Comparison

uFocus vs Pattio

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

uFocus

A distraction-free writing app designed for creative expression. It supports plain text files, offers advanced Markdown and Fountain syntax for various writing needs, and provides tools to enhance focus and productivity.

Highlights
  • Unobtrusive interface
  • Text statistics
  • MultiMarkdown support
  • Fountain screenplay support
  • Highlighting options
  • Typewriter scrolling
  • Customizable themes
Read full description

uFocus is a distraction-free writing environment that supports plain text files and allows you to keep them organized inside libraries. It allows everyone to express their creativity in the most simple way. • Unobtrusive interface: the navigation bar disappears while writing. • Swipe to show the sidebar. Here you can link your favorite libraries and quickly access your documents. • Show text statistics including character and word count and reading time. • MultiMarkdown: easily add headings, quotes, ordered and unordered lists, links, images, italics, bold, footnotes, citations, glossaries and acronyms. You can then export your documents to HTML or PDF. With CriticMarkup and Live Edit Mode you can easily mark removals, additions and substitutions, add highlghts and comments, and accept or reject them. • Fountain: create screenplays with the Markdown-inspired markup syntax and print or export them as PDF with industry-standard formatting. • Highlighting: you can stay even more focused by fading out all the text but the current sentence or paragraph. • Typewriter scrolling: automatically scrolls the text when you get on a new line. • Sound mode: experience the ultimate feeling of a typewriter. • No deletions mode: disable deletions and replacements if your greatest temptation is always to edit your text instead of writing. • Fullscreen: focus on your words and hide everything else. • Choose between three different editor widths, four font sizes and a light, dark, sepia or amber theme, or create your own theme. • Print single files or entire directory hierarchies. If you have any requests, suggestions or bug reports, you're welcome to visit the website through the Support link.

About

Pattio

Features
Read full description

Your digital shoebox. An endless cork board where you toss notes, photos, links and lists, move them with your finger like real paper, and group them however you like. No structure forced on you: save it first, sort it later — if you ever feel like it. EVERYTHING GOES IN, AND IT GOES IN EASILY Stickies, notes, images, links, checklists, folders, polls, countdowns, expenses, habits, albums, files, videos, places, songs, document scans, notebooks, documents, voice notes, drawings, events, calendars, reminders, doors into other boards and today's weather. Twenty-five kinds of card, every one of them pinned down. Share into it from any app, drag things in from Finder or your photo library, or just paste: Pattio works out on its own whether what you brought is a photo, a link or text. IT MOVES LIKE PAPER The canvas pans and zooms with your fingers. Cards drag, rotate with two fingers and snap straight when they get close. Tap a note and it opens for writing, big and centred, with the colour palette beside it; close it and it goes back to its spot on the board. Photos and folders open big from exactly where they sit, the way iOS apps open, and close again by following your finger. ZONES, NOT FOLDERS Paint a coloured area, give it a name, and drop things into it: whatever lands inside is filed automatically, and whatever leaves is unfiled. AND WHEN YOU WANT ORDER A masonry grid of two, four or six columns, filtered by kind, by folder or by zone. Search everywhere. Export the whole board as a PDF. ON IPHONE, IPAD AND MAC A real native menu bar and proper keyboard shortcuts on Mac. Drawing with Apple Pencil on iPad. Home screen widgets. Eight app icons to choose from. Dark mode with a warm night palette, not a grey one. IN YOUR LANGUAGE Thirteen languages: Catalan, Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, European and Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. IT WORKS WITH NO ACCOUNT Pattio is complete on your device without signing up for anything. An account is optional and only does one thing: sync. Private boards travel end-to-end encrypted, with a key that is yours alone and that we do not hold. No ads and no trackers. The only analytics are pseudonymous — a random per-install identifier, no account and no content — never read what you write, and switch off in Privacy. AND IF YOU WANT, IT’S SHARED Invite people to a board or hand out a link: whoever opens it can look, vote and add notes right in the browser, with nothing to install and nothing to pay. (A shared board has to be readable in your guest’s browser, so that one stops being encrypted. We would rather say so.) THE PLANS The free plan is enough to use Pattio for real: one board, seventeen kinds of card, sync, sharing and 50 MB in the cloud. The paid plans open up the rest: as many boards as you like, all twenty-five kinds of card, and more space. · Free — 1 board · 17 kinds of card · 50 MB · Plus — unlimited boards · every kind · 5 GB · Pro — unlimited boards · every kind · 15 GB Optional monthly auto-renewable subscription. Payment is charged to your Apple Account when you confirm the purchase, and it renews only if you do not cancel it at least 24 h before the end of the period. You can manage or cancel it in your Apple Account settings. And if you ever leave, you take it all with you: one button downloads a ZIP with every board as JSON and every original file, byte for byte. Free, always, on the free plan too, and even after a subscription lapses. — Terms of use: https://pattio.app/en/terms Privacy: https://pattio.app/en/privacy

Screenshots

uFocus4 screens
Pattio4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: uFocus at none against Pattio's 2. uFocus also leads on device support (5 vs 2). Pattio's advantage is update cadence (every 2 weeks vs monthly). On price, ads and iOS requirement 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Pattio sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. uFocus asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

uFocus ships an update monthly, Pattio every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and October 6, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
uFocus versus Pattio: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameteruFocusPattio
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (35 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews91.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings35 — better—
Update frequencyMonthlyEvery 2 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaid—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, Vision Pro — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.0 — better16.4
Further details — not scored
Size7 MB74 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperNicolas KickJoan Cama Ribot

In-app purchases

None

uFocus

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Pattio

Subscriptions2
  • Plus3 Days trial$2.991 Month
  • Pro$4.991 Month

Questions

Is uFocus free?
uFocus is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Pattio free?
Pattio is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do uFocus or Pattio have ads?
Neither uFocus nor Pattio shows ads.
Which is updated more often, uFocus or Pattio?
uFocus ships an update monthly, and Pattio every 2 weeks. Most recently, uFocus was updated on October 8, 2026 and Pattio on October 6, 2026.

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