What note-taking and editing tools does Xournal++ offer?

Xournal++ is a handwriting-focused note-taking application available on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Its toolset is built around three jobs: writing by hand, editing and arranging what you wrote, and adding technical content such as formulas or geometric figures. The site's own summary of the app is "Take handwritten notes with ease," with use cases ranging "from solving a physics problem to making travel diaries."

Handwriting tools

The core of the app is the pen and highlighter toolset. These are grouped under "Pen and Highlighter tools" in the documentation, meaning you get a writing instrument and a separate marker-style tool for emphasis rather than a single generic brush.

• Pen — for primary handwriting and drawing.
• Highlighter — for marking over existing content without replacing it.

Because both live in the same tool family, switching between writing and highlighting is a tool change rather than a mode change, which matters when you annotate a page you have already written on.

Editing and selection tools

Editing is handled by a set of tools that operate on what is already on the page:

• Eraser tool — removes strokes.
• Selection and Snapping tools — select existing content and align or snap it into place.
• PDF tools — work with PDF files directly, so a PDF can serve as the page you write on rather than a separate document you copy from.

The documentation also lists a dedicated "Working With PDF Files" section, which confirms PDF handling is a first-class part of the workflow rather than an import-only feature.

Technical and specialized tools

Two tools extend the app beyond plain handwriting:

These are the tools that make the "solving a physics problem" use case realistic — you can combine handwritten working with typeset formulas and constructed figures on the same page.

Organizing and speeding up note-taking

The site lists "Keep your work organized" and "Enhance and accelerate your note-taking" as separate capabilities, alongside a Configuration section covering Preferences, Toolbar, and Colors. In practice this means:

• Preferences and Toolbar — you can adjust how tools are presented and arranged, so frequently used tools are reachable without hunting through menus.
• Colors — pen and highlighter colors are configurable, which is how you separate annotations, corrections, or categories within one page.
• Plugins — the documentation has a Plugins section with a "Notable plugins" list and guidance on building your own, so the toolset can be extended beyond what ships by default.

How to decide if this fits you

Choose Xournal++ if your notes are primarily handwritten and you want to write directly on top of PDFs, or if you need to mix handwriting with LaTeX formulas and geometric figures. The combination of a pen/highlighter pair, a selection-and-snapping layer, and PDF tools is what distinguishes it from a plain drawing app.

If you mainly need typed text notes or collaborative cloud documents, the handwriting-first design here is not aimed at that. The relevant question is whether your work involves ink on a page — lecture notes, problem sets, annotated readings, or diaries — because that is the workflow the tool list is organized around.

For setup, see the Installation section covering OS selection for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and the Guide's Overview and Whirlwind Tour for a first pass through the tools.