If the pen stops drawing on an e-ink tablet, check the device’s own notes app first; if it is dead there too, the pen has wedged at the hardware level and the tablet needs a real power-off. Not sleep, not a restart from a menu: hold the power button until it offers to power off, then start it again.

Why this happens

E-ink tablets draw pen strokes with a fast hardware path that sits below the app — Onyx’s raw drawing on a Boox, Bigme’s ink layer, the timing controller on a Viwoods. That path is what makes ink feel instant. It also means that when it wedges, no app can draw: Ledgable, the stock notes app, anything. Sleep does not reset it, because the display controller stays powered. A cold power-off does.

Steps

1. Open the tablet’s built-in notes app and try to write.
2. If nothing draws there either, hold the power button, choose Power off, wait for the screen to clear, then hold the button to start. Open Ledgable; the pen is back.
3. If the stock app draws fine, the trouble is inside Ledgable. Leave the page and come back to it, or close the app from Recents and reopen. If it repeats, see Report a bug and say which device you have.

Things that look like a dead pen but are not

• Finger / hand mode. The hand button on the toolbar switches between writing with the pen and panning with a finger. Check which one you are in.
• Standing on a station page. All Stars and All Picks are views over the days and refuse ink on purpose. Step down to the note, or up to the day.
• The rail is tucked. The page runs edge to edge and the two slivers at the edge are Actions and Eraser. Tap either to bring the rail back; if the eraser sliver was tapped, you are erasing.
• A lasso selection is active. Tap away from it.
• Two-finger navigation. Single-finger swipes are ignored by design so a resting hand does not turn the page. That is not a pen fault.

Bigme and the ink layer

On a Bigme, strokes are drawn by the device’s ink layer while you write and baked into the page when the stroke ends. If strokes appear and then vanish, or appear offset, that is the ink layer and the app disagreeing; a power-off resets it too.

Nothing is lost

Strokes are written to the day file as you make them. A wedged pen stops new ink; it does not take old ink. After the power-off, the page is as you left it, and sync carries on.

On iPad

None of this applies. If the Apple Pencil stops, it is the Pencil’s battery or pairing; the app has no hardware ink path to wedge.