Help with OwlLuna

Nothing. OwlLuna is free and open source, released under the MIT License. There are no subscriptions, no ads and no accounts.

An iPad with iPadOS 18 or later. It also runs on Apple silicon Macs, as an app designed for iPad. You write with an Apple Pencil or, if you choose, with a finger.

It is a free beta for iPad (iPadOS 18 or later), through Apple’s TestFlight app. Install TestFlight from the App Store, then open the OwlLuna beta on TestFlight on your iPad. No Mac is needed. The App Store version follows. You can also build the app yourself from its source on GitHub, with a Mac and Xcode.

Yes. A PDF can be imported as a new notebook or inserted into one you already have, and then written on. To copy or highlight a PDF’s own text, choose ⋯More › Select PDF Text.

English, Spanish, French and German. The translations were machine-made for this release and have not been reviewed by native speakers, so corrections are very welcome in GitHub Issues.

On your iPad. With iCloud sync on, your notebooks, folders and stickers are also copied to the app’s private container in your own iCloud storage, which Apple syncs between your devices. OwlLuna asks before it syncs for the first time. Sync has been tested on real iCloud, between iPads on one Apple Account.

In the app, open Settings › iCloud and turn sync off. The switch can be set at any time, also before the iPad is signed in to iCloud. Your writing history is never synced, whichever way the switch is set. Each device has its own switch, and turning it off does not remove what is already in iCloud. The Privacy Policy says how to remove that.

Settings › Backup puts the whole library into one file, which you can restore on this or another iPad. Restoring adds what is missing and never replaces a notebook. One that differs from the backup comes back beside yours as a copy.

Yes, for 30 days. A deleted notebook goes to Recently Deleted in the library’s sidebar, and Restore puts it back. After 30 days there it is removed for good.

No. There are no accounts and no analytics, and handwriting and speech are recognised on the iPad. The Privacy Policy has the details.

No. A lock keeps a notebook closed in the app: it asks for Face ID, Touch ID or the iPad’s passcode every time the notebook is opened. Its files are not encrypted beyond what iPadOS does for every app, and a backup or an iCloud copy holds it like any other notebook. Making a backup of a library with locked notebooks, or sharing one again, asks you to unlock first.

Yes. Settings › Search in the app turns it off. The index is kept by iPadOS on the iPad, and locked notebooks are left out of it.

Only the Apple Pencil draws until you choose otherwise. In a notebook, choose ⋯More › Draw With › Pencil and Finger and a finger draws too.

The study guide is written by Apple Intelligence on the iPad itself. It needs iPadOS 26 or later, an iPad that has Apple Intelligence, and Apple Intelligence turned on in the iPad’s Settings. When one of these is missing, the sheet says which and nothing else happens.

A recording is transcribed on the iPad, never on a server, and only if the iPad can do that for the language spoken. If it can’t, the app says so and sends nothing. If the app says speech recognition is off, turn it on for OwlLuna in the iPad’s Settings › Privacy & Security › Speech Recognition.

Feature requests go in GitHub Issues, with the bug reports. To send a fix, read CONTRIBUTING.md first: for anything larger than a small fix, open an issue before you start.