The OneNote Team announced new updates today for OneNote on both iOS and Android which brings new features and makes OneNote on iOS a universal app by consolidating the iPhone and iPad versions.
The new universal iOS OneNote app consolidates both the iPhone and iPad versions into a single app and brings with it some useful new features. Users can now quickly access some of OneNote’s features through a Today Widget to help you quickly capture a note, photo or list without having to navigate to the app itself.
There is also a new Recent Notes view to help users find the most recently accessed pages across all of your notebooks and iPad users get a new page previews view when viewing the app in landscape mode. The update also fixed a bug in the program so that the document/whiteboard camera works properly.
OneNote for Android also got a new much requested feature that allows users to easily move or copy pages from one section or notebook to another section or notebook. The OneNote team also lets Android Wear users know to be on the lookout for an upcoming big update for their Android Wear app, which is currently available in open beta.
What’s interesting though to note is that Microsoft is attempting to bring its concept of universal apps to platforms beyond just Windows 10 apps.
Sataya Nedalla recently sat down with Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet to better explain Microsoft’s mobile strategy, which he said includes a great app presence on every mobile endpoint that’s tied to a Microsoft Account. But now OneNote is working like a universal app to scale to the device’s form factor, be it an Apple phone or Apple tablet, interestingly expanding the idea of Microsoft’s Continuum across Apple’s own Continuity.
The OneNote Team also had a little fun with today’s iOS update, adding some humor to the changelog.
“What’s New in Version 2.14
– Say good-bye to OneNote for iPad! Like IKEA™ hex keys, OneNote for iOS is now Universal. n.b. to save on localisation related expenses, all future release notes will be pictorial.
– Was finding the OneNote icon on your home screen just too much work? One of the six people who remember there’s a “Today” tab in the Notification Centre? Good news! Available today on iPad is our Today Widget. Create new notes, start a list, and access your most recent notes straight from the Notification Centre.
– Find your most recently edited notes with our recently added “Recent Notes” view in the recently combined iPhone and iPad apps. Recent.
– Ants objected to the removal of our tiny checkboxes. To appease them, we have added ant-sized Page Previews to iPad. Humans may also find them useful for differentiating between pages.
Squashed Bugs
– Fixed: The lens cap was left on when using the Document/Whiteboard camera. We removed and then subsequently lost it, so it won’t be making a reappearance.”
The new updates are available now and to get the new universal OneNote for iOS on your iPad you can head over to the iTunes store. The iPhone version of OneNote will automatically update to the new universal version, but iPad users will have to go to the store and re-download the app.
