The reMarkable Companion

Unfortunately, my experience with this app on my phone for the past several years has been frustrating. It is not convenient. It does not sync or update content without me having to uninstall and reinstall the app. I have tried all other options, that is the only one that works. Which is obviously annoying and, in the end, not worth the trouble. The reason I’m giving this review more than one star is because the desktop version of the app works much better. With the exception of attempting to empty the trash can, the desktop app works pretty much as it should. I wish it worked on my iPad the same way it works on my desktop! It is a bit inconvenient at times that I can only import or export files from my desktop. But at this point I’m mostly happy that feature works at all in any of the apps.

This review is for the reMarkable companion app but I will make a note about my reMarkable 2 also. First, the app. The App is a nice idea and, when it works correctly, it is great for checking out saved documents. However, I have run into this problem several times since I got my reMarkable 2: Inconsistent Syncing (with the iOS app obviously). EDIT: Apparently the inconsistency is caused by something else because the behaviour just changed. This is bothersome because the service cost money to work intermittently. Will update if necessary. Other than that, I’m happy enough with the app. Now, the tablet I love. I use it all the time for anything I need to write. I usually like to write things down regardless of the subject matter but I always wished I had digital copies. This is a perfect fusion of those desires. Both the app and the actual tablet OS could use some visual/UI improvements as most of it is far too simplified for any modern tech user. Really hope to see some software improvements and maybe some developer response on here. Kind of seems like there have been issues like these for a while based on other reviews. Edit Feb 1, 22: the app seems to be consistent enough. Not sure if something changed or what but seems to be working well.

First off I have to say that there aren’t many competitors to ReMarkable. Not many people do what they do. I actually saw this on an Instagram ad and immediately became interested, buying a remarkable 1 for myself because I couldn’t wait a few months until the second one came out. Maybe this is me just being addicted to technology but I *love* taking notes on this. I’ll be honest, taking them on the remarkable 1 is slow and often takes longer than it would if using pen & paper, but it’s so convenient because everything syncs. —Nice things— - you can drop PDFs into the mobile or desktop app and they sync to the device which is INCREDIBLE - you get to take notes on a device that feels more like paper than any iPad or tablet would —Bad things— - app has limited functionality and we can only edit the notes ON the remarkable, not on any of the apps which is very annoying. - the desktop app looks disgusting on windows 10. Icons are waaaaay too big and take up too much screen space - short battery life on the remarkable 1 - pen tips have to be replaced every 2 weeks for me (I guess I just write with a lot of force) All in all, is a good product, and the company is OKAY, but I think it could be a lot better. I use it as my daily driver for note taking and honestly couldn’t think about replacing it. For $299 I think buying the remarkable 1 is worth it, and pre ordering the 2 would be worth it as well.

I enjoy the remarkable tablet and am not sure if the app could add a light feature. If thats possible. I was shocked to find out remarkable tablets dont have a light feature. I also would like the option to not upload every file and to mark some as private. Sometimes i need to download pdfs into my remarkable but then it will upload notebooks too. So i just decided to download pdfs i need for reading then to disconnect my remarkable from the app and use this as strictly a writing notebook that i dont need to upload. I guess in the future if i need to download a pdf file i can just use a usb to computer for any further transfers of pdfs. I do understand that some ppl need the upload notebook feature and its nice but i would like the option to opt out of syncing certain notebooks especially for counseling notes. I wanted the app for the pdf sync funtion and it worked well at that. I do enjoy the notebook. Thankyou

ORIGINAL REVIEW: You can not open or access the files from this app, you can only see them. I thought maybe I needed a different pdf reader to accompany it, but that made not difference. The desktop version works but if you are using your remarkable it is not as crucial as if you are out and want a quick reference to the files. UPDATE: it took me a couple of weeks since I’m determination, but I finally figured out how to fix the issue. I went into my settings and forced my phone to re-sync to the reMarkable drive when I did that I was able to access my files on my phone. I absolutely love my reMarkable and having the ability to access. My files on my phone was the only thing I had felt was missing, and now I have it!

This app has potential, but still misses the mark. A few things that would turn this app fr good to great for me include: - being able to upload pdfs from within the app. I can open up a pdf in other apps and then share to the Remarkable app, where the pdf ends up just being uploaded to the root directory, where I have then move files later. It would be helpful if you could navigate to any folder and then click “Upload” and search for a pdf on your phones file manager to upload to that specific directory - using less storage space. I’m not sure but I feel like when you download the app it syncs all the files onto your phone. It would be great if it only synced “thumbnails” and gave us the option fully sync files, either all or selectively as needed - faster syncing. It’s terribly slow but I’ve had several instances where it took a few minutes to sync files either way (phone to remarkable or vice versa) - allowing screen sharing. It would be awesome if the screen sharing feature for desktop was added to mobile I’d probably use the app much more with these added functionality, instead of how I use it now, which is primarily just to see what I’ve written on my Remarkable when it’s not with me.

The reMarkable companion app works okay. It does exactly what it's meant to do - view the files on your reMarkable from an iPad/iPhone. But more than anything, the app seems largely outdated. I understand it was done to match the interface one the reMarkable, and while I love it on the eInk device, it just doesn't work well on an OLED/LCD display. Also, despite being visually identical to the desktop app, the mobile app doesn't support Screen Share. This seems like a function that wouldn't be too difficult to implement and would be very useful, particularly for the iPad app. For now, I'll just wait patiently as the app becomes more useful and (hopefully) more visually pleasing.

I am a niche case, as I bought this device for reading books and occasional marking, but found that you can’t really add books that aren’t publicly free ePub (which is almost none of them). That said I just started using it as a scratch pad for programming math and note taking and absolutely love it now. (Definitely opt for the pro pen btw, if you are buying the device, I didn’t and ended up purchasing the pro later bc erasing was such a pain without it). But all of that aside the app is constantly getting better which is always a great sign (fingers crossed they add support for one of the e-publishers in the future). There’s always something new when I open the app here or on my MacBook, which is really all anyone can ask for — consistent improvement.

I want to start by saying I am a huge gadget guy and always have been. I have a list of devices that left the greatest impression on me as far back as I can remember, and after a day of use the remarkable 2 is my favorite device I have ever owned. I only have one request. The desktop browser extension to convert pages to pdf and send to remarkable is amazing. Unfortunately, I do most of my browsing of articles on mobile and I know I am not alone in that. I know there is a workaround by using print to pdf, but it is not nearly as clean or convenient as the desktop browser extension. If you could add this extension to mobile as part of the mobile app or as a separate download, I think it would be extremely beneficial for many users.

I see & hear the frustrations of other reviews, but have not experienced any of the same misfortunes! I have been using remarkable since December and love the integration between the app, website & device. The extra paid service is utterly unnecessary in my opinion as remarkable device and service work perfectly without it. Not dunking on it, as it’s relatively affordable, but you essentially have to be taking 1000 notes an hour to need anymore space. I put ALL my books on my remarkable, and just about most of my 4 GB of google drive. It seems remarkable condenses most files, and only takes up a 1/4th of that space!

I’ve filed two bugs with Remarkable regarding issues with text input from iOS. Sometimes typing in a doc freezes the whole app. More often, everything you type just isn’t saved. Customer support does reply and asks for all sorts of information. When I provide information, they ask for even more. It’s like you, as a customer, are also their QA team, in charge of narrowing down all the exact scenarios that cause issues. Version numbers, replication steps, and screen recordings should be enough. Somehow it isn’t… I’m disheartened seeing old reviews with the same sort of comments. How can a device that touts its simplicity totally fumble the simplest features? I can’t recommend this product anymore. The Sync capability is a core feature and it’s really bad.

My daughter has a college final this next week and she has been unable to access a file that was corrupted on her tablet, took a week to get cloud team to provide a recovered file but she is still unable to access on her device. So we tried to access on both her PC app, which crashes everytime you open it….it does not work at all. Tried on 4 different PCs. So have been trying on the mobile app as well. The mobile app does not work either!!! Again tried on multiple phones. You open it, it starts to sync and then just closes out! Nobody has been able to offer any suggestions!!! This has been a horrible experience, and my daughter only has a few days left until final and is still unable to access about 20 chapters of notes. Will be rethinking her note taking strategy going forward.

Bottom line, this app does not sync. It won’t pull your notes from the cloud, it won’t upload changes you make. It literally has me sitting here looking at a blank screen. I’ve had this app for 2 years now, and check in from time to time to see if the remarkable team has gotten their act together, and I can report that as of March of 2023, the app remains largely unusable. This issue is not resolved by uninstalling and then reinstalling. Not is it fixed by any manner of troubleshooting found online. It’s just a bad app. I commit these thoughts here because I’m an avid remarkable user, and wish more than anything that the software services for the device were as well designed as the hardware. Stick to the desktop app.

The app and syncing works well enough. I have had a few frustrating moments here and there but usually just walking away and coming back allows whatever slowness was there to work itself out. A few nice to have features: • add hand writing features. I would use only the remarkable app (and tablet itself of course) for all of my notes if I could draw/write with my finger or a stylus on my phone. Only having the text editor is bothersome. As an aside, having a good way to add a tick box on the tablet would be great. • add something on Safari that is similar to the Chrome extension for Read on reMarkable.

It is so nice to be able to write a document on your remarkable then later access it on your phone (e.g., if you don’t have actual tablet handy). It’s even nicer to be able to send a document (e.g., email attachment, download, etc.) from your phone to the tablet. Unfortunately, I have unending troubles with app synching to the cloud. Typically, it just hangs with a message like “Synching (5 of 10)” or will look like it’s synched all the files then restart from the beginning. If this were fixed, I would be very happy with the app.

I love my Remarkable tablet, but the mobile app has a lot of rough edges that make it almost unusable. Sync is very hit-and-miss, and sometimes the mobile version will not pull down the sync for several hours. There is also no way to force a sync, which seems like a big oversight on what should be a fairly simple feature. It’s also the only app I’ve ever used on my iPad in which the official, Apple brand hard keyboard does not work right. You can type exactly one letter, then it stops responding. This is very frustrating, as I’d like to use Remarkable as my one note-taking and reference-keeping app, but if I can’t use it across a couple of different devices, this isn’t really possible.

The Remarkable 2 tablet is the best digital tablet on the market. I love using it and use it daily. I do not enjoy the app very much. It’s basic and has limited interactive ability. Things I would like to see: 1. The ability to manage and add tags to files. 2. The ability to edit text and add text in the files. 3. The ability to erase, copy, and cut just like the possibility in the tablet 4. The ability to manage files easier within the app 5. The ability to screen share without the need for app on desktop 6. The ability to screen share to phone 7. The ability to manage templates within a pdf document that was uploaded to tablet 8. The ability to add a template to a pdf document when a separate note page is added. If these interactive additions are added, which would give the app and tablet more ability to cooperate with my desire to get everything done in one place, this rating would go to a 5. Until then we are stuck at a 2.5.

I would give the Remarkable 2 itself 5 stars but the app's server interaction is slow and buggy, requiring multiple repetitions to upload edits and new material. The app's design is fine, smooth to use, but I can't reliably throw the device in my bag and pop off to class without first laboriously syncing and resyncing on my home wifi. (Rarely works at all on school wifi.) The problems seem to be worsening since I started using the device in fall 2021. I was early enough to be grandfathered into the now fee-based cloud service (assuming that promise is kept), but if I were paying for this service this spotty, I'd be outraged. As it is, I'm disappointed.

On my iPhone and my Windows 10 laptop the software allows me to copy from the reMarkable to my private cloud. I can also open and view the pages, scrolling through multiple pages with ease. On MacOS Big Sur - Dead on Arrival. No MacOS version. The iPad/iPhone version allows me to connect to the reMarkable cloud and see the notebook list. Opening a notebook leaves me stuck on whatever page it opens to and does n ot even let me scroll up or down on that page let alone go to other pages. No go on transferring the files to my private cloud, or to my Macbook Pro, or any other storage locations/device. Guess I have to live with the Windows 10 laptop a while longer. Hoping they support Macbook Pro Big Sur soon.

I received the remarkable 2 as a Christmas gift and absolutely love it. I am a very busy person who takes notes all of the time, but then I have to rewrite all of my notes. With this device I can write my notes and then turn them into text and send them via. Email text and add them to Google drive or box drop. Only downside as many people mention is that you cannot edit from any other app like your phone or iPad but I guess they want exclusive use of there device. All in all I love the thin design and how I write with it.

I am a user and fan of the ReMarkable 2 physical device and for the most part their sync to their desktop app (for Mac) and iOS apps for iPhone and iPad have worked for me. But when I want to edit, add to, or compose a note on my Apple iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard, the iPad app does not respond to the delete, return, or cursor keys. An incredibly frustrating experience made worse by ReMarkable support indicating this is “not a bug” and that the experience is optimized for using their physical device. As a user who purchased on the flexibility offered by taking written notes on the physical device, and be able to view, edit, and augment my notes on my iPad, I am left highly unsatisfied.

Like my Remarkable 2, but wish you would create templates (notebook covers, notebook with links to pages, checklists, daily agenda, calendar with links) that can be loaded, integrated with the selection of pages as part of your next software updates or for purchase on your website. Users should not need to get basic templates from Etsy, etc. Adding this will lend for a better user experience by making it easier to organize and quickly find notes (i.e. by date or title), etc.

In addition to the MANY bugs the apps have, everyone should be concerned about privacy, or lack thereof. My data should be 100% private. Other than warranty registration, there is zero customer benefit to this company collecting customers’ private data. The notes I take for work include proprietary info and my personal notes are—well personal. The company’s data collection is likely a substantive cause of the many bugs. I don’t have issues syncing data between devices wirelessly or through iCloud alone with other apps. If the remarkable tablet allowed the use of third party apps, it would solve a lot of problems, but then they couldn’t collect user data. No thanks. I’m out.

I love the ReMarkable2. But a big reason I bought it was for the capabilities that were supposed to be in this app. The syncing is inconsistent, it doesn’t work more often than it does work. And when I open my notes they are very pixelated/rough and hard to read without zooming in to enhance quality. even when i export my notes as a pdf the writing always looks rougher than on the tablet. if some kind of smoothing could be done at least on the app when viewing it would be great. but more so the connectivity needs to be fixed. It’s unfortunate since the tablet itself is so great.

I keep the subscription because I want to be able to work on my notes across platform, even though I have both the propriety keyboard folio and stylus. But the app’s support for keyboard input on iPad is so bad that I have to reconsider whether I still want it. Because currently the app doesn’t support Apple Pencil in any way, keyboard is the only way to edit notes. Bad keyboard support makes editing notes on iPad difficult. I don’t want to pay the extra fee every month only to be able to see the notes on my phone (that is, if they are synced in time at all).

The app is useful to view your notes across devices. I’m not a big fan of requiring a subscription to make changes to those notes on various devices. However, the price point is at the max I’d be willing to pay for the service. The developers need to fix the iPad (on a 13” Pro M4) app’s key mappings. If I hit the right/left button on my Magic Keyboard, it goes the opposite direction.

I love my remarkable 2 and it has helped with my college work and job not taking. I have the current pen, but as I work with it I wish I could push a bottom or two to switch back and forth between commonly used pen settings like the highlighter and the ballpoint. Or have the ability to manually set favorite pen settings, so when I push a button on the pen it would quickly switch to that setting.

I tried to find somewhere to write my reviews for the product on their website but there’s no “write a review” button so I tried here instead. I really love the device, I mainly use it to take notes and I really appreciate the paper-like writing experience. It would make it better if you guys can add a “next page” button for notes during next software update. Right now I have to go back to page overview to go to the next page on my notes, which is inefficient.

My primary method of reading articles or webpages is through my phone, which means not being able to send them to my reMarkable without first going to my desktop and utilizing the Chrome extension. There is a slight workaround where using the "Print" option then zooming in creates a PDF to share to this app, but it doesn't work very well for most websites. Is the ability to share natively to the app coming in the future?

Love the convenience of the tablet but just experienced the loss of my quick sheets after a sync update! I clicked on quicksheets after the restart and they were all gone. Only thing in tack are folders with documents. Will frequently export from here on out. If this happened to anyone and you were able to recover them after this last update please post…or if the company can say what to do to get them back that would help too… they were not in trash folder or accessible in the cloud space. Where did they go?

Over a few updates, I’ve noticed that I can’t get my note-taking to match old notes anymore. If I’m using a pen on “medium” thickness.. and all of a sudden the “medium” is thicker than everything else I’ve written after an update, it drives me crazy! I just want them all to be the same thickness, but it looks like I’m using totally different selections when I haven’t even changed anything! Please.. just leave it alone.

The iOS share functionality works but it would also be nice to be able to initiated import from the app itself (unless it already can and I’m just blind). Also it would be awesome if screen share would work on mobile apps, could be especially useful for people that have a powerful enough mobile device.

The files on my phone haven’t updated in months. Makes the app worthless and also makes the tablet itself less useful. This would be such a cool thing if they could get it together. This problem has persisted through multiple app updates and IOS updates. Very much considering ditching the whole thing and getting an iPad which was something I really wanted to avoid because I loved the idea of a lightweight tech object that just did this one specific thing that I actually needed. Such a shame.

It’s still unwieldy to have an entire copy of my RM in order for the app to function (5gb when perhaps only 50% or less of my docs need to actually sync when I open the app), but really appreciate being able to add typed text from another device- making the app more than just a read only copy to look at. Appreciate the progress!

Love the tablet but there's not enough value add to pay a subscription fee. There's value having access to my notes on mobile however the tagging system is so inconsistent and buggy on mobile it makes it unusable. For instance some tags work in search when others do not. This should be a bare minimum feature that works flawlessly, instead I'll have to manually hunt through all my notes.

Near instant connection with my remarkable 2. I have had issues with my remarkable 2 so that is why it gets 4 stars i had to return my tablet and get a new one because of the problems i was having. Since i got my new one i have been sending files to it a lot and it make it so much easier to get work done. Thanks remarkable!

So excited that we can finally insert text using iOS! UPDATE: Unable to move cursor by holding spacebar and sliding. This makes editing text very difficult. Please fix. UPDATE #2: very difficult (sometimes impossible) to copy and paste parts of my journal with iOS app. Please fix.

After all that I have gone through (5+ hours, and NO F****** tech support!) to get this tablet set up, I surely hope that it is worth the time and trouble…if it works??? To be determined…BUT the developers need to design a way to get it set up, and linked to one’s WiFi and to other devices running the same App, in a much more intuitive and user-sensitive way. Geeks DO NOT rule…human beings do.

I’ve been pretty impressed with the features that of come in my reMarkable after only six months of owning it, and I’m very excited to be able to insert text from my phone to my notebooks. The latest episodes coming soon believe me that please come soon enough! Cheers.

This app is not very user friendly. I have tried to add eBooks to it but all it says is “you can upload eBooks using the reMarkable apps”. Which is confusing because isn’t this the ONLY reMarkable app? I haven’t tried adding PDF yet but imagine I will likely run into the same issue. Please help! I was so looking forward to my reMarkable to help with work and everyday life but without these functions, I don’t think it will be much use to me at all.

The product doesn’t work as advertised so we returned it but they continue to charge our credit card for the subscription that you cannot use without the product. They don’t respond to any customer service inquiries, they don’t except messages anywhere, their website is impossible to navigate or contact anyone. We have disputed the charges multiple times and they have never responded to any of our many request to cancel the subscription. A total SCAM!!!!

I enjoy this app on my cell phone. I would like if it updated in real time without closing the document i am working on … but that’s not my biggest concern. I want to be able to use my Otterbox keyboard. I cannot use the “delete” button… when i press it, a “highlight” is created surrounding the previous character and with specific options but I cannot actually use the button to “backspace” or “delete” the character. And I does not highlight any other characters “behind”. Is there a disconnect with the app and this keyboard? I hope that this can be fixed .

I really want to like this app because the ease of accessing reMarkable documents, but there is a HUMONGOUS oversight in the development of this app (that the devs are aware of but have yet to fix): 3rd party keyboards do not work with the app. This really tanks the utility of this app. This isn’t worth using at all until this is fixed, imo. Otherwise, the functionality seems the same as the desktop app. This needs fixed ASAP!

Decent app to simply look at current workbooks but needs some work. Wish List: 1. Ability to add text to existing notebooks and pdfs 2. Ability to search for written text 3. Ability to delete and rename workbooks when you are viewing the item 4. Ability to use iPad and Apple Pencil to write text in notebooks

Renaming a file/book is somehow very difficult, especially when the name of the file is already long. Hope to see a linux version of this too but so far, it's a working version and goes mostly well with the tablet. Keep up the good work :)

Just lets you view things but can’t edit. Please add drawing and editing functionality. Make it so that a remarkable tablet is connected to the account to work or something. I end up in situations where I can only have my iPad and being able to edit my remarkable documents in those situations would be great. I wont stop using the remarkable just because I have an iPad.

For something that is being sold to make your life easier this product and the companion app’s set up isn’t great. It’s 95% of the way there, which is lovely. But signing in to the app on your phone/ipad isn’t straightforward and getting the battery to start charging on my remarkable 2 has proven to be challenging. Over two hours of set up and trouble shooting!

General navigation and functionality on the mobile app is fine. Noticed issues typing notes on the iPad app, backspace function doesn’t work and when using the checklist function hitting enter didn’t take you to another line with a checkbox, you had to reclick the check box. Simple fixes. Biggest issue I’m having is that importing documents with multiple pages to annotate or sign forms, etc and then when I export from the mobile app it only exports one page. I chatted with tech support and they told me it works, but it doesn’t. Exported multiple documents to multiple platforms (gmail, Google drive, ICloud, etc) and had the same issue. Would increase my rating if this was fixed.

I use the reMarkable tablet at work (I’m an RN in Assisted Living) and it saves me reams of paper! The mobile and desktop apps work seamlessly, allowing me to quickly glance at a document on my phone; and email myself documents which need to be printed out for any reason (chart audits for state surveyors, etc).

I love handwriting and I’m don’t write any reviews normally, but a product like Remarkable deserve it. From the first day I create my first note till now, I love it For people who still hesitate, go get one, seriously You’ll never gonna regret it Best product !!!!!!!!