Saber: Handwritten Notes

Adil Hanney

About this app

Saber is the notes app built for handwriting.

It's designed to be as simple and intuitive as possible, while still delivering unique features that you'll actually use. Additionally, Saber is available across all your devices, large and small, and syncs between them seamlessly.

Notably, it can invert your notes when you're in dark mode. This allows you to write with white ink on a black background, which is much easier on the eyes in low-light environments like when the teacher turns off the lights in class.
Images and PDFs are also inverted, so you can still use a digital printout or a textbook without the fuss.

Saber uses a dual-password system to protect your notes from anyone but you, even if they have complete control over the server. You can safely store your notes on the official Saber server, another server, or even host your own!

The app is completely open-source so that anyone can view the source code and see exactly what it's doing and how it handles your data. Many other note-taking apps are closed-source and proprietary, meaning that their inner workings are a mystery to the public.

As someone who studies maths, highlighting multi-line equations was always a hassle with other apps, where the highlighter would change color when it overlapped with itself. Another problem I had was that in some apps, the highlighter would render on top of the text, fading it out and making it hard to read.
Saber's highlighter has no such issues. It utilizes canvas compositing to render the highlighter in a way that is consistent with/better than traditional paper, where it handles overlaps and maintains color consistency.

Saber has everything you need to keep your notes organized. Create folders inside folders inside folders to your heart's content with no limit on the number of nested folders. And even though a note may be buried deep within a nested folder, you can still access it easily with your most recent notes always available on the home screen.

Discover a whole new way to capture and organize your thoughts with Saber. Whether you're a student, professional, or creative mind, Saber is your trusted companion for digital handwriting. Download now and let your ideas flow freely!

Ratings and reviews

Honestly I have been looking for an alternative to Samsung notes for a while and this is the best replacement I have seen so far. The developers even let you customize the toolbar position. There are some quirks if you have finger drawing on but I think the fact that it's completely free (unless you choose cloud storage) totally makes up for that. Especially since most apps require you to pay for storage whereas saber will store your notes locally.

If I erase a mark the undo feature doesn't undo the erase? It seems to just skip over the operation and undo the creation of prior marks instead. If I undo once and redo twice it lets me bring the mark back, but it's still annoying. Please fix. Eraser and lasso tools don't have any changeable features from what I can tell, but the app is probably still usable for those with patience. I do like the actual writing tools. I'm willing to try and make the best of it for now.

I have tried so many different handwritten note taking apps over the years. This is honestly the best one I have found so far. It's performant and responsive. There is also a lot of customizability in the settings. Best of all, it doesn't have a subscription, it's just free! The only things I would like to see added are a way to change the "paper size," better organization features, and an on screen ruler/protractor to aid with diagrams. Seriously, give this app a try!

What’s new

• Big improvements for Onyx Boox devices with increased tool support and miscellaneous fixes thanks to zinstack625 on GitHub.
• Improved speed of PDF imports.
• Improved loading times for notes containing large PDFs (they're now loaded page by page rather than all at once).
• Fixed an issue with saving PDFs from the long-press dialog.
• Fixed a bug where the wrong tool would be selected when turning off the eraser, thanks to ComputerElite on GitHub.