Color Notepad vs Pdftool
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Color Notepad
A clean and simple note-taking app that lets you personalize your experience with over 20 colorful themes. It offers a minimalist design for distraction-free writing, iCloud sync, and robust backup options.
- Minimalist design
- 20+ colorful themes
- Light & Dark Mode
- iCloud sync
- Sort notes
- Export notes
- Automatic local backups
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Color Notepad is a clean and simple note-taking app designed to match your personal style. Whether you’re jotting down quick thoughts, daily tasks, or important ideas, Color Notepad keeps things fast, easy, and customizable. Choose from 20+ colorful themes to match your mood — or let the app surprise you with a random one each time you open it. Key Feature: • Minimalist design for quick and distraction-free note-taking. • 20+ colorful themes to suit your mood. • Light & Dark Mode support for every theme. • iCloud sync to keep your notes up to date across devices. • Sort your notes by date or alphabetically. • Export individual notes or your entire archive for backup or sharing. • Automatic local backups with the ability to restore notes. Color Notepad is perfect for anyone looking for a lightweight, private, and beautifully customizable notes app — with no ads, no accounts, and no clutter.
Pdftool
Easily manage, read, and annotate PDF documents with intuitive tools. Highlight text or images, crop, merge, and export pages. Optimized for large collections and supports keyboard shortcuts for efficient navigation.
- Manage PDFs with tags and lists
- Crop, erase, and merge pages
- Highlight text and images
- Export PDF pages
- Batch operations
- Keyboard shortcuts support
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Designed to provide a visually pleasing and intuitive way to manage/read/highlight PDF documents on iPhone or iPad. Highlighter works for both text based and image based PDF. You can crop, erase area, merge, and export PDF pages. Crop operation is enhanced to support long document, such as those single page web content in PDF. You can zoom in and out to reposition document to make cropping large document a breeze. PDF documents can be easily shared to other apps or other compatible devices via AirDrop. ## Main Features - Manage PDF documents by Tags and Short List - Crop, Erase Area, Merge PDF pages - Export - Highlighting - Batch operations - Optimized to work with large collection of PDF documents - Keyboard shortcuts support for page navigation (when using external keyboard) ## Supported keyboard shortcuts - Cmd/alt + Left/Right arrow for previous/next page - Arrow keys to move around page - Cmd + plus/minus for zooming in/out - H for highlighter - T for thin highlighter - E for eraser - ENTER for committing changes Note: The app does not come with sample PDFs. Please add PDF files (such as via AirDrop) for them to show up in the app.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Color Notepad at Free against Pdftool's $1.99. Color Notepad also leads on rating (4.5 vs 1.0) and ratings volume (607 vs 1). Pdftool's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and update cadence (every 6 weeks vs every 5 months). On ads 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
Color Notepad is free to download; Pdftool costs $1.99 up front. Color Notepad sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Pdftool asks for nothing beyond the download.
Color Notepad holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 1.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Color Notepad has 607 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Color Notepad ships an update every 5 months, Pdftool every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 26, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Color Notepad | Pdftool |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $1.99 |
| Rating | 4.5 (607 ratings) — better | 1.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 46.5% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 607 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 months | Every 6 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Dmytro Vynokurov | Zhiguang Han |
Customer experience
Color Notepad
Pdftool
Bugs and requests
Color Notepad
Reported bugs
7 issues- Notes deleted unexpectedly after saving
- App crashes and fails to reopen
- Text disappears or becomes invisible
- Keyboard covers note content during editing
- Inconsistent save functionality (8 out of 10 times fails)
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- App unresponsive to input commands
- Notes lost after app closure
Requested features
6 requests- Password protection for notes
- Different colors for individual notes
- Checklist functionality with reset capability
- Note sharing capabilities
- Multiple font options
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- Apple Pencil support
Pdftool
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Color Notepad
- Unlimited Storage$4.99
Pdftool
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Color Notepad free?
Is Pdftool free?
Which has better reviews, Color Notepad or Pdftool?
Do Color Notepad or Pdftool have ads?
Which is updated more often, Color Notepad or Pdftool?
Other comparisons
