Hyphen vs Cairn
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Hyphen
This minimalist app allows for quick capture of daily thoughts, tasks, and moments. It organizes entries by day and provides a visual timeline of your year, highlighting days with more activity. Notes are automatically timestamped and can be entered via typing or voice.
- Quick entry via typing or voice
- Automatic timestamping
- Visual year-in-a-glance timeline
- Smart grouping of related notes
- Secure cross-device syncing
- Private and inaccessible by developer
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Hyphen is a quiet place for the details you would otherwise lose. Write a sentence, list, quotation, decision, observation, or full page. Every note belongs to its day, so you can move naturally through time and return by date, month, year, Chronicle, or search. WRITE WITHOUT FRICTION Capture a quick thought in place. Expand into the full editor when the thought becomes something larger. MARKDOWN MADE FOR IPHONE Use headings, emphasis, lists, checklists, quotations, links, and code without hunting through the iOS keyboard for punctuation. SEE YOUR DAYS TAKE SHAPE Move naturally between Day, Month, and Year, and view time as a quiet record of activity. Hyphen shows continuity without turning your writing into a streak game. FIND WHAT YOU WROTE Search your writing, browse Chronicle, and move directly back to the day where a thought belongs.
Cairn
Manage tasks and notes directly within your existing Markdown files. This app offers focused views, quick capture, and robust task management features, all while keeping your data private and locally stored. It integrates seamlessly with Obsidian and other file sync services.
- Native Markdown task and note management
- Works with Obsidian vaults or any folder
- Quick capture with date, tag, and priority parsing
- Multiple task views (Today, Upcoming, Inbox, Pool)
- Full support for sub-tasks and recurring tasks
- Local reminders and Live Activity integration
- Data stays local, no cloud sync required
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Cairn is a fast, native task and note companion that lives on top of the Markdown files you already own. Point it at your Obsidian vault — or any folder of Markdown notes — and your tasks and notes appear in clean, focused views. Everything you do in Cairn is written straight back to your files as plain text, in the Obsidian Tasks format. YOUR NOTES STAY YOURS • No account, no sign-up, no Cairn cloud database — your tasks live in your own files • Cairn does not send your notes or tasks to the developer • Careful, patch-based edits change only the content you touched, preserving the rest of your note • Works alongside Obsidian, iCloud Drive, Git, or any sync you already use CAPTURE, BROWSE, AND PLAN • Browse and edit Markdown notes directly in your vault • Quick capture into your daily note, with date, tag, and priority tokens parsed as you type • Choose where longer captures are saved • Today, Upcoming, Inbox, and Pool views, plus a global filter for folders, tags, dates, priority, and status • Full support for sub-tasks and task hierarchies • Recurring tasks in Obsidian Tasks format, with safe completion handling • Convert upcoming calendar events into tasks, or mirror your dated tasks into a calendar you choose (optional) STAY ON TRACK • Local reminders for due tasks — including sunrise-relative reminders computed entirely on your device • A Live Activity keeps today's progress on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island • Home Screen widgets and a Control Center quick-capture control • Search across every task in your vault MADE FOR OBSIDIAN — NOT ONLY OBSIDIAN Cairn reads and writes the Obsidian Tasks plugin format (due, scheduled, start, and done dates, priorities, recurrence, tags), so your vault stays fully compatible with your desktop setup. Don't use Obsidian? Create a plain task folder in the Files app and Cairn works as a stand-alone Markdown to-do app. Cairn asks for access only to the folder you pick. Calendar access and location (used to compute local sunrise times) are optional and processed on your device. If you choose iCloud Drive or another Files or calendar provider, that provider's own sync and privacy terms apply.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Hyphen at every 2 days against Cairn's every 5 days. Hyphen also leads on ratings volume (7 vs 1). On price, rating, review sentiment and ads 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Hyphen against 5.0 for Cairn. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Hyphen has 7 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
Hyphen ships an update every 2 days, Cairn every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and October 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Hyphen | Cairn |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (7 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 7 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days — better | Every 5 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 9 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | CHRISTOPH J WHITELAM | Young Hun JEONG |
Customer experience
Hyphen
Cairn
In-app purchases
Hyphen
No in-app purchases
Cairn
No in-app purchases








