Second Brain vs Maho Notes

Second Brain is a companion voice recorder for the Second Brain macOS app. Capture voice notes on the go and sync them to your Mac for transcription and AI analysis. The app automatically detects speech and silence (Voice Activity Detection), splits recordings into chunks, and transfers them to your Mac over the local network — no cloud involved. Features: - Voice recording with automatic Voice Activity Detection - Background recording — keeps working when the app is minimized - Live Activity — recording progress on Lock Screen and Dynamic Island - Seamless Mac sync via Bonjour (P2P, no cloud) - Geolocation tagging for recordings - Fully offline — all data stays on your device Pair your iPhone with the Second Brain macOS app to unlock transcription, knowledge extraction, and AI-powered search across all your voice notes.

Maho Notes is a markdown-based note-taking app for people who care about their words — and want to keep them. Every note is a plain .md file on your device. No proprietary format, no vendor lock-in, no servers you don't control. Sync through your own iCloud, your own GitHub repo, or keep notes purely local — your choice. A NOTES APP THAT SPEAKS YOUR LANGUAGE Full multilingual support, including search across English, 中文 (Traditional Chinese), 日本語 (Japanese), and 한국어 (Korean) — powered by a CJK-aware tokenizer that actually understands word boundaries in each language. Add furigana to Japanese kanji, Zhuyin to Mandarin, Tâi-lô to Taiwanese, or readings to Korean — all with one simple syntax: {漢字|ふりがな}. THREE WAYS TO SEARCH • Keyword search — fast SQLite FTS5 across every note • Semantic search — on-device vector embeddings find ideas, not just words • Hybrid — both, fused into one ranked list Models run entirely on-device. Nothing about your notes leaves your hardware. WRITTEN IN MARKDOWN, RENDERED BEAUTIFULLY • Full CommonMark + GitHub Flavored Markdown • KaTeX math equations • Mermaid diagrams • Syntax-highlighted code blocks • Ruby annotations for any language • Image and asset embedding • Tables, task lists, footnotes ORGANIZE YOUR WAY Vaults hold collections. Collections hold notes. Drag-and-drop reordering, custom icons and colors, hierarchical sub-collections, and per-collection ordering — all stored in plain YAML you can read. SYNC THAT RESPECTS YOU • iCloud — seamless across your Apple devices • GitHub — version your notes as a private repo, sync through your own account using GitHub's official Device Flow login (no third-party server in the middle) • Device-only — keep everything offline Conflicts get clearly-named files (note.conflict-DeviceName.md), never silent overwrites. UNIVERSAL APP One purchase covers iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Optimized layouts for each: a focus-friendly stack on iPhone, a three-column workspace on iPad and Mac, with the same vault wherever you are.