GraphNotes and LiquidText

Yes, keep LiquidText for taking a long document apart: excerpts on a workspace, each tied to its source. And add GraphNotes when those thoughts should live on as notes of their own, written by hand and linked both ways.

What this page says about LiquidText was read in its maker’s own pages on November 11, 2026, and its Claude row in its maker’s pages and Anthropic’s on November 14, 2026; they are listed at the end. Prices are US prices on that day. Apps change, so check there for what it does today.

Side by side

	LiquidText	GraphNotes
Made for	Close reading of long documents, with excerpts pulled into a workspace beside them	Reading PDFs and writing by hand, with every note linked to where it came from
Runs on	iPad, iPhone, Mac and Windows	iPad, iPhone and Mac. The Mac shows handwriting but does not take new handwriting
Price	A free Basic version. Pro is $89.99 once for one platform, and LIVE plans with sync start at $8.99 a month	Free, with no subscription. In public beta on TestFlight
Handwriting	Ink on documents, notes and the workspace, in its paid versions	Apple Pencil. Handwriting stays handwriting, search finds it, and it becomes typed text only on request
PDFs	Highlights, margin comments and ink on the page, for PDF, Word, PowerPoint and web pages. An excerpt leads back to its source	Highlights, with your notes beside each passage in Margin view. The file is never changed; Export with Highlights makes a copy with them in it
Links between notes	Ink links drawn between pages, documents and notes	Every doc, highlight, block and board has a link. Each shows what it links to and what links to it, and a link can say why
Boards	Each project has its documents and workspaces with no edge	Boards with no edge. Cards are the docs themselves, and connectors join cards, sticky notes and the notes in PDFs’ margins
Where notes live	On the device. With a LIVE plan, synced through LiquidText’s own service	On your devices and in your own iCloud. No account
Getting notes out	A PDF of the project with its workspace, Word, or a LiquidText file	Export Everything: docs as Markdown with their links, PDFs with highlights written in, handwriting as images, boards as JSON Canvas. Also a one-file backup
Claude	No connection to Claude on its App Store listing, its pricing page or Claude’s connector directory	From GraphNotes for Mac, once you turn it on: Claude reads your library, PDFs’ pages included, and what it proposes waits for you to keep it. How it works

Where LiquidText is the better tool

Comparing far-apart pages of one long document: pinch them together.
Pulling excerpts from many documents into one workspace.
Word, PowerPoint and web pages, as well as PDFs.
Windows, as well as Apple devices.
Writing in ink directly on the page, in its paid versions.
Shared projects that people work in at the same time.

What GraphNotes adds

Highlights that are notes in your library: place one on any board or cite it from any doc, and it still opens at its passage.
Both directions. Every doc, highlight and board shows what it links to and what links to it.
Links that say why. A connection can carry a reason, such as Supports, Contradicts or Cites, and a label of your own.
Search that finds words in your handwriting and shows the handwriting, with the words marked.
Handwriting and linking at no price, with no account.

Using both

Keep working documents in LiquidText. For a PDF you want in your library of notes, share it to GraphNotes, or save it in the GraphNotes Inbox folder in iCloud Drive.

Export with Highlights makes a copy of a PDF with your GraphNotes highlights and, if you choose, your notes in it. LiquidText imports PDFs from iCloud Drive.

Copy Link in GraphNotes gives a graphnotes.app link to a doc, a highlight or a board. It is a web link like any other, and it opens that note in GraphNotes on an iPad or iPhone that has it.

GraphNotes is free and in public beta on TestFlight. Join the Beta.

Sources

LiquidText on the App Store
LiquidText on the Microsoft Store
LiquidText’s own site, liquidtext.net: its home page and its pricing and features page. Its terms ask other sites not to link to it, so the address is given here without a link.
Claude: connectors