What It Does

The Pen Tool lets you hand-write your notes just like the traditional way on paper. As you can see, it's the most important tool to master!

How to Use It

Write

• Select the Pen Tool from the toolbar, then write on the page.

Zoom in

• Spread two fingers on the page.

Zoom out

• Pinch two fingers on the page.

Pan a zoomed-in page

• Drag on the page in any direction.

Scroll through pages

• Swipe up or down (or left/right in horizontal scrolling mode).

  <aside> 💡 For large documents, you can scroll the page a bit to reveal the scrollbar, then long-press it until it widens, and drag it up or down to quickly scroll through pages.

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Scroll to the top of the current page

• Tap the status bar, which shows the clock, today's date, etc.

Fit the paper to the screen width

• Double-tap on the page with 2 fingers.

How to Customize It

You can customize this tool further to better suit your note-taking needs. For example, you can beautify your own handwriting (and your notes) by changing how the ink should be produced.

As with all tools, you can tap the tool again to access its settings.

Change the pen style

Choose any of the following:

• Fountain Pen - for your everyday notes and sketches (pressure sensitive)
• Ball Pen - for your everyday notes and sketches (not pressure sensitive)
• Brush Pen - for more artistic sketches, drawings, and lettering (highly pressure sensitive)

Set the appearance of the selected pen style

• Drag the appropriate slider(s), if available.

  <aside> ℹ️ Pressure Sensitivity determines how the line width of the stroke should vary with the Apple Pencil pressure on the glass surface. Note that the "Min" pressure sensitivity value does not remove the sensitivity. The default settings are 50% Tip Sharpness (Fountain Pen and Brush Pen) and 50% Pressure Sensitivity (Fountain Pen only).

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Change settings for drawing shapes

• Draw and Hold: With this enabled, you can draw a perfect line/curve/oval/polygon by drawing a rough shape in one stroke (i.e. without lifting the pen) and holding your pen briefly at the end of the stroke.

• Snap to Other Shapes: ****Drawing a line/curve and holding the stylus tip close to an endpoint of another line/curve will connect both of them automatically. This is great for drawing tables or a closed shape, for example, when you need to draw the shape in many strokes. A closed shape can then be adjusted and moved as a whole.

• Fill Color: Every closed shape you draw will be filled transparently with the selected color.