Digital planning can look far more complicated from the outside than it actually is. Scroll through planner content for long enough and you’ll find dashboards, colour-coded schedules, digital stickers and beautifully customised pages. But you don’t need an elaborate setup to start.

At its core, digital planning simply means using a planner on your tablet or device instead of a paper one. You can handwrite, type, navigate between linked pages, add stickers and images, and keep everything with you without carrying several notebooks around.

If you’re curious about giving it a try but aren’t quite sure what you need, which app to download or how a digital planner actually works, this guide will take you through the entire setup from the beginning.

What Is a Digital Planner?

Most digital planners are interactive PDF files designed to be opened inside a note-taking or PDF annotation app. The planner itself contains the pages and structure like calendars, weekly layouts, daily pages, trackers, goal-setting pages and anything else included by the designer. The app is what allows you to interact with it.

Once your planner is imported, you can usually handwrite with a stylus, type onto the pages, highlight and draw, add images and digital stickers, duplicate or rearrange pages, and use hyperlinks to move around the planner.

Think of the planner as the notebook and the app as the digital version of your pen, paper clips, tabs and stationery.

What Do You Need to Start Digital Planning?

You only need a few things:

A compatible device.
A tablet is usually the most natural choice because you can write directly onto the screen, although most apps also work on phones, laptops and desktop computers.

A digital planning or note-taking app.
This is where you’ll import and use your planner.

A digital planner.
Usually supplied as a PDF file.

A stylus, if you want to handwrite.
An Apple Pencil, Samsung S Pen or another compatible stylus makes digital planning feel much closer to writing on paper, but it isn’t essential. You can type instead, or use both.

And that really is enough to begin. You can add stickers, fonts and other digital stationery later if you enjoy customising your planner, but none of those things are required for the basic setup.

Which Digital Planning App Should You Use?

There are plenty of digital planning and note-taking apps available, from free PDF annotation tools to more fully featured paid apps. Most of them support the basics you’ll need, like importing PDFs, writing or typing on pages, using hyperlinks and adding images, so the easiest way to narrow your options is by the device you already use.

If you have an iPad, GoodNotes and Notability are both natural places to start. They’re designed around handwriting and note-taking as well as PDF annotation, which makes them particularly well suited to digital planners.

If you use a Samsung or Android tablet, Samsung Notes can be a very intuitive option, while apps such as Xodo are useful if you primarily want a straightforward way to write and annotate directly on PDFs.

If you use a Windows tablet or 2-in-1 device, a PDF annotation app such as Xodo can work well, particularly if you want something focused on the planner itself rather than a broader note-taking system.

And if you regularly move between different devices, it’s worth checking whether your chosen app supports syncing across the platforms you use.

How to Choose the Right Digital Planner

Once you’ve chosen an app, you need the actual planner. This is where it helps to think about both what you want to organise and how you want the planner to work.

If you mainly want to manage your calendar and everyday schedule, a straightforward daily, weekly and monthly planner may be enough. 

If you want to organise several areas of your life in one place, a more comprehensive planner can combine your schedule with things such as goals, habits, routines, wellness and finances.

And if one particular area matters most to you, you may prefer a specialist planner like a reading journal, a fitness planner, a budget or a travel planner.

There’s no universally “best” type. The useful question is what you want the planner to help you keep organised.

Things to Look for in a Digital Planner

Before buying one, I’d check for a few practical features.

Clear navigation.
A larger planner should have hyperlinks or tabs that let you move quickly between sections. You shouldn’t have to swipe through 300 pages to reach next Tuesday.

A layout you can understand at a glance.
Beautiful design matters, but the page still needs to be functional when you're actually using it.

Dated or undated pages.
A dated planner is ready to use for a specific year. An undated planner can usually be reused whenever you like. Which is better simply depends on how you prefer to plan.

Flexible or reusable pages.
For trackers, notes and specialist templates, the ability to duplicate pages can make the planner much more adaptable.

Compatibility information.
The product description should clearly explain which apps and devices the planner is designed to work with.

And for larger planners, I'd also look at how the sections connect together. A comprehensive planner is much more useful when it feels like one organised system rather than a giant bundle of unrelated templates.

The Simplest Way to Start: Plan Your Month, Week & Day

The easiest way to understand digital planning is through the three views most people already recognise from paper planners.

1. Your Monthly Planner

The monthly view gives you the bigger picture. Use it for things such as appointments, deadlines, events, travel and important dates so you can see what the month looks like at a glance.

2. Your Weekly Planner

Your weekly view brings things closer. This is where you can see the next seven days together, organise appointments and priorities and decide how you want the week to take shape.

3. Your Daily Planner

The daily page gives you more space for the detail of a particular day — your schedule, tasks, notes or anything else you want in front of you.

Once those three views make sense, the rest of a digital planner becomes much less intimidating. Goals, habits, budgeting, wellness and specialist sections are simply additional tools you can bring into the same system when they’re useful.

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Try Digital Planning for Yourself

If you’re curious about digital planning but want to see how it feels before committing to a complete planner, start with the basics.

The free Digital Planning Starter Kit includes a monthly, weekly and daily planning page, so you can import them into your preferred app and try the core digital-planning experience for yourself.

Get the Free Digital Planning Starter Kit →

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How to Import Your Digital Planner

This is the part that can feel mysterious if you’ve never used one before, but the basic process is very simple. The exact buttons vary slightly between apps, but the workflow is usually:

1. Download Your Planner

After purchasing or downloading a digital planner, save the PDF file somewhere you can find it easily, usually your device's Files or Downloads folder. If your planner arrives inside a ZIP file, unzip it first and locate the actual PDF.

2. Open Your Planning App

Open GoodNotes, Notability, Xodo or whichever compatible app you've chosen and look for an option such as Import, Open file or a + button.

Alternatively, you can often open the PDF from your Files app and use Share or Open in to send it directly into your planning app.

3. Import the PDF as a New Document

Choose the planner PDF. Once imported, it should appear in your app as its own notebook or document.

You're now ready to write on it, type, highlight and customise the pages.

4. Test the Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are one of the biggest differences between a basic PDF and a purpose-built digital planner. They work like navigation buttons on a website, instead of scrolling through hundreds of pages, you simply tap where you want to go.

If your planner is hyperlinked, tap a link, tab or navigation button and check that it takes you to the correct page.

Important: Most apps distinguish between editing/writing mode and navigation/read-only mode. Hyperlinks are usually accessible only while in navigation/read-only mode, so if tapping a hyperlink simply selects it or draws on the page, switch to the app's navigation or read-only mode and try again. The exact control varies between apps, but it’s a useful thing to know the first time a link appears not to work.

5. Test Your Pen or Text Tool

Write a quick note, erase it and try moving it around. If you prefer typing, add a text box instead. You don’t have to commit to one method. Many digital planners use handwriting for quick planning and typing for longer notes.

That’s really all you need to understand before you start exploring the planner itself.

Can You Add or Duplicate Planner Pages?

In many digital-planning apps, yes — and this is another useful advantage over paper.

If your planner includes reusable templates, you can often duplicate a page whenever you need another copy. For example, you might duplicate a notes page, a goal-planning template, a workout tracker or a book review page.

How duplication works depends on the app, but you'll usually find the option inside the planner's page or thumbnail manager.

One thing worth remembering is that hyperlinks inside the original planner structure are fixed to particular pages. If you duplicate a page, existing navigation links elsewhere in the planner won't automatically rewire themselves to the new copy. That doesn’t stop duplicated pages being useful, it just helps to understand how hyperlinked PDFs work.

What Are Digital Stickers and How Do You Use Them?

Digital stickers are one of the things that make digital planning feel much more personal than simply writing on a PDF. They're usually image files, often PNGs with transparent backgrounds that you place onto your planner pages. Once inserted, you can resize them, move them around and layer them with other elements.

Some planning apps also let you save commonly used stickers into their own collections or elements libraries, making them even quicker to reuse.

You certainly don't need stickers to use a digital planner, but if you enjoy making your planner visual, personal and easy to scan, they’re one of the most useful advantages of planning digitally.

Start With the Essentials, Then Make It Your Own

A good digital planner doesn't have to be basic in order to be beginner-friendly. You can start with familiar monthly, weekly and daily planning, then gradually use more of the system as it becomes relevant to your life.

That might mean bringing in goal planning when you’re working towards something specific, using habit or routine trackers when you want more consistency, or adding financial planning when you want a clearer view of your money. At other times, you might want to organise wellness, fitness, meals, reading or travel in more detail. The point is that you can expand the planner around your life, rather than trying to use every section from day one. 

The advantage of a comprehensive planner is that those tools are already there when you want them. You don't have to use every section just because it exists.

Digital Planning Can Be as Simple, or as Complete as You Want

You can use a digital planner purely as a calendar. Or it can become the place where your schedule, goals, routines, finances and other parts of your life come together. There isn't one correct way to use it.

If you prefer having those areas inside one beautifully connected system, the Girls Got Goals 2027 All-in-One Digital Planner brings everyday monthly, weekly and daily planning together with goals, habits, productivity, wellness, finances and more, while still letting you use only the sections that are relevant to you.

Explore the All-in-One Digital Planner →

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