Spark vs PDF nano
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Spark
Capture and organize your innovative thoughts in one place. Quickly add, edit, search, and share your ideas with intuitive tools. Personalize your experience with sorting filters and dark mode.
- Quick idea addition
- Edit and update ideas
- Search by title and description
- Filter and sort ideas
- Share ideas easily
- Dark mode support
- Export all ideas
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At Spark, we believe even the simplest idea has the potential to change the world. Our mission is to create an intuitive solution to store your ideas in one central location. Spark allows you to quickly add, edit, view, or share your innovative thoughts. ADD • It's simple! Just click big yellow + in the bottom right to swiftly input your idea title, then in it'll take you to the idea view where you can input your full idea's description! • Alternatively, hold down the Spark app icon on your device's home screen and press "New Idea" to quickly add an idea. • A time stamp will be added to each idea indicating the moment you inputted it, when you update an idea, the time stamp will update as well. VIEW AND EDIT • View your ideas either in a vertical or horizontal scroll using the toggle near the top left of the main idea page! • Tap one of your brilliant ideas to view a larger, more elegant page displaying all details of your thought. • To edit the title, just tap on the title letters and change it to whatever you like! • To edit the idea description, simply tap on the texts to alter/ change and type to update it. • Press "DONE" in the top left of the idea page to save all changes you've made! • Editing an idea title or description will also update its time stamp as well. SEARCH • Search through all of your ideas with the search bar at the top of the main idea view! • The text you input in the search bar searches through the idea titles and idea descriptions to find the idea you're looking for! LIKE • Tap on your favorite ideas and press in the heart in the top tool bar to like it! A red heart will appear in the main page if you've liked an idea. • You can use a filter to view only liked ideas! FILTERS • There are now filters to help sort your brilliant ideas. • Having all filters deselected is the standard which will allow you to scroll through all your ideas in chronological order (newest first). • Selecting "FILTER BY LIKED" will display only ideas that you have liked. • Selecting "OLDEST FIRST" will display all ideas from oldest first, meaning each new entry or updated idea will be placed at the bottom. • Selecting "TITLE A-Z" will sort by your idea title's in alphabetical order. • More ways to sort your idea's coming soon! SHARE • In the idea viewing and editing mode, tap on the top right share icon to share your idea title and description. • Alternatively, swipe left on an idea and tap the share icon to share the description of your idea.. • Use the share button to copy any of your ideas to paste elsewhere, forward ideas through messages or email, and post an idea to social media! DELETE • Tap on an idea and press the trash icon on the top tool bar to delete any idea. • Alternatively, simply swipe left on an idea on the main screen and tap the yellow trash icon. MORE FEATURES • Dark Mode! Click the top left menu to enable or disable dark mode. • Export all: Tap "Export All Ideas" to export all the ideas you've made on Spark. *If you delete the Spark app all of your ideas will be deleted as well, use the "Export All" feature before deletion to save your incredible ideas elsewhere* • Add your first name: In settings you will find "Change Name" which you can input your first name to have a more personalized experience throughout Spark. • Total idea count at bottom of idea view. • Themes: Coming soon. • More features to come (such as drawing)! SOCIAL Email: SparkJournalApp@gmail.com Facebook: @SparkJournalApp Instagram: @SparkJournalApp Twitter: @SparkJournalApp
PDF nano
Edit, translate, and manage PDF documents with a focus on on-device privacy. This app offers tools for scanning, converting, annotating, and organizing your files locally.
- Read, organize, and manage PDFs
- Offline PDF translation with layout preservation
- Scan documents and create PDFs
- Convert PDFs to Word, Excel, or images
- OCR for Arabic and English text
- Add signatures and annotations
- Remove hidden metadata for privacy
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PDF nano is a comprehensive, professional PDF reader, editor, translator, and manager engineered for speed and privacy. Combining powerful on-device tools with Apple Intelligence, PDF nano delivers a unified workflow tailored for iPhone, foldable iPhone Duo, and iPad—handling your contracts, reports, and paperwork with top-tier security. Key Features: 1. Foldable iPhone Duo & iPad Experience: • Seven Postures Adaptation: Automatic layout across foldable and dual-display devices. • Dual-Screen Book Mode: Side-by-side reading with automatic hinge isolation to prevent content clipping. • Tabletop Mode: Bottom screen transforms into a control deck for drawing, signing, and scrubbing without covering the document. • Dynamic iPad Sidebar: Instant browsing of thumbnails, outlines, and bookmarks beside your canvas. • High-Contrast Navigation Pill: Prominent back button for effortless touch accessibility and zero status-bar overlap. 2. AI Document Assistant (Beta): • Instant executive summaries of lengthy reports, extracting decisions and action items. • Precision risk analysis and contractual obligation detection. • Verifiable Q&A with answers grounded in direct textual citations from your document. • Encrypted Cloud Privacy: Powered by Apple Intelligence and Private Cloud Compute (PCC) to process documents securely without logging or storing data. *Note: AI features require Apple Intelligence-compatible devices. 3. Offline Document Translation (Beta): • Full-document PDF translation entirely offline while preserving layouts, fonts, and tables. • Batch approval to accelerate processing for files up to 100 pages. • Granular paragraph review with selective editing for each translated block. *Note: Translation operates fully on-device. Machine translations may contain errors. 4. Advanced Reading & Viewing: • Dual-Page Continuous View: True book-like reading with native RTL Arabic and LTR layout. • Distraction-Free Guard: Locks editing overlays during reading mode to prevent accidental markups. • Fast-Scrub Vertical Scroll: High-velocity thumb scrubber for jumping through hundreds of pages. • Full Interface Adaptation: Precision safe-area integration around the Dynamic Island and status bar. • Smart Double-Tap Zoom: Rapid focus scaling with an intuitive floating navigation capsule. • OCR Visual Search: Direct in-document search across scanned PDFs with fuzzy and multi-word query support. 5. Conversion & Smart Scanning: • High-Fidelity PDF to Word (.docx) conversion preserving tables and formatting. • Accurate Table Extraction to Excel (.xlsx) with automatic data type inference. • Camera Document Scanner to digitize receipts and paperwork into clean PDFs. • High-quality PDF-to-Image and multi-image-to-PDF conversion pipelines. 6. Editing, Signing & Organization: • Digital signatures: Create, position, and cryptographically sign contracts and forms. • Complete markup suite: Freehand drawing, highlighters, custom text boxes, and annotations. • Page management: Reorder, rotate, extract, or delete pages with fluid drag-and-drop. • Merge & Split: Combine multiple PDFs into one or split large documents into individual files. • Smart PDF Compression: Reduce file size for rapid sharing via email and messaging apps. 7. Industry-Leading Privacy & Security: • 100% On-Device Processing: Reading, editing, translation, OCR, and conversion run locally without uploading files to external servers. • Cryptographic Apple Privacy: AI Assistant requests are strictly restricted to Apple Private Cloud Compute (PCC). • Visual face and sensitive data blurring with hidden metadata sanitization. • Password encryption, native AirPrint support, and Home Screen widgets. Free tier includes daily tool quotas. Unlock unlimited access via in-app purchase. Standard Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: PDF nano at 5.0 against Spark's 4.5. PDF nano also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs weekly). Spark's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and ratings volume (52 vs 1). On price, 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
Both are free to download. PDF nano sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Spark asks for nothing beyond the download.
PDF nano holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Spark has 52 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Spark ships an update weekly, PDF nano every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 26, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Spark | PDF nano |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (52 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 76.5% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 52 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 11.3 — better | 18.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 20 MB | 25 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Cameron Nazemi | Thamer Mohammed |
Customer experience
Spark
PDF nano
In-app purchases
Spark
No in-app purchases
PDF nano
- PDFnano Pro Lifetime$19.99









