Handwritten notes to text
Snap a photo of your handwritten notes or upload a scanned PDF, press “Read with AI”, and get editable text you can copy, download or turn into a study guide.
Tip: one page per photo, flat, in good light, filling the frame.
Your typed notes appear here
Upload a photo, then press Read with AI. Words the AI cannot read are marked [?] so you can fix them.
How to photograph notes so the AI reads them well
- One page per photo, held flat, shot from straight above. Angled pages squash the letters at the far edge.
- Daylight or a bright lamp, no flash glare. Shadows from your phone across the page are the most common cause of [?] words.
- Fill the frame. The page is resized to at most 1,600 pixels on the long side before sending, so a small page in a big photo loses detail.
- Several pages? Scan them into one PDF with your phone’s notes or files app and upload that: up to 10 pages per run.
Why type up handwritten notes at all?
Writing by hand is a good way to take notes in class, and typed text is easier to search, reorganise and turn into questions. Once your notes are text, the study guide maker can sort them into an outline with key terms, and the practice test generator can quiz you on them. Reading back the transcript and fixing the [?] words is itself a quick first review of the lecture.
Questions students ask
How do I convert handwritten notes to text?
Take a clear photo of each page (or scan them to a PDF), press "Upload file" and choose it. Press "Read with AI" and the text appears in the box, line by line. Check it, then copy it, download it as a .txt file or turn it straight into a study guide.
Can it read messy handwriting?
It reads most legible handwriting, including maths symbols and arrows written as plain text. Words it cannot make out are marked [?] instead of guessed, so you can fix them. Good light, a flat page and filling the frame with one page make the biggest difference.
Which file types work?
Photos in JPG, PNG, WEBP or HEIC (iPhone) format, and scanned PDFs of up to 10 pages per run. Typed PDFs, Word and PowerPoint files do not need AI: their text is copied out in your browser instantly.
Is it free, and are my notes stored?
It is free with no account. Page images are created in your browser and sent once through Vercel AI Gateway to an AI vision model only to read the text; NoteSynthesis does not store them. Details are on the privacy page.
What does the AI do with diagrams?
It describes a meaningful diagram in one line, such as [Diagram: cell membrane with channel proteins], and skips decoration. Redraw important diagrams yourself; drawing from memory is good revision.