A notebook is a shared, paged space inside your Nearo session where you and your student draw, type, and work together in real time.
Both of you see the same page and can write on it at the same time. Notebooks save automatically and stay in your account, so the work from a session is there the next time you look.
When to use a notebook instead of screen sharing
Screen sharing and notebooks do different jobs.
Use screen sharing to view something together — a website, a game, a PDF open in another app, or anything else you want your student to see. What you share is not kept.
Use a notebook to work on something together — writing, marking, drawing, and keeping the result. A notebook is saved.
Opening a notebook
Open the Nearo desktop app, then open your room or start a session with your student.
To open your room, press the blue Open my room button at the bottom of the My room card on the home screen.
Click the Notebooks icon in the Controls bar, the dark gray strip along the bottom of the call window. The icon is at the left of the bar, right after Share Screen.
If you have already worked in a notebook with this student in this session, or in one that just ended, that notebook reopens. Otherwise a blank notebook opens, and you can start working in it right away. There is no naming step and no dialog.
When the notebook opens, you see the whole first page, the video tiles move to a strip at the right of the window, and the Notebooks icon lights up. Point at the icon to see "Open notebook," or "Close notebook" once a notebook is open. If your connection is weak, a one-line connection message sits at the top of the video strip, never over the notebook.
Only you, in the Nearo desktop app, have the Notebooks icon. When you open a notebook, it opens on your student's side too, whether they joined from the web or from the Nearo desktop app. Your student has no icon to open or close it.
During a session, if you are in the Floating View window, the Notebooks icon is in the row of buttons under the video tiles, and clicking it switches you back to the full window. In your room before a student joins, the Floating View has no Notebooks icon. The Notebooks icon in the Controls bar is dimmed while a screen is shared, and Switch to Floating View is dimmed while a notebook is open.
In an empty Room, before your student has joined, the Notebooks icon, in the same place in the Controls bar, opens a blank template instead, so you can prepare pages ahead of time. Opening it turns your camera and microphone off. To learn more, see Using templates in Nearo notebooks.
ℹ️ A blank notebook that you never draw on is discarded when the session ends, so opening the Notebooks feature does not add anything to your notebooks list.
Opening a notebook from an earlier session
To get to notebooks you created before, open the notebooks list from inside an open notebook.
Press the Notebooks button in the upper right of the open notebook, in the top band, to open your notebooks list, a box in the middle of the window. In a narrow window, the button moves into the More (⋮) menu at the right end of the top band.
The top band is the strip across the top of the open notebook. In the list:
Click any notebook in the list to open that notebook. Nothing is copied.
Type in the Search notebooks and templates field to filter the list as you type.
Click Start New, the large button at the top of the list, to create another new notebook and open it right away. In an empty Room, this button reads New template.
The list also shows a count, such as "12 notebooks · 3 templates," and lists your notebooks with the most recently opened first.
ℹ️ Your student never sees the notebooks list. While you are browsing it, your student's screen does not change: they still see the notebook that was already open, or the normal session view with the video tiles.
If you have no notebooks yet, the list shows only Start New and the line "Draw, write, and work together. Everything is saved."
How notebooks are named
Notebooks name themselves. A new notebook is named with your student's name, the date, the time, and your time zone — for example, "Maya - Mar 3 2026, 4:00 PM EST". The time zone is your local one, such as EST or PST, or a GMT offset such as "GMT-3" where a zone has no common abbreviation. If no student name is available, or your student joined as "Guest", the name starts with "Notebook" instead — for example, "Notebook - Mar 3 2026, 4:00 PM EST".
Renaming is optional. You never have to name anything, but you can rename a notebook at any time.
Click the name at the top left of the notebook, or click the pencil beside it.
Type the new name in place.
How saving works
There is no save button anywhere in a notebook. Everything saves continuously as you work.
There is no "unsaved changes" warning and no save dialog.
There is nothing to remember at the end of a session.
A notebook that is created but never drawn on is discarded when the session ends, so your list only ever contains real work.
If your connection drops, a reconnecting indicator appears and your work is restored when the connection returns. Nothing is silently lost.
There is no export option. Your notebooks stay in your Nearo account.
Closing a notebook
Click Close at the right end of the top band of the notebook.
Closing a notebook takes you and your student back to the video of each other, the normal session view with the video tiles, and you stay in the session. There is no confirmation, because your work is already saved, and the notebook stays in your notebooks list, which you open with the Notebooks button in the top band of any open notebook.
💡 To learn what your student can and cannot do in a notebook, see What does your student see in a Nearo notebook? To find, rename, duplicate, or delete notebooks later, see Managing your Nearo notebooks.
Using a notebook on a tablet
Notebooks work on tablets.
On shorter screens, whether a tablet or a small laptop window, some controls collapse to save room.
The zoom controls, which sit in the tool rail down the left side of the notebook below the drawing tools, collapse into a single button showing the current zoom percentage. Tap it to reveal Zoom out, Zoom in, Whole page, and Page width.
If space is still tight, the five shape tools — Rectangle, Ellipse, Diamond, Line, and Arrow — collapse into one Shapes button that opens the full set. The button always shows the rectangle icon, whichever shape you used last.
On a touch screen or with a pen, the marks for marking text sit on the tool rail. If space is tight, they fold into one Marks button.
On narrow windows, the top band gives up space too: Close becomes ✕, and Import PDF and Notebooks move into a More (⋮) menu. If the window gets narrower still, the Add page icon and the three dots move into More as well, as Add page and Page options…. The Pause editing button stays in the top band at every size.
Nothing is removed, and the tools never change position or order. Pointer, Pen, Text, Eraser, Highlighter, Laser pointer, Undo, Redo, and Clear page stay directly available at every screen size.