The short version
- GoodNotes uses any font installed on your iPad or iPhone. Install your handwriting font once and it is in the text tool's font menu.
- With SnapFont you skip the iFont step: the app builds the install profile for you.
- The font is for typed text: headers, templates, planner layouts, and long notes you type instead of write.
- Your pen strokes stay pen strokes. This is about making the typed parts look like they belong to the same person.
The problem with typed text in a handwritten notebook
Anyone who uses GoodNotes seriously ends up with two kinds of text on the page. The stuff they wrote with the pencil, which looks like them, and the stuff they typed, which looks like a document. Headers, template labels, a paragraph pasted in from somewhere, the date at the top of a daily page. The typed parts always look like a visitor.
A font made from your own handwriting closes that gap. The typed header and the scribbled notes under it finally look like the same notebook.
Getting it into GoodNotes
GoodNotes does not have its own font import. It lists whatever fonts are installed on the iPad, so the job is installing the font on the iPad, and that is what most guides send you to iFont for. With SnapFont the profile is built in.
- Make the font: print the sheet, write the 72 letters, take one photo. About 20 minutes. Full guide here.
- Tap Install in SnapFont, save the profile to Files, and open it.
- Settings, General, VPN and Device Management, tap the profile, Install.
- Open GoodNotes, pick the Text tool, tap the font name, and choose yours.
On a Mac, export the TTF instead and install it in Font Book; GoodNotes for Mac picks it up after a restart. The per device steps are on the GoodNotes page.
Where it earns its place
- Templates. If you build your own planner or study templates, set the labels in your font. The template stops looking like a download.
- Headers and dates. Type them instead of writing them, get the neatness of typing, keep the look of your hand.
- Long typed notes. Lecture notes you type in class, reading notes, meeting notes. They look like your notebook instead of a printout.
- Text boxes on handwritten pages. The one place a system font truly jars, fixed.
Building a template page in your font
The quickest way to get the most out of this is one template you reuse. In GoodNotes, open a blank page, add text boxes for the parts that never change: the day headers, a "to do" label, the habit names, the notes heading. Set each one in your font, size them so the largest is about twice the smallest, and leave generous space under each for pen. Then Export the page as a PDF and import it as a custom template, so every new page starts with your handwriting already on it and you only ever write the day's content.
If you prefer to lay pages out in Keynote or Pages first, the same installed font is available there, and a PDF exported from either drops into GoodNotes as a template the same way.
Two honest limits
First, a handwriting font is still a font. Every a is the same a. In a header that is fine; in a full page of typed text the repetition shows if you look for it.
Second, GoodNotes does not carry the font inside the document. Open the notebook on a device without the font installed and the typed text falls back to a default. Install the profile on each device, or export a PDF when you share.