Microsoft Garage app Journal just received a big update to improve notetaking

What you need to know

• The Journal app from Microsoft Garage recently received several new features.
• A recent update improves the instant lasso feature and ink-to-text recognition.
• Journal is an ink-first app built for taking notes.

Journal, a Microsoft Garage project, received an update with several new features this week. The update improves the instant lasso feature and ink-to-text recognition. It also adds support for importing password-protected PDFs and writing in different languages. Journal now has a music staff page style as well. The team behind the Journal app shows off the app's new features in a blog post.

Here's everything that's new for Journal:

• New music staff page style
• Improved instant lasso
• Ability to save pen states from the Pen Settings menu
• Ability to multi-select by holding the pen side button or Ctrl key while tapping
• Support writing in different languages (change in the Page Menu or Settings)
• Support for importing a copy of a password-protected PDF
• Bug fixes and performance improvements

The lasso tool has been improved to identify the difference between circling an item to draw something and circling an item to select it. For example, if you're writing a bulleted list and circle each number, the app shouldn't select them. If you slow down your stroke, the app will realize that you're trying to select an item.

You can also multi-select content within the Journal app following its recent update. If you hold CTRL and tap an item, you can select multiple pieces from your notes.

The Journal team highlights that the app now uses Microsoft's latest ink-to-text technology. This should improve the accuracy of converting written notes into text.

In addition to its new features, the app includes some bug fixes:

• Improved handling of opening and saving journals, especially on network drives
• Headers and stars are detected more accurately
• Improved performance of ink

You can grab the latest update for Journal through the Microsoft Store.