iPad app suddenly switched from native Apple Pencil drawing to alternative interface

I'm having the same issue and it's really annoying.

I’m also having the same problem. When I use Khan Academy on my IPhone it uses the old scratch pad which I much prefer, but when I use Khan Academy on my IPad it uses this new interface which has a lot of issues.

I recently logged into my Khan Academy account on my PC (windows) and after that the switch happened. I’m wondering if it’s somehow related since I haven’t updated my Khan Academy app recently. Hopefully a fix will come through.

CC - I didn't update Khan Academy app on my ipad either. Not sure what has caused the switch.

I am experiencing the same as mentioned above. Pretty significant downgrade in writing experience. It worked great for years before, and has become a serious burden to write now.

Hi everyone,

Thank you very much for reporting this.

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.

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.

Kind regards,

Same issue as the others... All four of my kids who Khan Academy with apple pencils on their iPads, and the iOS app consistently only registers one out of every two draws. For example, if I draw the word "elephant" it will write "e e h n", completely missing the letters in between. I tested it on both the Khan iOS app as well as in Safari on the website and both have the same exact issue. I also tried raising my hand up so that my palm isn't touching the screen but that didn't resolve the issue. At first I thought it was their apple pencils, but then I tested them in the iOS test scribble settings dialog as well as other websites and they did not have this issue, so it's specific to Khan Academy.

Please change the writing interface back to its previous version. The new upgrade has disrupted the joy of scribbling math notes and solving problems with hand.

I have just updated to the latest available version from App Store (8.3.1), and it seems like the native scratchpad is back! However, I noticed that handwritten notes tend to suddenly disappear while you turn scratchpad on and off multiple times during the work on a same task in a quiz. I do not remember such issue in the past.

The native scratchpad has returned and once again writes smoothly and as expected. However, It seems to now carry over from the previous problem without clearing the page; which differs from before. It has also erased the scratchpad contents mid problem on a few occasions in the brief period I’ve used it since regaining the functionality.

Certainly a step in the right direction, but perhaps a few more bugs to work out.

For my kids, the scratchpad is working much better with Apple Pencils now and is registering every "draw" instead of every other one *on the native iOS mobile app*. However, the khanacademy.org website itself still has the same issue when drawing with an Apple Pencil.

I can confirm that the latest version in App Store as of today (8.3.2) fixed the issue of randomly disappearing handwritten notes between quiz tasks as well. Everything is as good as before - thanks to everyone involved!

On a related note, is khan academy iOS app source code available for the community to dig in and submit improvements / bug fixes via GitHub or anywhere else?