LessonNote – What’s New

V. 6.1 (August 18, 2026)

Now requires iOS 17 or later.

Full feature list:

  • Support for multiple seating charts per lesson.
  • Now works on iPhones, with support for keyboard entry during note-taking.
  • Rotate the seating chart to match your perspective
  • Use LessonNote on a Mac to view data collected on an iOS device.
  • Multiple export options:
    • Lessons: as web archives – open in any web browser
    • Lessons: as LessonNote archives – save offline or import into LessonNote on another device
    • Photos (Pro feature): export to camera roll in realtime or afterwards.
    • Seating charts (Pro feature): save a lesson’s seating chart as a template for future use.
    • Seating charts (Pro feature): share a seating chart with other users, e.g. via email or AirDrop. Recipients do not need to be Pro subscribers.
  • Button in the home screen toolbar to go to the new LessonNote forum or to send us mail.
  • (Pro feature) Add and edit tags directly from the notepad.
  • Modality timer: See when a note was created relative to the start of the current instructional modality. For example, see that a certain note was taken 7 minutes since the students started working independently.
  • Changed how the lesson and modality timers get updated to reduce energy consumption.
  • Tags display in the notepad immediately after they have been applied.
  • PDF export is much improved
  • Progress reporters actually show progress for core data upgrades and lesson archive imports
  • Lots of under-the-hood code cleanup and smaller UI improvements.

Change log

V 5.4

  • Changes to the toolbar in the recorder, most notably an explicit button with start/stop symbols next to the lesson timer.
  • Fixed a lot of inefficient code. Lessons load MUCH faster now; expanding notes from review is also much faster.
  • First pass at modality timer in the toolbar.
  • Merged the stop/end button with the lesson timer, both for space-efficiency reasons (esp. for future iPhone version) and because new users think tapping on the lesson timer is the right way to start it.
  • Aesthetic fix: Current lesson modality (recorder toolbar) is no longer washed-out in iOS
  • Tightened up the statistics area of the review screen.
  • Tightened up the notepad toolbar.
  • Bugfix: Incorrect start time for notes. The app was using the time a note was saved, rather than when it was created.

V 5.3

  • Now requires iOS 17 or later.
  • The eraser tool reverts to drawing tool after a single stroke.
  • Tool for filtering by entity: “Clear selections” replaced by “X”; tapping that also closes the view.
  • New users expect that tapping on the seating chart in the review screen will open the session recorder for taking notes, so that’s what it does now.
  • Annotations don’t overlap the note. Multi-line annotations show in their entirety (is that good?).
  • More under-the-hood cleanup.
  • Tags were broken in various ways; fixed.

V 5.2

  • Fixed some mostly-cosmetic layout issues with grid view & PDF export: Grid view uses the full column height, fixed note headers.
  • NEW: No longer requires the full screen; Supports windowing.
  • NEW: Rotate the seating chart to match your point of view.
  • NEW: Note headers now show the delta between the last modality transition and the start of the note.
  • Workaround for a past bug – which was finally fixed April 27, 2026 – that left lessons with no stroke data. When there is no stroke data, the app will use the saved composite raster image (which cannot be edited).
  • Lessons load faster.
  • Importing a lesson archive – the progress indicator now shows some progress.
  • Seating charts can now be imported as a template from a file.
  • Entity icon sizes are larger.
  • FIXED: Deleting an entity attached to notes – if you cancelled when warned, it *appeared* as though the entity was deleted (even though it was not).
  • FIXED: Notes created in dark mode display properly in light mode – including in PDFs – and vice-versa.
  • More code cleanup.

V. 4.0

  • The handwriting engine is completely redone. Handwriting capture is now perfect, especially if you use an Apple Pencil.
  • Undo of handwriting is instantaneous.
  • Move fluidly back and forth between note-taking and notes review; quickly review and edit recent notes.
  • More ways to filter notes. Previously you could filter notes that were flagged or that have a photo. New: filter notes that contain a seating chart or are related to one or more entities (e.g. students).
  • New, more intuitive user interface for handling photos.
  • A LessonNote Pro subscription is required to record more than 5 lessons per year. (Lessons with 15 or fewer notes don’t count against this limit.) This means the app is still free for typical lesson study use by teachers and administrators. But we are asking power users to help pay for future developments of the app.