Birch vs Shooglebox
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Birch
This app helps you organize your life using photos as notes. Simply snap a picture, add hashtags, and find it quickly later. It's ideal for visual individuals who use their photo album for reminders and references.
- Organized photo notes
- Hashtag-based organization
- Quick photo capture
- Fast search functionality
- Multiple hashtag support
- Light and Dark mode support
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Birch is a different kind of Notes app, built for photos. It's Notes, for visual individuals! Organized photo notes: Are you the type of person who's always super busy, and takes quick reminder photos of things you need to remember later? Is your photo album filled with pictures of product labels, mail, receipts, household projects, whiteboards, recipes, etc? Many of us have turned our photo album into a visual notes app, but Birch can make this "Photo Notes" part of your life much simpler and more organized! Just snap a photo, add a hashtag in a note, and that's it! Create photo notes in seconds and find them lighting fast when you need them later. Hashtags are simpler and way more convenient than creating albums and folders to organize your photos, especially these reminder note photos! Think of it like a document scanner mixed with an organized file cabinet, except it's not limited to only documents or PDFs and can be used to document and reference anything that can be captured by a photo! Multiple hashtags can be added to any photo note, so you can find these organized pics in multiple places. And the organization is managed automatically for you by simply adding hashtags to your notes! Just a few examples of where Birch really shines: • Snapping a quick photo note of something you see in the wild and want to buy later. • Labels & product numbers of household supplies you need to find at the store later. • Receipts and mail you don't want to keep physical copies of. • Organizing and saving whiteboard notes, so you can safely erase but never lose. • Or even just organizing your favorite photos from an occasion (it's built for notes... but it's still way easier than managing personal photo albums) Free with a paid Pro option: I'm a small indie developer, but I don’t think it’s right to make money unless you’re actually getting value. So you get a good amount of features and functionality for free, then have an upgrade option to access more “power user” features. If Birch is helping to make your life a bit easier, upgrading costs less than 5 coffees per year… only 3 if you drink the good stuff! Organize your life, with beautiful photo notes! A clean, simple and intuitive design that looks great in Light or Dark mode! In-App purchase disclaimer: Should you decide to upgrade to Birch Pro, a purchase will be applied to your iTunes account at the time of upgrade. Subscriptions will automatically renew unless canceled within 24-hours before the end of the current period. You can cancel anytime with your iTunes account settings. Any unused portion of a free trial will be forfeited if you purchase a subscription. For more information, see our ToS EULA (http://danielmac.co/birch-eula) and Privacy Policy (http://danielmac.co/birch-privacy-policy).
Shooglebox
Capture and organize content from various sources into shareable cards. Ideal for teams and individuals to gather research, spot trends, and gain insights from social media and other platforms.
- Gather content from multiple apps
- Organize content into shareable cards
- Spot social media trends
- Explore research material
- Collaborate with teams
- Create at-a-glance outputs
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Shooglebox helps teams gather and explore content and insights from multiple sources – and create inspiring at-a-glance outputs to share with others. Marketing and PR teams use Shooglebox service to spot, understand and act on fast-moving TikTok trends – and tap into what their customers are seeing, saying and doing across social media. Researchers, writers and creators use the Shooglebox iPhone and iPad app to save content directly from other apps – Safari, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, X, YouTube, Photos, Maps and more – and build on the things they gather. Shooglebox turns everything you gather into cards with an at-a-glance front and full material, embeds and notes on the back. You can use the iOS app to review and edit your cards – or switch to a web browser on a larger-screen device to explore them and see the bigger picture. Shooglebox is an indispensable tool for: • Gathering and building on research material fast • Exploring different types of content in one place • Collaborating across marketing, PR and other teams • Spotting emerging TikTok and social trends • Discovering insights from social conversations • Getting your heads round hot topics and opportunities • Reviewing live social feeds to track hot topics • Creating inspiring outputs to share with others
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Shooglebox at none against Birch's 2. Birch's advantage is ratings volume (127 vs 12) and review sentiment (84% vs 75%). On price, rating, update cadence and ads 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. Birch sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $1.49 per month. Shooglebox asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.6 for Birch against 4.5 for Shooglebox. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Birch has 127 ratings behind it against 12, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 84% of Birch's written reviews are positive against 75% of Shooglebox's.
Birch ships an update every 3 weeks, Shooglebox every 4 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 2, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Birch | Shooglebox |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (127 ratings) — better | 4.5 (12 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 83.6% of reviews — better | 75.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 127 — better | 12 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks — better | Every 4 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 17.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 65 MB | 117 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Daniel McCarthy | IMP Media Ltd |
Customer experience
Birch
Shooglebox
In-app purchases
Birch
- Pro (Monthly)$1.491 Month
- Pro (Annual)$14.991 Year
Shooglebox
No in-app purchases









