Most of what gets shared here is handwritten, photographed on a phone, in a hostel room, at night. That is the normal case and none of the advice below asks you to change it — no scanner, no app, no daylight you do not have.
It is worth the ten minutes because of what happens next. Your notes are read on somebody else's phone, at a smaller size than you are looking at now, by somebody deciding in about two seconds whether this is worth their attention. Six things decide that, and five of them are free.
Shoot straight down, not at an angle
The single most common problem in this library is the photograph taken from where the person was sitting. The page comes out as a trapezium, the lines run diagonally, and the far edge is smaller than the near edge and slightly out of focus because the camera could not hold both distances.
Stand over the page and shoot straight down. If your own shadow lands on the paper, move the page rather than the camera — turn it ninety degrees so the light comes from the side instead of from behind you.
One page per photograph
An open notebook photographed as a spread gives the reader two pages at half the size each, with the binding shadow down the middle exactly where the inner margin of both pages is. On a phone that inner third is unreadable.
Photograph one page at a time and fill the frame with it. It takes twice as many photographs and produces something people can actually read at the size they will read it.
Get the light off the page, not onto it
The instinct with a dim room is to turn on the flash, and the flash is almost always wrong: it produces a bright disc in the middle of the page and darkness at the corners, and on glossy paper it erases whatever is underneath it entirely.
Better is any indirect light — a window during the day, a room light with the page moved out from directly beneath it. If the page is still dark, raise the exposure in your camera app rather than adding flash. A slightly grey photograph of readable handwriting beats a bright photograph with a hole in the middle.
Check it at the size it will be read
Before uploading, look at the photograph on your own phone at normal size — not zoomed in. If you cannot read a line of your own handwriting without pinching, nobody who did not write it will manage.
This one check catches nearly everything else. Blur, angle, shadow and low light all show up the moment you stop zooming.
Name it for the person searching, not for yourself
A file called "Notes" or "IMG_20260831" is invisible. Nobody searches for those words, and a reader scanning a list of results has nothing to go on.
The title that works names the subject and the topic, and the level if it is not obvious: "Class 10 Science — Chemical Reactions" tells a searcher and a search engine the same thing at the same time. This is the single highest-return thing on this page, and it takes about four seconds.
Our upload screen scores each note for how findable it is and shows that score to you and to nobody else. It is not a judgement — it exists so you can see, before you finish, whether what you have written will be found.
- Weak
- "Notes", "Chapter 3", "IMG_20260831". Nobody searches these words.
- Strong
- "Class 10 Science — Chemical Reactions", "BCA First Semester — C Programming".
Write thirty to eighty words about what is in it
The description is the part most people skip and the part that decides whether the note is found. Thirty to eighty words is the range we ask for, and the reason is simple: under thirty there is not enough for a search engine to match against a real question, and over eighty nobody reads to the end.
Say which topics are covered, which class or course it is for, and anything a reader would want to know before downloading — whether it includes worked examples, whether it covers the whole chapter or part of it, whether the handwriting is yours or copied from the board.
The honest version of this is that a good description takes about a minute and roughly doubles the chance the note is ever opened. It is the highest-value minute in the whole process.
Common questions
- Should I use a scanner app instead of the camera?
- You can, and the edge detection helps with the angle problem. But a straight-down photograph in decent light beats a scanned photograph taken at an angle in the dark. The technique matters more than the tool.
- What file size can I upload?
- Up to 15MB per file. If a set of photographs exceeds that, split it rather than compressing until the handwriting breaks up.
- Does it matter if my handwriting is untidy?
- Far less than whether the photograph is readable. Untidy handwriting shot straight down in good light is read all the time. Neat handwriting shot at an angle in the dark is not.
- What is the findability score on the upload screen?
- A measure of how likely your note is to be found, based on how well the title and description describe it. It is shown to you and to nobody else, and it exists so you can improve it before you finish rather than wonder afterwards.
Notes for these subjects
Everything students have shared with us for this level. If the subject you need is empty, that is an invitation rather than an apology — the library only holds what somebody uploaded.
Share your notes for this levelWhere this came from
Every factual claim on this page is drawn from the sources below. The curriculum and the examination are national and change; if you find something here that is out of date, please tell us and we will correct it.