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Changelog

New features, improvements, and fixes — what's changed in Penlo.

Last updated 9 November 2026

A fairer trial and a clearer Free plan

9 November 2026

  • Changed — Your Power trial starts with your first notebook. The 7 days of Power now begin when your first notebook arrives in Penlo, not when you sign up, so the whole week is spent trying Penlo on your own notes. Accounts that haven't synced a notebook yet get the full week too.
  • Improved — Automatic sync and text cleanup on every plan. Free accounts sync new notebooks on their own and get the same text cleanup as Pro and Power.
  • New — Notebooks that go past your monthly pages. If a notebook has more pages than you have left this month, Penlo reads the pages that fit and marks the notebook Partly read. Open it to upgrade, or click Read the rest once your pages renew.
  • Changed — AI summaries are part of Pro and Power. Summaries you already have stay in your notebooks.
  • Changed — One cloud connection on Free. Free connects Dropbox or OneDrive. Pro and Power connect both.

Printed documents are skipped, and a smoother sign-up

5 November 2026

  • New — Printed documents aren't read as handwriting. If a book, manual or article lands in your notes folder, Penlo recognises it and leaves it unread, so it doesn't use your monthly pages. Its card shows a document icon and the notebook says "Printed document · not read". If Penlo got it wrong, click Read handwriting anyway. Printed pages with handwritten notes on them are still read.
  • Improved — Clearer message for very long notebooks. Handwritten PDFs over 120 pages now tell you to split them into smaller notebooks, instead of showing a technical error.
  • Improved — Confirming your email signs you in. The link in the sign-up email now takes you straight into Penlo, even if you open it on another device. No need to type your password again.

More control over your data

2 November 2026

  • New — Delete a notebook from Penlo. From a card's menu, the notebook's ⋯ menu or with Select for several at once. Penlo removes the PDF, its text, summary, tags and share links. The original file in your Dropbox, OneDrive or on your tablet isn't touched, and Penlo won't import it again unless the file changes.
  • New — Download all your notes. Settings → Privacy → Download all your notes gives you one ZIP with every notebook, archived ones included: the text and summary as Markdown, and the original PDFs if you want them.
  • New — Share links that expire. Settings → Privacy → New links last sets how long new share links work. Expired links stop working, and Stop all links turns every link off at once.
  • New — Two-step verification. Settings → Account → Security: ask for a code from an authenticator app (Google Authenticator, 1Password, Authy) when you sign in.
  • New — Sign out everywhere. Ends your sessions in every browser and app with one click.
  • Improved — Connections stored encrypted. The keys Penlo uses to reach your Dropbox, OneDrive and Notion are encrypted in our database.
  • Improved — Privacy Policy updated to explain plainly what Penlo stores, who processes it and how to delete it.

Choose which sources appear in your library

1 November 2026

  • New — Show in library, per source. In Settings → Sources & sync, each cloud account and tablet has a Show in library switch. Turn it off and that source's notebooks leave your library, search, Penlo AI and AI assistants, while they keep syncing in the background.
  • New — "Also on" tag. When the same notebook syncs from two sources, its card says where else it lives, so you can tell the copies apart.

Zoom, right-click menus and cleaner text

29 October 2026

  • New — Zoom in the notebook view. Pinch, or Ctrl/Cmd + scroll, to zoom from an overview of up to four pages per row to 400%. Double-click toggles between fit and 200%, drag to move around, and Ctrl + / − / 0 work from the keyboard.
  • New — Right-click menus. On a page: copy its text or image, download it as PNG, read the page again, rotate it, copy a link straight to it, or ask Penlo AI about it. On selected text: fix it from the handwriting, copy it, search all notebooks for it or ask Penlo AI.
  • New — Rotate pages. Pages scanned sideways can be turned, and Penlo remembers it.
  • New — Text cleanup settings. Settings → Processing → Text cleanup: Join broken lines, Fix spelling and grammar and Tidy punctuation, each one a toggle. Turn them all off for the raw reading.
  • New — Markdown and text files in your folder. Settings → Export & destinations can save a Markdown or plain-text file next to each PDF in your Dropbox or OneDrive, ready for Obsidian and other apps.
  • New — A guided start. New accounts get a short setup: pick your tablet, connect Dropbox or OneDrive, and see your first notebook arrive.
  • Changed — Favorites are now Pinned. Pin a notebook to keep it at the top of your library.

Edit your notes, bulk actions and summaries in your language

15 October 2026

  • New — Correct the OCR text. Open a notebook's Content tab and fix any misread word. Changes save automatically, edited pages are marked, and "Revert to OCR" brings back the original. Search, Penlo AI, MCP and exports all use your corrected text.
  • New — Re-run OCR without losing edits. If you've corrected a notebook, Penlo asks whether to keep your edits or replace them with a fresh reading.
  • New — Summary language. Settings → Note processing lets you choose the language of AI summaries: the note's own language, English, Polski, Deutsch, Español or Français. Regenerate one summary from the notebook's Info tab, or all of them at once.
  • New — Bulk actions. Click Select, pick several notebooks, then re-run OCR, add a tag, export them as Markdown or archive them. Archiving can be undone.
  • New — Resize notebook cards freely. A slider replaces the three size presets.
  • Improved — Whole-page thumbnails. Cards show the full page at its real shape instead of cropping it.
  • New — Status on every card. See which notebooks are being read, queued, failed (with the reason and a Retry button) or waiting for next month's quota. Filter by Processing, Needs attention or Edited.
  • New — A better notebook viewer. Page thumbnails down the side to jump between pages, a zoom slider with Fit width, and a button to hide the sidebar for more room.
  • New — Usage meter. The sidebar shows how many OCR pages you've used this month.
  • New — Keyboard shortcuts. Press / to search and Esc to close a notebook or leave selection mode.
  • Improved — Penlo AI finds more of your notes. Every notebook is now indexed for Penlo AI automatically, including older ones that were missed.

Faster, mobile-friendly and more secure

15 October 2026

  • Improved — Much faster dashboard. Notebook thumbnails are now drawn once and saved, so the dashboard no longer downloads and renders every PDF each time you open it.
  • Improved — Long notebooks open smoothly. Pages are drawn as you scroll instead of all at once, so notebooks with hundreds of pages no longer freeze the tab.
  • Improved — Live updates. New notes and finished OCR appear on the dashboard by themselves, without refreshing.
  • Improved — Faster search. Searching across all your notebooks is several times quicker.
  • New — Mobile layout. On phones the sidebar becomes a slide-out menu, and the viewer and settings stack to fit the screen.
  • Improved — Easier to read and use. Higher-contrast text, visible keyboard focus, screen-reader labels on icon buttons, and dialogs that close with Esc.
  • Improved — More reliable OCR. A note can no longer be read twice at the same time, notes stuck mid-OCR recover on their own, and failures now record a reason.
  • Improved — Complete AI summaries. Summaries are no longer cut off mid-sentence.
  • Improved — Security. We tightened how accounts, billing, sync and share links are protected.
  • Fixed — Upgrade links and prices. Upgrade buttons open Billing again, and the prices shown in the app now match checkout.
  • Fixed — Settings details. Billing no longer shows impossible trial lengths, Account shows your email and join date, and Sources shows a loading state instead of "No providers connected".

15 October 2026

  • New — Connect with a link. Add Penlo to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor by pasting https://notes.penlo.app/api/mcp as a custom connector, signing in to Penlo and clicking Allow. No download, no config files, no API key to copy. Works in Claude on web, desktop and mobile.
  • New — Read whole notebooks. Besides searching, your assistant can now open a notebook and read it page by page.
  • New — Manage connected assistants. Settings → MCP lists every assistant connected to your account, with when it was last used. Disconnect any of them with one click.
  • Improved — Desktop extension still available. The Claude Desktop extension (.mcpb) now sits under “Other ways to connect” for anyone who prefers an API key.
  • Fixed — REST API requests sent to the sign-in page. Calls to /api/v1 with an API key now reach the API.
  • Removed — Google Drive. Penlo syncs from Dropbox and OneDrive.

Penlo AI

16 June 2026

  • New — Chat built into Penlo. A chat window is now part of the Penlo dashboard. Type a question, get an answer drawn from your OCR'd notes — no MCP setup, no external AI client, no API keys required.
  • New — Answers grounded in your notes. Penlo AI uses the transcribed text from your notebooks to answer questions. The responses reference what you actually wrote, not general knowledge.
  • New — Searches across your entire library. Penlo AI draws on all your notebooks at once, not just one at a time, so it can surface connections that span multiple documents.
  • New — Available on the Power plan. Penlo AI is included alongside MCP access, unlimited OCR, the REST API, and webhooks.

Smarter note dates

28 May 2026

  • New — Original note dates, not sync dates. Penlo now reads the embedded date inside each PDF so a note is dated when you actually wrote it, rather than when it synced to the cloud.
  • New — First-sync fallback for Onyx Boox. Boox re-stamps every file on each sync, so Penlo falls back to the first time it ever saw the file. The result is a stable date that doesn't jump forward. The logic is device-agnostic and works across Boox, reMarkable, Supernote, and others.

AI assistant access (MCP)

18 May 2026

  • New — Penlo MCP server. Your handwritten notes are now reachable from AI assistants that support the Model Context Protocol — Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and others.
  • New — One-click desktop install. The connector ships as a packaged .mcpb bundle, so connecting no longer means hand-editing config files.
  • New — Time-aware search. You can ask things like "what did I write about last week?" — search now understands when notes were created and last updated.
  • New — MCP on the Power plan. AI assistant access is now part of Power, alongside unlimited OCR, the REST API, and webhooks.
  • Improved — Privacy Policy & Terms updated to describe how data flows when you connect via MCP.

Search & plans

15 May 2026

  • Improved — Search covers titles and content together. Cross-notebook full-text search now matches both notebook titles and transcribed text in a single query.
  • Fixed — Duplicate search results. Notebooks with more than one saved version were showing up multiple times. Search now returns only the latest version.
  • Improved — Clearer pricing page. The plan comparison was rebuilt to reflect what each tier actually includes.

Reliability & interface

15 May 2026

  • Fixed — OCR stalling and timing out. A truncated deployment was causing OCR to start but never finish. The full pipeline has been restored.
  • Fixed — Failed deployment. A corrupted line in the search route was breaking the build. Repaired.
  • Fixed — Thumbnail flicker on refresh. Updated notes briefly flashed a placeholder. The crossfade now keeps the existing image until the new one is ready.
  • Fixed — Missing thumbnail on the newest note. The most recently added note no longer shows up without a thumbnail.
  • Fixed — Removed the "Pending" badge that didn't convey useful information.
  • Fixed — Tab alignment. The tab bar height now lines up with the top bar.