With over 10 years in the App Store, Notion Mobile is a free, award-winning music composition tool for iOS, iPadOS®, macOS and more! You’ll effortlessly create dynamic compositions in traditional musical notation or guitar tablature with its intuitive touch-based interface and incredibly broad editing capabilities.
With a user-friendly interface and simple interactive piano keyboard, fretboard, drum pad, and even optional Handwriting Recognition, Notion Mobile makes it easy to get started composing your music. You can also hear your music performed with the most realistic playback possible, using real audio samples recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios.
Notion Mobile is a native cross-platform app, meaning you can write anywhere on any device without requiring a constant Internet connection. And when you’re back online, you’ll be able to sync your work across multiple devices — either through your preferred cloud provider, or through the optional wireless transfer between PreSonus applications on any device. Start your work on one device and finish it on another. Once you are happy with your creation you can share the Notion file, or export as MIDI, MusicXML, PDF or as an audio file.
Compose, edit, and play back your music performed with real piano and orchestral samples recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios — along with outstanding sampled guitar, bass, drums and other popular instruments. And when you’re ready for more sounds, you’ll find the extensive library of Notion Add-on Soundsets to purchase as part of the Feature Bundle. To save space, the initial app download contains just piano — you can then manage which of the bundled Soundsets to have on your device or keep in the cloud, just tap on Sound Installation.
Notion has been featured in various Apple campaigns including the 2014 YourVerse television commercials and has won several awards, including a prestigious music industry NAMM TEC Award for Best Smartphone/Tablet App.
What you get:
Notion Mobile includes unlimited staves, comprehensive editing features and core orchestral and rhythm section Soundsets — all for free. You can optionally register (also for free!) to unlock an additional Soundset (containing Solo Strings, Classical Saxophones and Glockenspiel), the multivoice function that allows writing in up to 4 voices per staff, and access to the friendly Notion Mobile User Forum. Then for the full experience, either sign in with your Studio One+ membership or purchase the Notion Feature Bundle. This unlocks Handwriting Recognition, Layout Controls, all the Expansion Soundsets (including many auxiliary instruments and additional articulations and effects), additional audio export formats (m4a, OPUS, FLAC) and direct file transfer between any PreSonus application running on the same network (including Notion Mobile, Notion Desktop, and Studio One.)
Free:
Unlimited staves
All editing features
Core Soundsets
Export as MIDI, PDF, wav, mp3
Register for free:
Reward Soundset including Solo Strings, Glockenspiel, Classical Saxophones
Access to the new Notion Mobile User Forum
Additionally write for voices 3 and 4 in a single staff
Export as MusicXML, Compressed MusicXML
Feature Bundle (in-app purchase or sign in with Studio One+):
Handwriting Recognition, powered by MyScript
Available on iPhone, iPad and macOS (macOS with supporting graphics tablet or using Sidecar with compatible iPad)
Automatic pen vs. finger recognition to switch between handwriting and edit mode
Pressure-sensitive support for Apple Pencil
Adjustable timer for Handwriting Recognition
Override handwriting timer by double tapping Apple Pencil (2nd Gen)
Layout Control
All Expansion Soundsets
Additional audio export formats (m4a, OPUS, FLAC)
Direct file transfer between any PreSonus application running on the same network (including Notion Mobile, Notion Desktop, and Studio One)
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In-Apps
Ukulele
$0.99
Flugelhorn
$0.99
Basset Horn
$0.99
Handwriting
$7.99
Jazz Bundle
$5.99
Wagner Tuba
$0.99
Bass Trumpet
$0.99
Alto Trombone
$0.99
Feature Bundle
$14.99
Guitars Bundle
$2.99
Screenshots
Notion FAQ
Is Notion free?
Yes, Notion is free to download, however it contains in-app purchases or subscription offerings.
Is Notion legit?
🤔 The Notion app's quality is mixed. Some users are satisfied, while others report issues. Consider reading individual reviews for more context.
Thanks for the vote
How much does Notion cost?
Notion has several in-app purchases/subscriptions, the average in-app price is $3.79.
We purchased the app a few years ago, and it was glitchy, but workable. I don’t know what has happened with the newer version, but it seems to be more trouble than it’s worth. Although we did pay for the app at the time, a window keeps popping up wanting me to purchase. Even though we have registered the app, the “restore purchase” button does nothing. The final straw was there does not seem to be any positive way to save my work. When the app crashed, I lost everything I had done in the past half hour. I’ll be looking around for a different app.
Crashing
Nothing is more frustrating than getting five or six measures of beautiful music out of your head and onto the screen and then to have the whole thing crash, losing what took you so long to get out of your head. Please please fix the crashes!
Glitches
Used to be great, but now I have lost two scores I was working on because the app glitches, freezes, and then shuts down! Is this what a paid app gets you?! So angry I lost not one, but two scores! I will definitely be looking for other notation software.
Used to be a great program
I used Notion for years and loved it. This was my first foray into Notion Mobile. I am VERY disappointed. What used to be an easy to use, intuitive, highly responsive workhorse of a program is now glitchy, buggy, incredibly slow, unintuitive and even crashed on me in the middle of entering a piece, losing everything. Entering music is VERY slow (using built in keyboard). It sometimes deals with low G ukulele tab correctly and other times acts like the low G string doesn’t exist. Even when the low G tab works (not guaranteed), can’t play it back (guaranteed - all notes on low G string are silent). Selecting a single note with the pencil sometimes works, others not. Doesn’t seem to have palm suppression when using the pencil. Selecting part of a measure to transpose defaults to the entire measure. Can’t make a duplicate of a piece to create different versions. Simple things like enharmonics or dotting notes takes forever. If there is any way to go back to the pre-Mobile Notion I would take it in a second and even pay for it again.
Check and give handwriting function to me
I bought and used the handwriting function before the update, but after the update, i can’t press restore my purchase history. I want to you guys check it and give it back Asap
Refund please
The apps functions are not what i need and want
Wonder if i can get refund please??
Formerly awesome but no more
My previous review gave this app 5 stars as the absolute best music notation app on iPad, with fantastic sounds at a great price (they gave a great preview of what you composed, which it still does), ease of use, intuitive interface, and round trip between iPad and Mac version. Was it perfect? No. It had a couple of extremely minor issues, but it allowed me to work efficiently on the go (and often even when not on the go, as it was that useful and even fun to use on iPad). Sadly, the developer, like many others, decided to ignore usefulness to follow the “clean” trend of mobiles, which is fine for a phone, which you might use in the pinch, but useless, clunky, slow, unintuitive and inefficient for actual production on a bigger screen. This new interface is absolutely awful, and should really be tossed. It’s a shame I was surprised by the upgraded new version, otherwise I would have blocked the upgrade and kept the old one until the system blocked it. I’ve tried this version, but its interface is so slow and unintuitive. The old one was more like the Mac interface with a great layout, easy access and discoverability, you know, basic interface design 101 stuff. Quick access, quick writing, quick articulations. But no more. Sadly, my time of composing non-stop on iPad is over until I find a replacement that’s designed for actual efficient work and not as a gimmick to show on a phone, on which the old interface also worked excellently btw. Thankfully the Mac version is still awesome, and continues to be my bread and butter. Please don’t ruin it as well. I have yet to find something even remotely close to what y’all built for Mac. In summary, I used to recommend this to anyone even remotely interested in composing or learning to compose, but with this interface, I can’t recommend it the same anymore. The underlying power is still there, hence the 2 stars, but in my personal opinion, accessing it is no longer enjoyable or efficient.
Finally - a great way to prepare sheet music on the iPad!!
I do not want to have to leave my mobile devices and go to the desktop just to prepare sheet music (or any other purpose that I should be able to achieve via my iPad) — so for that purpose, MusScore is not an option (as their mobile app, unlike their desktop app, is just a viewer). So I searched to find a good app to use instead for mobile score editing.
And I found a GREAT app for that purpose — this one!!! Even the free version is great —- though you can pay to get some features of extra convenience.
I have no idea why this app has fewer than four stars. I would expect that an app like this would have over four stars, and closer to five.
App has made huge improvements, highly recommend
I’ve been using this app on my iPad for years. It wasn’t the most intuitive, but it worked. A large upgrade happened a year ago and it became a little confusing, but it continued to iron out things that weren’t as intuitive (which I highly appreciate) and it’s become so much easier. I especially appreciate the quick access to all the notes along to side so I don’t have to press multiple buttons to quickly change notes. I’m a music teacher on a small school and my band has “challenging” instrumentation. I’ve been using this app all school year to write arrangements for them, and just wrote my first Choir piece on this app. My only issue is that I wish there was a button or a way to easily cancel out articulation. If I select a staccato or an accent or something I’m stuck with it (I’ve been selecting the slur option to cancel it out because that works for me). If there already is something like this, I haven’t found it yet.
New updates are atrocious. Go back to pre-version 3.0.
I have used this app for years and have been interested in music composition as a current high schooler. The new update is simply not intuitive and less efficient compared to the previous versions. The previous versions were solid and gave a great foundation for efficient composition. I was able to create tons of chords and melodies with ease and it felt fantastic. However, just like the other recent written reviews seem to hint at, and I hope Notion developers have noticed that, these new “features” make the app super clunky to use. I can barely make a measure of chords without getting frustrated, not because it isn’t possible, but because it is so much worse than something that I have known this app to be. And I have tried for hours, because I don’t want to speak prematurely. But now I’m sure. The new side bar with all the options do not help. The new features do not help. Please go back to the old setup. It wasn’t perfect either, but it was much better than what we have now. Now, this app I used to rely on so heavily might cause me to lose my interest in composition (until I figure out how to download the older versions, of course 😉).
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