Sync your BOOX to Penlo without Dropbox or OneDrive

Penlo for Android runs on your BOOX itself. Pair it with a QR code, pick your notes folder, and every notebook you close uploads straight to Penlo. No cloud account to connect.

Michal Wlosik

27 Oct 2026 · 5 min read

Until now, getting notes from a BOOX into Penlo meant a detour through the cloud: BOOX exported each notebook to Dropbox or OneDrive, and Penlo picked it up from there. It worked, but it meant one more account to connect, one more folder to pick, and one more thing that could quietly stop syncing.

Penlo for Android removes the detour. Install Penlo on the BOOX itself and it reads the notebooks your tablet saves, then uploads them straight to your Penlo account in the background. Close a notebook, and a few minutes later its pages are searchable on your phone and computer.

Get it on Google Play (coming soon)

Penlo on a BOOX tablet showing sync status, next to the Penlo Android app on a phone — Penlo on a BOOX Note Air 2 (left) and on an Android phone (right). Same account, same notebooks.

What changes

	Through Dropbox or OneDrive	Penlo on your BOOX
Accounts to connect to Penlo	Your cloud account	None
Setup	Bind the cloud on BOOX, connect it in Penlo, pick the folder	Scan a QR code, pick the folder
Where your PDFs travel	BOOX, then the cloud, then Penlo	BOOX, then Penlo
Edited notebooks	Updated in place	Updated in place
Works with	Every tablet that saves PDFs to the cloud	BOOX tablets with Google Play

Dropbox and OneDrive still work exactly as before. If you write on a reMarkable, Supernote or Kindle Scribe, nothing changes for you. If you own a BOOX, you can now pick the shorter route.

What you need

A BOOX tablet with Google Play turned on. On most models: Settings › Apps › turn on Google Play, then sign in.
One cloud account switched on in BOOX. BOOX only writes notebook PDFs to its note folder when one cloud account is enabled under Settings › Storage & Backup › Cloud Storage. Any one works, and you don't connect it to Penlo. Penlo reads the PDF straight from the tablet.
A Penlo account. Free to start. On the Free plan you sync from one source: your BOOX or one cloud account.

Step 1: Link the tablet to your account

Open Penlo on the BOOX and tap Link this tablet. Penlo shows a QR code and an eight-character code. There are three ways to approve it, and none of them involves typing a password on the e-ink screen.

BOOX tablet showing a QR code to link Penlo, and a phone approving the link — Scan the code with your phone camera. Penlo opens with the code already filled in: tap Link tablet.

Scan the QR code with your phone camera, sign in to Penlo if you need to, and tap Link tablet.
Be on the same Wi-Fi. If Penlo is open in a browser on your phone or computer on the same network, it notices the waiting tablet and asks Link BOOX NoteAir2? One tap, nothing to type.
Type the code in Penlo under Settings › Tablets.

Penlo in the browser asking whether to link a BOOX tablet on the same Wi-Fi — On the same Wi-Fi, Penlo asks for you. Tap Link tablet and the BOOX moves on by itself.

The tablet notices the approval within a few seconds and moves to the next step on its own.

Steps 2 to 4: PDFs, folder, background

Every step on the tablet is one screen with one card and two buttons, so it reads well on e-ink.

The four Penlo setup screens on a BOOX: link, save PDFs, notes folder and background sync — The whole setup, start to finish.

Let your BOOX save PDFs. If you already use BOOX cloud sync for notes, tap It's already on. If not, Penlo opens Cloud Storage settings: sign in to any one account and turn on sync for Notes.
Choose your notes folder. On most BOOX tablets it's Internal storage › note, and Penlo opens straight into it. Tap Use this folder, then Allow. Penlo can only read this folder, and it never changes or deletes your files.
Keep syncing in the background. BOOX freezes apps it thinks are idle. Allow battery use and switch off Freeze for Penlo, and uploads keep going while the app is closed. You can skip this: Penlo then syncs whenever you open it.

After setup

Penlo checks your notes folder on its own and uploads new and changed notebooks. BOOX rewrites a notebook's PDF every time you edit it, and Penlo recognises it by its place in the folder, so an edited notebook updates the same notebook in Penlo instead of creating a copy. Unchanged files are skipped.

Penlo on a BOOX showing Up to date and recently uploaded notebooks with their status — The status screen: last check, Sync now, Pause, and every recent notebook with its reading status.

Opening Penlo on the BOOX shows the status screen: when it last checked, a Sync now button, Pause, and your recent notebooks as they move from Uploaded to Reading to Text ready. On the web, notebooks from the tablet carry the Penlo logo where Dropbox notebooks carry the Dropbox one.

And on your phone

Install the same app on an Android phone and it opens your full Penlo library instead of the BOOX helper: every notebook, each page next to its text, search across everything, and Penlo AI.

Penlo on three phones: a handwritten page, the notebook grid and search results

Questions

Does Penlo upload everything on my tablet?

No. Penlo can only read the one folder you pick, and it only uploads PDFs from it. It never writes to the folder or deletes anything.

What if I'm offline?

New notebooks wait on the tablet. Penlo uploads them the next time the BOOX is online.

Can I still use Dropbox?

Yes. On Pro and Power you can sync from a tablet and cloud accounts at the same time. On the Free plan, pick one source.

How do I unlink a tablet?

On the tablet, tap Unlink on the status screen. Or in Penlo on the web, open Settings › Tablets and tap Unlink. Notebooks it already uploaded stay in your account.

Get it on Google Play (coming soon)

Penlo for Android is waiting for Google's review and will appear on Google Play shortly. Until then, create a free Penlo account and sync your BOOX through Dropbox or OneDrive today.

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