I’m also having issues and wish I could rollback this update. A big problem is now highlighting text when trying to use the scratchpad! The detection is suddenly hit and miss when it was previously seamless. The only improvement is the way the erase tool now works. I’m very frustrated trying to use this now to refresh my math skills. Please fix this!

I totally agree! Its so bad i use a paper and pencil instead now.. it often doesnt track my apple pencil correctly and its so frustrating!

This change fundamentally broke how I was using the app. I cannot imagine they intended for this making the use of the scratchpad next to usless on iPad if you use the apple pen. This has to be rolled back. Using pen and paper as a complement just because the draw tool is so poor is inexcusable in 2025.

Hi everyone, 

Our engineering team has become aware of some issues affecting the newest version of the Khan Academy iOS app-- including some related to the performance of the ScratchPad and the support of the Apple Pencil. Rest assured that we're working hard to fix all these problems affecting your learning experience. We are a small team here at Khan Academy, so I do not have a firm timeline yet for when it will be resolved.

For now, they have all the information needed to investigate further.

Thank you for being part of Khan Academy, and for taking the time to report this! You are helping improve the Khan Academy experience for users across the globe.

Is there no way to get the old drawing tool back? Can’t even use it with Apple Pencil. Acts all weird trying to select things and making lines where I’m not even drawing.

The latest update solved the issue and the original scratchpad is back.
However it appears a new issue has now appeared. During the 20 minutes or so I was using it. At least twice the entire scratch pad cleared randomly in the middle of me doing calculations. Please look into this.

We’re seeing an issue where the scratchpad completely clears all of my son’s work before he’s even finished solving the problem. It seems to happen at random—no warning, no gesture he’s aware of that triggers it. When it happens, the undo and redo buttons don’t bring the work back either. It’s incredibly frustrating because he’ll lose all his progress midway through a multi-step math problem. This has happened multiple times on an iPad using the latest version of the app.