I found a great alternative to Google Cursive for taking handwritten notes on your Chromebook

I’ve both been infatuated with and extremely frustrated with Google Cursive, the tech giant’s web-based, Chromebook-only handwriting web app. When it’s good, it’s great, but when its flaws show, it makes me question digital bullet journaling and notetaking at its core. Instead, I want to go back to paper and pencil, despite the fact that it lacks the benefits of a digital organization system.

I’ve really been digging into Linux lately – an alternative to Windows and macOS that Chromebooks are built on. My desktop is now running Ubuntu 23.10 for game development and full production, and much of what I’m learning is bleeding into my Chromebook usage thanks to the embedded Crostini Linux container.

Today, I’m going to show off a new notetaking app that I discovered because it’s just as good – and in some ways, much better – than Google Cursive! Both have their pros and cons, but if you’re done with Cursive or simply want to explore a viable alternative, let me quickly tell you about ‘Rnote‘.

Introducing ‘Rnote’, a handwriting and sketching app for Linux

Below, you’ll see the interface for ‘Rnote’. It has a canvas to jot down notes with a stylus, different pencil and pen sizes, colors and more, and if I may say so, fairly fantastic palm rejection just like Cursive. Unfortunately, there’s no way to lock the canvas to prevent it from zooming and panning, but I rarely had this issue while using it on my Dragonfly Chromebook. Of course, your mileage may vary depending on the hardware you’re using, but it’s still worth a shot.

Instead of having a grid-based note view with journals like Cursive, a side panel slides out from the left (it can be moved to the right) and you can create different workspaces, journals, and notes from there. It feels like a cross between Cursive and Microsoft OneNote, but that’s just my opinion.

Additionally, you can toggle a neat little sound option that injects scribble notetaking sounds every time you put your stylus to the screen. It’s silly, but kind of interesting and fun. One thing to note is that there is no cloud saving here, and unlike Cursive, you won’t have your notes if you wipe out the app and re-install it. The upside is that you have complete ownership of your notes and data because Rnote is open source and free forever.

The benefits of using Linux-based applications on your Chromebook are that unlike web apps, they’re local and most often open source and cost you absolutely nothing, but again, you must be certain you’re backing up your Linux container or exporting your notes to Drive or some other cloud storage solution.

And before you ask, no, you can’t import your Cursive notes, because Google only offers them in PDF format through Google Takeout. This is confirmation that aside from reading your notes, they’re pretty much worthless if you leave the Google ecosystem.

How to install Rnote on your Chromebook

so, how do you install Rnote anyway? As previously mentioned, this is a “Linux” application, not an Android or web application, so you’ll first need to install the Linux container on your Chromebook. To do this, just open the Settings app on your device and navigate to the Developers section using the left hand sidebar.

If you don’t already have “Linux development environment” enabled, just click the “Turn on” button shown in the image above. Go through the steps to name your container and leave it at the default size, especially since you can resize it later.

Once it’s done installing, you can open the “Terminal” app from your Chromebook’s ‘Everything button’ or launcher. You can find the install instructions for ‘Rnote’ here, but I’ll provide them below as well. First, we need to install the capability to add ‘Flatpak’ packages. Simply paste the following codes into your Terminal app one at a time and hit ‘Enter’ on your keyboard after each:

sudo apt install flatpak

flatpak –user remote-add –if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Afterward, simply restart your Chromebook and then open the Terminal app again to enter one last code:

flatpak install flathub com.github.flxzt.rnote

You’re done! Now, you should be able to launch Rnote from your Chromebook’s app launcher. If not, you can restart your Chromebook one last time to make it appear in the app drawer or use the following code once to manually launch it through the Terminal app:

flatpak run com.github.flxzt.rnote

Linux apps and web apps are the future of Chromebooks

While it may seem like a bit of work compared to installing an Android app, Flathub generally does have the ability to one click install on other Linux distros. I’ll let you know if I find a way to make this possible on Chromebooks, but out of the box, this web app requires you to use terminal commands in order to install Linux apps.

Anyway, once you have it open, just grab your Chromebook stylus and get to writing or sketching! There are other less ‘Cursive-like’ apps you can install from the Google Play Store like Bamboo and Squid, but again, Rnote truly feels like an alternative to Google’s notetaking web app, and it’s not Chromebook exclusive. Oh, and it can be used offline too. While it’s clear that web apps are the future of Chromebooks, I’m confident that Linux apps will be right there alongside of them as more users seek out non subscription-based alternatives and have more powerful Chromebooks.