Xournal++ — The Complete Guide: Free Handwriting, Sketches and PDF Markup on a Tablet
Xournal++ is open-source handwriting software for Windows, macOS and Linux. With a pen on a tablet or a touch-screen laptop it becomes a smart notebook — for students in lectures and engineers checking drawings.
Xournal++
Xournal++ team
Handwriting and PDF annotation with a stylus — markups on drawings, lecture notes and problem solving.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Pressure-sensitive writing — pen, highlighter and eraser, with shape recognition for clean lines and circles.
- PDF annotation — review markups on a drawing or document, saved as a new PDF.
- LaTeX formulas — inserting a typed formula in the middle of handwriting.
- Backgrounds — squared, ruled, graph paper or plain.
- Layers and pages — order in long pieces of work.
Uses
Working through statics and strength-of-materials problems, sketching details on site, marking up a contractor’s drawing, and a whiteboard during a video call.
Related tools
For typed, organised notes — Joplin. For arranging PDF pages — PDFsam Basic. For fast viewing — SumatraPDF.
Joplin
Joplin
Notes and to-do app with encrypted sync — site diaries, checklists and project documentation.
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PDFsam Basic
Sober Lemur
Split, merge, rotate and extract PDF pages — for drawing sets, specifications and submissions.
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SumatraPDF
Krzysztof Kowalczyk
A tiny, very fast PDF reader for Windows — opens heavy drawings instantly, and reads ePub and DjVu too.
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LyX
LyX team
A graphical LaTeX-based document editor — theses, papers and technical reports with equations.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Xournal++ turns a tablet and pen into a real engineering tool — free, with no note-app subscription.