Plan&Journal vs Jottle
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
Plan&Journal
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* Get a birds-eye view of your week. * Capture your todos in one place to be dealt with later * Keep on top of life on a week by week basis * Keep a record of your accomplishments
Jottle
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Jottle is for the thought you need to get down before it's gone. Open it and there's a blank line, waiting. Type the thought, tap Add Note, and get on with your day. There's nothing to set up and nothing to file. A note is a piece of plain text with a date on it. The first line becomes the title. That's the whole model, and it's why capture takes a second instead of a minute. EACH DEVICE GETS ITS OWN SHAPE โข iPhone: the list and the editor, and nothing between you and the blank line โข iPad: your notes on the left and a full page for writing on the right โข Apple Watch: a real app, not a mirror. Dictate or scribble from your wrist. It syncs straight from iCloud, so it works with your phone out of range โข Mac: Jottle is there too, as a notepad that drops in over whatever you're doing with one keystroke Notes sync through your own iCloud account. There's no Jottle account, no sign-in, and no server of ours in the middle. WIDGETS AND COMPLICATIONS Pin the notes that matter and they show up in the Pinned Notes widget, small, medium or large, on the Home Screen, the Lock Screen or in Notification Center. On the watch, put New Note on your face to dictate with one tap, or Recent Notes to read your latest at a glance. LOCKED NOTES, ACTUALLY LOCKED Lock any note and its body is encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a passphrase only you know, derived with PBKDF2-SHA256 at 600,000 iterations. Only the ciphertext is stored and only the ciphertext syncs, so a locked note is unreadable everywhere except on a device where you've entered the passphrase. Face ID or Touch ID unlocks it after the first time, and an open locked note is hidden from the app switcher. There's no recovery and no backdoor. Forget the passphrase and the note is gone for good. That's not an oversight. It's the feature. PLAIN TEXT, NOT A TRAP Export one note or all of them as ordinary Markdown files, with the dates kept in the front matter. Import a folder of them back. They open in any editor and are already covered by whatever backup you run. You are never locked in. THE REST OF IT Pin a note to keep it at the top. Archive one to get it out of the way without deleting it. Search across everything, or find within the note you're editing. MAKE IT YOURS Eight accent colors, light or dark, on a Paper or Bright background, and a text size your eyes agree with. Your watch keeps a color of its own. FREE Jottle on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch is free, with every feature. The Mac app is a separate choice: a free 14-day trial, then a one-time purchase. WHAT IT DOESN'T DO No account. No subscription. No analytics, no advertising, no crash reporting, no third-party SDKs of any kind. Jottle makes no network requests of its own. The only thing it talks to is your iCloud, at your instruction. Nothing about you or your notes is collected, because there is nothing in it to collect them with. Requires iOS or iPadOS 26. The Apple Watch app requires watchOS 26. Syncing needs an Apple Account signed in with iCloud Drive on. Without one, Jottle runs perfectly well on a single device and tells you plainly that it isn't syncing.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Jottle at weekly against Plan&Journal's monthly. Jottle also leads on device support (4 vs 2). Plan&Journal's advantage is iOS requirement (18.6 vs 26.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Plan&Journal ships an update monthly, Jottle weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 1, 2026 and October 17, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Plan&Journal | Jottle |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Weekly โ better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch โ better |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 โ better | 26.0 |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 5 MB | 5 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | DAN CONSTANTIN CONDURAT | Mike Shear |
In-app purchases
Plan&Journal
No in-app purchases
Jottle
No in-app purchases









