I’ve been noodling a lot lately with digital journaling tools. In doing so GoodNotes quickly rose to the top for me in the “draw words on an iPad” category. The app is reliable, has an excellent ink engine, and, most of all, the developer has thought through the digital writing workflow better than any other app I tried (including Apple Notes).

With GoodNotes, it’s easy to mix drawing and writing. It’s also easy to write in a magnified view while the words simultaneously appear in a normal size on the page behind it.

And with yesterday’s version 5.5 update, GoodNotes is now also able to collaborate. While I’ve often used online collaboration tools with text in apps like Google Docs and Apple Notes, it had never occurred to collaborate with GoodNotes. The new feature works just as if you and a friend share a piece of paper across a desk. The pen strokes don’t show up in real-time but instead with a delay that, in my tests, were as fast as 20 seconds and as slow as 40 seconds. That’s not bad, considering what is happening. Think of this more as a shared note than a shared whiteboard.

What I like best about this feature is that it falls more in the category of “in addition” than “essential feature”. I use GoodNotes because it is so good at what it does. Now, also, I can collaborate.