Libreto Support

Libreto is a digital notebook, planner, drawing studio and PDF editor. On iPad and iPhone Duo you get all of it: Apple Pencil notebooks, hyperlinked planners, Sketch, and the full set of PDF tools. On other iPhones, Libreto is a focused PDF editor and notes app.

Everything lives in one library with folders, and it syncs through your own iCloud when iCloud Sync is on.

Libreto runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS 17 or iPadOS 17 or later.

A few features need newer software: Libreto Intelligence and lecture transcription need iOS 26 or later, Image Playground needs iOS 18.2 or later, and Apple's newer handwriting engine (which also makes the ink on PDFs searchable) arrives with iOS 27 and iPadOS 27.

iPad and iPhone Duo get the full Pencil studio: Sketch, planners and the planner Library, Study Split, and the Apple Pencil tools. On iPad in landscape, and on iPhone Duo opened and held sideways, notebooks and PDFs lie open as two-page spreads.

Other iPhones get the PDF editor, notebooks, notepads and text notes, with tabs for Files, Notes, Trash and Settings. You write with your finger, and notebooks show the page number and page arrows at the bottom of the screen.

No. Libreto works without signing up. Settings, under Account, offers optional Sign in with Apple, which ties your Premium purchase to your Apple ID.

If you do sign in, Delete Account in the same section permanently erases your Libreto data from the device and from iCloud. It can't be undone, and it doesn't cancel a subscription, because Apple bills that separately.

English and Spanish. Libreto follows your device's language. Handwriting search and OCR have their own language support, covered under Troubleshooting below.

Libreto is free to download and try. Libreto Premium unlocks everything, and there is only one tier: $19.99 a year with a 3-day free trial, $2.99 a month, or $59.99 once for lifetime access. Prices are in US dollars. The App Store shows the price for your country or region.

The free trial is on the yearly plan only, for Apple IDs that haven't used it before. Nothing inside the app is sold separately, and there are no AI credits to buy.

You can create up to 3 documents of your own. Notebooks, notepads, quick notes, text notes and sketches all count toward the 3. PDFs you import or scan never count, and neither do documents in Trash or the sample documents. If you're over the limit, your existing documents stay open and editable; only creating a new one asks for Premium.

Also free: reading, annotating and filling in PDFs, reordering, rotating and deleting PDF pages, scanning paper, notebook paper styles, built-in stickers and washi tape, audio recordings of up to 20 minutes each, iCloud Sync, App Lock and Trash.

Unlimited documents and recording time, planners and the planner Library, the Sketch Studio landscape layout, signatures, Smart Search, Search Handwriting, Convert Handwriting to Text, Select & Edit Strokes, Libreto Intelligence, Study Split, Lecture Mode, Read Aloud, and Backup & Restore.

For PDFs: Add Watermark, Compress PDF, Password Protect, Remove Password, Add Page Numbers, Crop Pages, Split PDF, Extract Pages, Merge Another PDF, Export as Image, Make Searchable (OCR), Enhance Scan, Redact, Export as Text and Export as Word (RTF).

For notebooks: importing your own paper templates, importing your own stickers, making stickers with Image Playground, dropping photos from other apps onto a page, and importing flashcard decks.

A single payment unlocks every Premium feature permanently, including future updates. Nothing renews and there is nothing to cancel.

It's a single-account purchase and isn't shared through Family Sharing.

Open Settings in Libreto and tap Restore Purchases under Subscription. The Premium screen has a Restore Purchases button too. Make sure you're signed in to the App Store with the Apple ID you bought with.

In Libreto, open Settings and tap Manage Subscription under Subscription (it shows while you're subscribed). Or open the iOS Settings app, tap your name, then Subscriptions, then Libreto.

Cancel at least 24 hours before your renewal date, or before your free trial ends, to avoid the next charge. Libreto's Settings shows the date your plan renews or your trial ends.

Nothing is deleted. Your documents stay in your library, and documents beyond the free limit stay visible and editable. Premium tools show the Premium screen again when you tap them, and creating new documents follows the free limit.

Since 2.6, notebooks open closed, on their cover, filling the screen like a book on your desk. If the cover has an elastic band, slide the band to the lock and hold for three seconds. Light climbs the band as it counts, then the band comes off. Swipe left or tap to turn the cover open.

Turning back from the first page closes the notebook again. Notebooks you return to with Continue, or by unfolding iPhone Duo, skip the cover and open where you left off.

Yes. Open the notebook, tap the More (…) button, choose Edit Cover, and pick None under Band. Without a band, a swipe or a tap opens the cover. Otherwise the band is back each time you open the notebook.

Choose Edit Cover from the More (…) menu. You can rename the notebook, use any photo as the cover with Choose Photo, pick a seasonal cover or a design and color, and choose the band color. On iOS 18.2 or later, Generate creates cover art with Image Playground.

New Notebook offers Paper (blank and three ruled widths), Grids & Graph (dot grid, grid and graph paper in two sizes each), Notes & Lists (including Cornell Notes and To-Do List), and Stationery.

Change Template in the More (…) menu swaps the paper under ink you've already written. With Premium, Import Template turns any image into your own paper.

Choose Insert Text from the More (…) menu to add a text box. In its Style section, set Font to Handwritten. Serif and Sans are there too, along with size, color, bold and italic.

Tap the pen button in the notebook's toolbar to show the pen tools. While they're showing, Apple Pencil and your finger both write. Tap it again to hide them: the page is then for reading, nothing draws, and a swipe turns the page.

With the pen tools hidden, swipe across the page and it turns like paper. The arrows on either side of the page number turn pages too, and with a keyboard, Command [ and Command ] do the same.

On iPhone, the page number and arrows sit at the bottom of the screen.

Tap the page number, or the Browse pages button, to open the page browser. Each page there has Change Template, Insert Page After, Bookmark, Move Up, Move Down and Delete Page, and Reorder lets you drag pages into a new order.

The bookmark button in the toolbar bookmarks the page you're on. Bookmarked pages show a star next to the page number.

Yes. The scroll button switches to scroll view, which shows all your pages in one continuous scroll. Switch to paged view, in the same spot, takes you back to turning pages.

On iPad and iPhone Duo, draw a rough line, rectangle, triangle or circle, then keep the Pencil still at the end for a moment. If the stroke is close enough to a shape, it snaps clean. It works in notebooks and in Sketch.

Undo brings back the stroke you drew. On Apple Pencil Pro, you feel a click when a shape snaps.

Use the More (…) menu: Insert Image, Image Playground (iOS 18.2 or later), Insert Sticker and Add Tape. Once a page has tape, Edit Tape lets you move it. Built-in stickers and tape are free.

With Premium, the sticker browser can also import your own stickers and generate new ones with Image Playground, and you can drop photos straight onto a page from another app.

Yes. Choose Record Audio from the More (…) menu to show the recorder. Recording keeps going as you turn pages and is saved on the page where it started. Every stroke you write is linked to that moment, so later you can tap a stroke to jump the recording to when you wrote it.

Free recordings stop at 20 minutes each. Premium records for as long as you need. The first time, allow microphone access; if you said no, turn it on for Libreto in the iOS Settings app.

Planners are part of Premium, on iPad and iPhone Duo. In Notes, tap + and choose New Planner. There are six: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Scheduling, Personal and Pro, all with real calendar dates. You pick the year, the page size, a Light or Dark theme, the cover, and the day the week starts on.

The Library button in Notes holds ready-made planners and journals you can add with one tap.

Planners open on a tappable Contents page that lists every section. Long runs of pages are listed by month for dated pages, by quarter for weekly pages, and in groups of thirty otherwise. Tap a row to jump there. Very short Library planners skip it.

Tap a day on a month page to open that day. If the day doesn't have a page yet, Libreto adds one. On a day page, the calendar button next to the page number, Back to the month, returns you to its month.

On iPad in landscape and on iPhone Duo held sideways, a planner works like facing pages: tap a date or link on the left page and it opens on the right.

Folded, the cover screen shows the notebook you opened last, closed, with its band. You can slide the band to the lock and hold to open it right there.

Or just unfold the phone. The same notebook comes up on the inner screen: closed if its band is still on, so you can take it off, or open where you left off if it isn't.

Open the phone and hold it sideways, and notebooks and PDFs lie open across both halves, one page on each side of the hinge. Hold it upright and you see one page at a time.

Planners on the spread work like facing pages, with links from the left page opening on the right.

In one row at the top: the sidebar button on the left, and a glass capsule with Back and the tools. Held sideways, the page control shares that row. Held upright, it moves into the capsule.

A folder shows its contents as a list on one side of the hinge and a preview of the selected document on the other. Documents open full screen from the preview.

On Pencils that sense pressure, strokes are kept exactly as you draw them. Double-tap follows the Apple Pencil setting in the iOS Settings app, the way Notes does; by default it switches between your pen and the eraser.

On Apple Pencil Pro, squeeze shows your pen favorites, and you feel a click when a shape snaps or a sticker lines up with the center of the page.

Libreto handles this for you. The USB-C Apple Pencil and fingers don't report pressure, so once you finish a pen, fountain pen or pencil stroke, Libreto gives it a natural width: slow lines a little heavier, quick ones lighter, with a short taper where the nib lands and lifts. Strokes with real pressure are left as drawn.

On iPad and iPhone Duo, turn off Draw with Finger on PDFs in Settings, under Display. Then only Apple Pencil draws on PDFs, and your finger scrolls and zooms. It's on by default.

Sketch is on iPad and iPhone Duo. Anyone can draw in it, and each sketch counts toward the free version's 3 documents. Sketch Studio, the landscape layout that docks your reference image, layers and colors beside the canvas, is part of Premium.

56 brushes in 8 categories: Sketching, Inking, Painting, Airbrushing, Textures, Charcoals, Calligraphy and Watercolor. Brush Studio lets you tune a brush, including its grain, with a live preview.

Each sketch can have up to 5 layers. A layer can be hidden, locked, duplicated or deleted, and has Alpha Lock, Clipping Mask, Layer Mask and Reference options. Blend modes range from Multiply and Screen to Overlay, Difference, Hue and Luminosity.

Vertical, Horizontal, Both Axes, Radial 4 and Radial 8, or None.

Hue, Saturation and Brightness, Color Balance, Curves, Gradient Map, Gaussian, Motion and Perspective Blur, Noise, Sharpen, Bloom, Halftone, Chromatic Aberration and Glitch. Apply to Layer bakes the result into the active layer.

Tap the share button in Mail, Files, Safari or any app and choose Libreto. PDFs open right away. Photos become PDFs, and text and Markdown files become text notes. On iPad you can also drag a file from another app onto your library.

Imported PDFs and photos never count toward the free limit. Text and Markdown files do, like a text note made in the app.

The palette holds Highlight, Underline, Squiggly, Strike, Ink, Erase, Shape, Text, Note and Sticker. Every mark can be undone and redone.

To change how pages flow, the display menu has Continuous, Single Page, Two Pages and Page-Swipe Mode.

Tap the signature button and choose Create Signature. You can Draw it with Apple Pencil or your finger, Type it and pick a font, or use a Photo of your signature on white paper, with Remove white background. Save it once and use it on any PDF. Signatures are part of Premium.

Yes, for free. Form fields in a PDF are live: tap one and type. The form menu has Save and Reset Form.

Open the page manager. Tap Reorder to drag pages around, or long-press a page for Rotate Right, Rotate Left, Insert Blank After, Insert PDF After and Delete. Merge Another PDF is part of Premium.

The PDF Tools menu (the wrench) has Read Aloud, Add Watermark, Compress PDF, Password Protect, Remove Password, Add Page Numbers, Crop Pages, Split PDF, Extract Pages, Export as Image, Make Searchable (OCR), Enhance Scan, Redact, Export as Text and Export as Word (RTF). They're part of Premium.

Compress PDF keeps pages with real text as they are and only recompresses image pages.

When a PDF has no text layer, Libreto shows a banner, This PDF isn't searchable, with a Run button. You can also choose Make Searchable (OCR) from PDF Tools. OCR runs on your device and reads English and Spanish.

It cleans up photographed pages: it evens out uneven lighting and shadows, lifts the paper to white, and sharpens the text. Enhanced pages become images, so any text layer is replaced. Run Make Searchable (OCR) afterward to get search back.

Yes. Drag a box over anything that must go, or type a word in Find and redact every match. Redacted pages are flattened to images, so the hidden content is destroyed, not just covered. Pages without redactions are left untouched and stay searchable.

You can also save the redacted copy to your library.

Password Protect asks for a password that anyone opening the PDF will need. Restrict what readers can do lets you turn off Allow printing and Allow copying text and images. Keep the password somewhere safe, because Libreto can't recover it for you.

When you open a password-protected PDF in Libreto, it asks for the password first.

The share button sends a PDF as a PDF. From PDF Tools you can Export as Image (PNG or JPEG, all pages or a single page), Export as Text, or Export as Word (RTF).

Notebooks export as PDFs with a searchable text layer over your handwriting. Text notes export as Markdown or as plain text.

Tap the sparkles button in a PDF or notebook. Ask answers questions about the document and cites the pages it used; tap a page to jump there. Summary summarizes the whole document with key terms. Study builds flashcards and quizzes. Select text in a PDF first and you also get Explain this, a plain-language version of the selection.

It's part of Premium. There are no credits and no usage limits.

iOS 26 or later on a device that supports Apple Intelligence, with Apple Intelligence turned on in the iOS Settings app. Everything runs on your device with Apple Intelligence. Nothing you write is uploaded.

Libreto only shows AI buttons when your device can actually run them. The usual reasons: the device can't run Apple Intelligence, it's on a version older than iOS 26, Apple Intelligence is turned off, or Apple Intelligence is still downloading its models (try again in a few minutes).

It also disappears if Libreto Intelligence is switched off in Libreto's Settings, under Intelligence. Everything else in Libreto works normally either way.

Study Kit, in Libreto Intelligence, turns a document into flashcards and quizzes. Generate makes a deck, Review takes you through the cards due today with Again and Got it, and Quiz me starts a quiz. Export deck saves it as a CSV for Anki. Questions come from your own material, on your device.

Yes. Choose Flashcards from a notebook's More (…) menu. You can add cards yourself, or use Generate from pages to make one card per page from your handwriting, on device.

Anki text exports, two-column CSV files, and plain text with one card per line as front, back. Imported cards join the review schedule. Importing is part of Premium.

With iCloud Sync on (it is by default), your library syncs through the private iCloud database of the Apple ID signed in on the device, across every device signed in to that Apple ID. It doesn't go through our servers.

Turning iCloud Sync on or off takes effect the next time you open Libreto. If iCloud isn't available, Libreto keeps working with your library stored on that device.

In Libreto's Settings, under Sync, make sure iCloud Sync is on and the iCloud Account row says Signed in. No iCloud account or Restricted means iCloud isn't available to Libreto on that device.

Make sure every device uses the same Apple ID, and that iCloud Sync is on in Libreto on each one. If you just changed the switch, close Libreto and open it again.

Turn on App Lock in Settings, under Security. Libreto then asks for Face ID or Touch ID when you open it or return to it. App Lock needs a device passcode, so set one in the iOS Settings app first if you haven't.

Backup & Restore, in Settings under Backup, is part of Premium. Save Backup via Share Sheet lets you save a backup anywhere, and Save Snapshot to iCloud Drive puts one in iCloud Drive. Auto-Backup Daily saves a fresh snapshot once a day and keeps the last 7.

Backups are an extra-safe copy in open formats: PDFs and scans as they are, notebooks and sketches as PDFs, text notes as Markdown, and whiteboards as images. Documents in Trash aren't included.

In Backup & Restore, tap Restore next to a snapshot in iCloud Drive, or use Restore from Folder to pick a backup or any folder. Restoring imports the PDFs it finds, so notebooks and sketches come back as PDFs, not as editable notebooks.

To move to a new device with everything as it was, use iCloud Sync instead.

Yes, for 30 days. Deleted documents go to Trash (a tab on iPhone, in the sidebar on iPad). Tap Restore to bring one back. After 30 days, items in Trash are deleted automatically.

Delete Permanently and Empty Trash remove items right away, and that can't be undone.

No. There are no ads, no tracking, no analytics and no third-party SDKs: Libreto is built only on Apple's own frameworks. Handwriting search, handwriting to text, OCR and Libreto Intelligence all run on your device.

Tap the pen button to show the pen tools. When they're hidden, the page is for reading and nothing draws. On a PDF, pick Ink in the palette first.

On iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, Libreto uses Apple's on-device handwriting engine, the one Notes uses, which reads more than 20 languages. The Search Handwriting sheet shows how many your device understands. On earlier versions, Libreto uses Apple's Vision framework, which covers English and Spanish, plus a few other languages where your device supports them.

Searching the handwriting you wrote on PDFs needs iOS 27 or iPadOS 27. Search Handwriting and Convert Handwriting to Text are part of Premium.

If the PDF is password protected, Libreto asks for its password; enter it to open the file. If you see Couldn't open PDF, the file may be damaged or may not be a real PDF. Try saving it to Files and importing it again with Import PDF.

If it still won't open, write to us using the form below and tell us where the file came from.

Libreto needs microphone access to record. If you turned it down, allow the microphone for Libreto in the iOS Settings app, then try again.

Make sure you're on the latest version from the App Store. In Settings, under Data, Clear cached text and index frees the search and AI cache without touching your documents. Closing Libreto and opening it again can help after a long session.

If something is still slow, tell us which document and what you were doing, and we'll look into it.