Actions For Obsidian vs Marklens
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Actions For Obsidian
This app bridges your personal knowledge management notes with Apple's automation tools. It offers over 40 actions to integrate your notes with other applications, enabling seamless data flow between your vaults and the wider Apple ecosystem.
- Create and manipulate notes
- Search and organize notes
- Work with files and folders
- Integrate with Dataview
- Utilize note properties
- Execute Obsidian commands
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Actions For Obsidian integrates the personal knowledge management tool Obsidian with Apple's automation ecosystem. With 40+ Shortcuts actions, it brings your notes and automations together, making Obsidian a first-class citizen in Apple's Shortcuts app. Use it to bring information from other apps into your notes, or to bring information from your vaults into other apps. Some of the possibilities it adds: - Creating, manipulating, searching, opening, organizing notes, including daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly ones - Working with files - Working with Dataview - Working with note properties - Working with your vault's files and folders - Working with Obsidian commands For a full list and detailed description, please click the "Website" link to the right or visit https://actions.work/actions-for-obsidian. ——— This application is not affiliated with or endorsed by Obsidian.md.
Marklens
This app is a fast, native Markdown viewer for macOS, iPadOS, and iPhone. It renders .md files instantly with beautiful typography, themes, syntax highlighting, and diagrams. Designed for reading, it offers a private and friction-free experience.
- Instant Markdown rendering
- Syntax highlighting for 30+ languages
- Mermaid diagram support
- GitHub-Flavored Markdown
- Light and dark themes
- Export to PDF
- Quick Look preview on macOS
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Marklens is a fast, native Markdown viewer for macOS, iPadOS, and iPhone. Open any .md file with a click and see it rendered immediately — beautiful typography, light and dark themes, syntax-highlighted code, and Mermaid diagrams. No editor, no library, no friction. HIGHLIGHTS • Instant render — every .md opens in a clean, focused window • 30+ language syntax highlighting via highlight.js, bundled offline • Mermaid 11 diagrams — flowcharts, sequence, state, xy-charts and more • GitHub-Flavored Markdown — tables, task lists, footnotes, strikethrough • Light and dark theme matching the system appearance • Quick Look on macOS — press Space on any .md in Finder for a rendered preview • Export to PDF on every platform • Pinch-to-zoom on iPadOS and iPhone, ⌘+ / ⌘− / ⌘0 on macOS • Open files via drag-and-drop, the Share Sheet, or the Files app MADE FOR READING Marklens doesn't try to be a notes app or a knowledge base. It opens a file, renders it perfectly, and gets out of the way. If you write Markdown in another tool — VS Code, Obsidian, GitHub, your favorite text editor — Marklens is the viewer you reach for to look at the result. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Marklens collects nothing. No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reports, no network requests. Every rendering asset — Mermaid, highlight.js, fonts — ships inside the app. Read the full privacy policy at https://donald-jackson.github.io/marklens/privacy/ OPEN SOURCE Marklens is MIT-licensed and developed in the open. Source, issues, and contribution guide live at https://github.com/donald-jackson/marklens.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Actions For Obsidian at 88% against Marklens's 0%. Actions For Obsidian also leads on ratings volume (40 vs 2). Marklens's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 11) and rating (5.0 vs 4.8). On price, update cadence, 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. Actions For Obsidian sells 11 one-off in-app purchases. Marklens asks for nothing beyond the download.
Marklens holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Actions For Obsidian has 40 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 88% of Actions For Obsidian's written reviews are positive against 0% of Marklens's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Actions For Obsidian ships an update every 3 weeks, Marklens monthly. The most recent releases landed on September 28, 2026 and September 19, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Actions For Obsidian | Marklens |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (40 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 87.5% of reviews — better | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 40 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks — better | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 18.4 | 18.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 22 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Carlo Zottmann | Donald Jackson |
Customer experience
Actions For Obsidian
Marklens
In-app purchases
Actions For Obsidian
- macOS+iOS License Upgrade (S)$6.99
- macOS-only License (S)$8.99
- iOS-only License (S)$8.99
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- macOS+iOS License Upgrade (M)$8.99
- macOS-only License (M)$11.99
- iOS-only License (M)$11.99
- macOS-only License (L)$14.99
- iOS-only License (L)$14.99
- macOS + iOS License (S)$14.99
- macOS + iOS License (M)$19.99
- macOS + iOS License (L)$22.99
Marklens
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Actions For Obsidian free?
Is Marklens free?
Which has better reviews, Actions For Obsidian or Marklens?
Do Actions For Obsidian or Marklens have ads?
Which is updated more often, Actions For Obsidian or Marklens?
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