset can be customized by tapping on an option twice and using the pop-up tools. To learn more about color presets, see: Adding colors to the pen and highlighter presets.
Set stroke style and thickness
- Tap one of the stroke slots in the contextual section located on the right-hand side.
Set stroke color
- Tap one of the color slots in the contextual section located on the right-hand side.
Customize the selected stroke
- Tap the slot again.
- Make customizations:
- To set the style, choose Solid, Dashed, or Dotted.
- To set the thickness, adjust the thickness slider.
Configuring the Pen Tool
There are many ways to customize the Pen Tool. To get started, tap twice on the tool to bring up further settings.
Pen Styles
- Fountain Pen - for your everyday notes and sketches (pressure sensitive)
- Ball Pen - for your everyday notes and sketches (not pressure sensitive)
- Brush Pen - for more artistic sketches, drawings, and lettering (highly pressure sensitive)
Adjusting Tip Sharpness and Pressure Sensitivity
You can beautify your own handwriting (and your notes) by changing how the ink should be produced. Different Pen Styles will produce different effects when adjusted.
- Fountain Pen - Both Tip Sharpness and Pressure Sensitivity are adjustable. Tip Sharpness ranges from Round (Min value) to Sharp (Max value). Pressure Sensitivity determines how the line width of the stroke should vary with the tip pressure on the glass surface. Note that the "Min" pressure sensitivity value does not remove the sensitivity.
- Ball Pen - These two settings do not apply, and the produced stroke always has a round end.
- Brush Pen - Only Pressure Sensitivity is adjustable.
The default settings are 50% Tip Sharpness (Fountain Pen and Brush Pen) and 50% Pressure Sensitivity (Fountain Pen only).
Drawing Shapes
By default, you can draw shapes with the Pen Tool by holding your pen at the end of a stroke. To disable this behavior, tap Draw and Hold in the pop-up options and disable the first option. The other options can be tweaked like in the Shape tool.