SMART Notebook Viewer

SMART Notebook is the lesson software that comes with SMART Board interactive whiteboards, and .notebook is the file it saves. Teachers share these lessons by email, on Google Classroom, on school sites and on teacher marketplaces, so a lot of people end up with a .notebook file and no way to open it. SMART Notebook needs a paid licence after the trial, the free SMART Notebook Express web app was switched off years ago, and the program does not run on Chromebooks or phones. A parent checking homework, a student teacher planning a lesson, a substitute teacher on a school Chromebook, or someone moving to a different whiteboard brand can open the file here instead, on any device with a modern browser.

A .notebook file is a ZIP package. Inside it there is one SVG drawing per page, a manifest that lists the pages in their real order, a folder of pictures, and folders for attachments, Flash items and lesson metadata. This viewer reads the manifest, so pages appear in the order the teacher arranged them in the Page Sorter, not the order they happen to be stored. Each page is cleaned before it is shown: scripts, links and anything that would load from the internet are removed, and the pictures are taken from inside the file. Text, shapes, lines, pen ink, tables drawn as shapes, pictures and backgrounds show as saved. Flash timers and games cannot play in any browser, so they show as a labelled box where they sit on the page.

Saving is the other half. Download PDF makes one PDF page per lesson page at the lesson's own size, ready to print, share or upload to Google Classroom. Page as PNG saves the current page at twice its size, sharp enough for slides or worksheets, and All pages as PNG (ZIP) saves the lot. Copy text and Download text give you every word in the lesson, page by page with page titles, which helps when you want to reuse questions in Word or Google Docs. Pictures as ZIP takes out every picture in the original quality, and files the teacher attached to the lesson, such as worksheets or answer keys, can be saved one by one.

Lesson files often hold student names, class photos, test answers and school details. This page does not upload your file. The lesson is read by a small worker inside this tab, the pages are drawn on your screen, and every PDF, PNG, text and ZIP file is made on your device. TaskNinja never receives the file, its name or anything in it, and nothing is sent to an AI model. Pages are shown as pictures, so nothing inside a lesson can run code or contact a website.

There are limits. The viewer reads .notebook files from SMART Notebook 9.5 and newer, which covers lessons saved since about 2007. Older .xbk files from Notebook 9.1 and earlier use a different format and need to be saved again as .notebook in SMART Notebook. Live parts of a lesson, such as Flash activities, videos, sounds, Lesson Activity Builder games and the infinite cloner, show only as a still or a box. Fonts that are not on your device are replaced with close matches, so a line may wrap a little differently. Password protected or damaged files cannot be opened. SMART Notebook and SMART Board are trademarks of SMART Technologies ULC, and TaskNinja is not affiliated with SMART Technologies.