Mandala Printer vs NerDie
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Mandala Printer
Design an endless variety of unique mandalas with customizable settings. Create wireframe designs for coloring or printouts, or generate solid, vibrant patterns for wallpapers. This app offers pure creative fun with no restrictions.
- Infinite mandala designs
- Customizable settings
- Wireframe mandalas for coloring
- Solid mandalas for wallpapers
- Kid-friendly entertainment
- Printable designs
Read full descriptionHide full description
Endless Mandala Magic! Make as many mandalas as your heart desires! Tweak the settings and unlock an almost infinite world of unique designs - right at your fingertips. Go artsy with wireframe mandalas - perfect for coloring apps or printing out for some hands-on fun with pencils and markers (great for keeping the kids entertained, too!). Feeling bold? Create vibrant, solid mandalas and turn them into one-of-a-kind wallpapers for your iPhone or iPad. It’s something ◆ unique ◆ just for you! A truly free App - no ads, no subscriptions, no sign-ups, and no "pro" versions. Just pure, fun, with zero strings attached !
NerDie
This application generates 8-bit noise and chip sounds using a variety of oscillators, LFOs, and a sequencer. It offers extensive sound manipulation options and can be used as a standalone instrument or an AUv3 plugin.
- Four oscillators with 16 waveforms
- Four LFOs with 8 shapes
- Complex summing topologies
- Resonant low-pass filter
- One-bar sequencer with overdub
- 32 registers with MIDI Learn
- MPE support
Read full descriptionHide full description
NerDie is an 8-bit noise machine for iPad and iPhone: four oscillators, four LFOs, a summing tree with eight algorithms, a resonant low-pass filter and a one-bar sequencer. Thirty-two registers, integer arithmetic, mono output — the sound of a chip rather than a picture of one. The engine runs in whole numbers at a fixed chip rate. Overflow, wrap and quantisation are not added afterwards to make it sound old: they are the signal itself. It runs on its own or as an AUv3 instrument on a MIDI track in any host that loads them, in portrait and in landscape. THE MACHINE • 4 oscillators, 16 waveforms each, 19 to 1350 Hz • 4 LFOs, 8 shapes, moving pitch or volume — free-running in Hz, or multipliers of the clock up to x128 with the phase reset on every tick • 3 summing topologies x 3 nodes x 8 algorithms: addition, overflow, subtraction, ring modulation, XOR, FM and wave-shaping — 1,536 ways to add four voices together • 8-bit resonant low-pass filter that self-oscillates at the top of its travel • One-bar sequencer with overdub, recorded finer than a sixteenth-note grid, driven by the internal clock, the host transport or MIDI clock • 32 registers on 8 pages of 4 pots, with optional hardware-style pot pickup • Four chip rates — 15625, 31250, 62500, 78125 Hz — and three outputs: RAW, CLEAN, TAPE TWO KINDS OF ACCIDENT CHAOS throws every register at once, the way the machine does, and sometimes lands on silence. RND builds a whole patch, renders it and measures it before handing it over, so it always makes a sound. UNDO brings back what you had. MADE FOR GLASS Drag a knob up and down for the coarse move and sideways for the fine one, eight times slower, without lifting your finger. Long press to type a value in its real unit - Hz, ms, %, the name of a waveform - to reset it, or to assign a MIDI CC with MIDI Learn. Double tap for the default. Two knobs turn at once, and the four pads are played with as many fingers as you like. Pinch the panel up to 250% and drag it around; the top bar and the value strip never scale, so the preset name and the register you are turning stay readable at any zoom. MPE The four oscillators become four MPE voices. Press, slide, strike and bend pass through a matrix that decides what each one moves — tuning, level, waveform, LFO depth, filter cutoff — with a response curve per gesture. Controllers reach the app over Bluetooth or a Camera Connection Kit, and reach the AUv3 through its host. THREE FACES The pixel panel with its four pots and page buttons; the matrix, with all 32 registers on screen at once; and a photograph of the circuit with the controls mounted on it. PRESETS 45 factory presets in nine folders — Bass, Drones, FX, Glitch, Melodic, Noise, Rhythms, Sequenced, Init — installed on the first run. The ones you save live in the Files app under On My iPad / NerDie / Presets, so you can copy them out or drop new ones in. The .ner format is identical to the desktop version and travels in both directions. Presets saved inside a host are there when you open the app on its own. NO ACCOUNT, NO SUBSCRIPTION, NO ADS Buy it once. There is nothing to activate, nothing to sign in to, and nothing is collected. NerDie is an independent project, modelled on the behaviour of the SOMA Laboratory Rumble of Ancient Times. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by SOMA Laboratory, and no firmware, artwork, font or layout of the original is used in this product.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Mandala Printer at Free against NerDie's $4.99. NerDie's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and update cadence (every 2 days vs every 9 months). On rating, ratings volume, 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
Mandala Printer is free to download; NerDie costs $4.99 up front. Mandala Printer sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. NerDie asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Mandala Printer against 5.0 for NerDie. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.
Mandala Printer ships an update every 9 months, NerDie every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 16, 2026 and October 21, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Mandala Printer | NerDie |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $4.99 |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 9 months | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Best chart rank | — | #173 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 9 MB | 10 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jan Nutbroek | Diego Capoccitti |
Customer experience
Mandala Printer
NerDie
In-app purchases
Mandala Printer
- Import a Photo or Image$1.99
NerDie
No in-app purchases









