xnotes

xnotes is a handwriting-first notebook for phones and tablets, built for pen and stylus. Write, sketch and annotate with pressure-sensitive, variable-width ink, and nothing you draw is ever flattened.

At a glance:

• Pressure-sensitive ink: a custom stroke engine turns raw stylus samples into a smooth, variable-width ribbon that swells and tapers with pen pressure, so handwriting and sketches feel natural instead of like a flat marker.
• Live presentation streaming: broadcast your canvas to any web browser on the same network in real time. Turn a tablet into a wireless whiteboard for the room, with nothing to install on the other end.
• Vector PDF, in and out: drop in a PDF as a page background to annotate, then export your notes back to PDF as true vector: ink and text stay crisp at any zoom instead of being flattened to pixels.
• Razor-sharp deep zoom: a background renderer redraws a high-resolution viewport off the main thread, so you can zoom far in and the ink stays sharp rather than turning blocky.
• Real highlighter blending: highlighters are composited live every frame with a true multiply blend, so overlapping strokes deepen like real ink instead of painting over one another.
• Neon pen: a glowing pen with a bright white core and saturated, luminous edges for accents that pop off the page.
• Smart PDF dark mode: invert a PDF page for comfortable night reading while leaving embedded photos and images untouched.
• Nothing is ever flattened: every stroke is stored as editable vector data in the open .xnote format, so you can re-select, move, restyle, or erase any mark at any time.
• Stylus-aware by design: pen and finger are handled separately, so you can pan with a finger while you draw with the pen; on devices without a stylus, finger drawing turns on automatically.
• Private and open: open source, no accounts, no telemetry. Files go through Android's Storage Access Framework, so the app needs no broad storage permission (network access exists only for the optional presentation server).