Honk! Inky is Back

Happy April Fool’s Day! If you've opened Notability today and found a small animated goose running amok across your notes, you’ve officially met Inky. And if you’re wondering how a goose ended up living inside your note-taking app, well, that's a story worth telling.

A Hackathon, a Goose, and a Perfect Name

Inky all started as an internal Notability hackathon project in 2024. Peter Janosky, Software Engineer, had a simple but fun idea: what if a goose came and wreaked havoc on your notes? Inspired by the chaotic charm of Untitled Goose Game (2019), Desktop Goose (2020), and the beloved internet meme of a goose wielding a knife, the concept practically wrote itself.

“I wanted to bring more joy into Notability, and make it more fun and playful because a lot of people really appreciate that. Software has gotten really minimal and functional, but I think there's still room for whimsy,” Peter says.

Why a goose? The team didn't deliberate long. Geese are, by nature, agents of chaos, and that energy was exactly what they were going for. Peter confirms, “We wanted to bring more chaos to Notability. Geese are just naturally chaotic. If you've ever seen them in real life, they will chase you. They will take up their space on the sidewalk.”

Then came the name. The team brainstormed and tossed around ideas, and then Somya Prabhakar, Software Engineer, suggested “Inky.” The name clicked immediately. Not just because it sounded right, but because it felt true to everything Notability is about as an app.

Bringing Inky to Life, Frame by Frame

While Peter, Somya, and student co-op Kat Aristizabal figured out the mechanics, the designers got to work drawing Inky. Maya Muranaka, Senior Staff Designer, and Esther Lee, Associate Product Designer, drew Inky by hand, frame by frame. The goal wasn’t a polished, perfectly smooth animation. It was something deliberately silly and imperfect. “We didn't make the initial designs very natural. And that was the whole point. It was supposed to just be silly-looking. The fact that it was a frame-by-frame animation adds to that whimsicalness, so it’s not smooth and perfect,” Maya explains.

The team started with a walking animation and a pecking one, which felt like the minimum needed to make something that moves around the screen and takes a simple action. But then Maya added something nobody had asked for, and everyone immediately fell in love with: a diving animation.

Chaos, Yes. But the Right Kind.

Not every Inky idea made it to launch. The team was thoughtful, and even gleefully mischievous features have limits. Leaving footprints on your actual notes felt too scary to the team. Permanently altering note content? Cut immediately. Peter shares that the team’s intention was to have fun actions that didn’t actually have any permanent, harmful impact.

What stayed? Inky randomly switching your tools in the Toolbar. This felt harmless, hilarious, and perfectly on-brand for a goose. The engineering trick behind it is also delightfully clever: Inky lives in her own layer, hovering above everything in your note. When it looks like she's interacting with your toolbar, she's simply positioned where the team calculates the toolbar to be. The actual tool switch happens behind the scenes within the app’s code at precisely the right moment.

“It was a lot of work to sync everything up so that Inky was pecking in the right location and we were taking the action at the right time, all in order to maintain the illusion that an actual goose is in your note,” Peter says.

From Hackathon to Shipped Feature

The team always envisioned Inky as an April Fool's Day release, but getting her there took time, belief, and a little bit of viral momentum. After the hackathon wrapped, Inky existed as a scrappy, joyful prototype of a goose with eyebrows and a penchant for toolbar sabotage. The team hoped to ship her, but felt that Notability was, at its core, a polished product. A freehand goose waddling across your notes didn’t feel like it fit exactly on the standard product roadmap. Eventually, Product gave the team the directive: get Inky out to the people. And even then, the moment felt surreal to those who had built her.

“I was shocked when the Product team let us release Inky. I knew they were considering it, but I didn't think it was going to actually happen because Notability is generally such a professional app,” Peter remembers.

When the World Met Inky

The team braced for some pushback, thinking that surely someone would be frustrated that development time went toward a goose rather than a note-taking feature. What they got instead was something they never expected. The way that the world responded was a warm surprise:

• Users drew little houses for Inky in their notes, complete with ponds for her to play in.
• Students reported that having Inky on screen during stressful exam periods gave them a much-needed brain break, and actually helped them focus.
• TikTok creators filmed skits with Inky as a co-star. Peter says he watched every single one.
• When Inky eventually left the app after April Fool’s Day, users drew gravestones for her.
• A Reddit petition to make Inky a permanent feature gathered hundreds of signatures.

“I remember that feedback from our user community on Reddit about having Inky as a brain break in the middle of exam season was really helpful. That was really enlightening. I didn't think during an exam people would actually want to see something like that,” Maya recalls.

Perhaps most touchingly, the community responded with the same warmth the team had poured into building her. Users weren’t just entertained—they connected. The early glimpses of Inky and real enthusiasm online also prompted users in China to reach out and ask if they could have her, too. That kind of organic excitement was hard to ignore.

As Somya puts it, users anthropomorphized a silly goose and treated her like a real person. “After we finished our hackathon project, we were like, ‘Inky is our child. We raised her,’ and then everyone reflected that energy back at us,” Somya says. It was a no-brainer for the team to bring Inky back for April Fool’s Day this year.

What's New for Inky in 2026

Last year’s Inky was chaotic and raw, exactly as intended. This year, she’s grown up a little. The team noticed something beautiful in the original launch: users were turning their notes into environments for Inky, including mazes, rooms, and ponds. So the team asked: what if Inky could actually respond to users?

The new Inky is smoother, more expressive, and for the first time, interactive. You can drag her around and tap on her. She’s no longer just a feature visiting your note; she’s a companion inside it. And if you’re worried about losing Inky after April Fool's Day, fear not. She'll be around for a week.

Please note: Inky is only available for existing individual users who already have Notability downloaded.

More Than a Prank

It would be easy to write Inky off as a fun April Fool’s stunt. But she’s become something more to the Notability community. Inky is proof that great software doesn’t have to choose between being powerful and being joyful. That a small, close-knit team with a wild idea and a few days to build it can create something that genuinely makes people happy.

“Often, people just choose what apps they want on their phone based on what’s the cutest or the most fun. So I think this was nice to add to that column,” Somya adds.

So whether Inky is pecking away at your toolbar, waddling across your lecture notes, or diving off the edge of your screen right now, we hope she brings you a smile. She was made with a lot of love, a little chaos, and a genuine belief that there’s always room for whimsy.

Happy April Fool’s Day from the entire Notability team.🪿