Fast Notes vs Rune Secure Notes
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Fast Notes
This app offers a modern approach to note-taking and list-making using intuitive gesture controls. It aims to replace traditional pen and paper methods with a digital solution available on Apple devices.
- Gesture-based controls
- Note-taking
- To-do lists
- Digital replacement for pen and paper
- Available on iPhone and iPad
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Fast Notes is the fastest way to write notes and to-do lists. Create a note in seconds and manage everything with simple, natural gestures: pull down to add a new note, swipe right to mark it as done, swipe left to delete it, and pinch two notes apart to insert one in between. WHAT'S NEW • Home Screen widget: see your notes at a glance and check them off without even opening the app • Search: find any note in an instant • Reminders: get a notification for a note at the time you choose • Quick action: start a new note right from the app icon AND MORE • 7 color themes to choose from • Icon badge showing how many things are left to do • Sounds and haptic feedback • Works offline: your notes stay on your device • Great on both iPhone and iPad Put down pen and paper — try Fast Notes now, it's free!
Rune Secure Notes
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Rune is a calm, fast notes app for people who don't want to trust an app with their data. Your notes never leave your device, they are encrypted at rest, and the app makes no network connections at all. There is no account, no cloud, and no sign-up. Privacy by construction, not by promise: • No telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, no tracking, none, not "anonymised", not "aggregated". • No networking code. Put your device in airplane mode and everything still works. If anything ever tries to reach the network, that is a bug. • No account and no server. There is no "we" that could hold your data. Real encryption: • Your passphrase derives a key with Argon2id; notes are sealed with XChaCha20-Poly1305 authenticated encryption. Only ciphertext is ever written to disk. • The passphrase is never stored and is not recoverable. If you forget it, your notes are gone, no reset, no backdoor. That is the price of real privacy. • A wrong passphrase simply cannot decrypt your notes. • Optional Face ID / Touch ID unlock: opt in to unlock with biometrics. Even then the passphrase is never stored — only the in-memory key is cached behind the biometric prompt. What you can do: • Create, edit, search, and organise plain-text notes with a clean, calm layout. • Auto-lock on inactivity and lock-on-background; the app starts locked. • Export an encrypted backup (safe to keep anywhere); plaintext export is gated behind an explicit warning. • Capture voice notes and transcribe them to text entirely on your device with on-device speech recognition — no audio and no transcript ever leaves your phone. Free and open source under the GNU GPLv3. The security-critical code is a small, dependency-light core so it can be read and audited. Releases ship with cryptographic provenance and are built reproducibly, so you can verify the binary was built from this source.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: Rune Secure Notes at none against Fast Notes's shown. Rune Secure Notes also leads on update cadence (every 2 days vs every 6 months) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Fast Notes ships an update every 6 months, Rune Secure Notes every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 4, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Fast Notes | Rune Secure Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (16 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 66.7% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 16 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 6 months | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Ad-supported | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPod, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 6 MB | 58 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Emanuele Floris | Rory Standley |
In-app purchases
Fast Notes
No in-app purchases
Rune Secure Notes
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Fast Notes free?
Is Rune Secure Notes free?
Do Fast Notes or Rune Secure Notes have ads?
Which is updated more often, Fast Notes or Rune Secure Notes?
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