Comparison

SmartNotes vs Captured!

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

Head to head
About

SmartNotes

Features
Read full description

SmartNotes is a beautifully designed note-taking app that helps you organize your thoughts with simplicity and elegance. KEY FEATURES: • Create and organize notes with custom categories • Choose from beautiful color themes for each note • Pin important notes to keep them at the top • Search through all your notes instantly • View detailed statistics about your notes • Dark and light mode support • Complete privacy - no internet required DESIGNED FOR iOS: SmartNotes features a clean, minimal interface that feels native to iOS. Every interaction is smooth and intuitive, making note-taking a pleasure rather than a chore. PRIVACY FOCUSED: Your notes stay completely private on your device. No account required, no data collection, no internet connection needed. Just pure, simple note-taking. ORGANIZE YOUR WAY: Create custom categories with personalized colors to organize notes exactly how you want. Pin your most important notes and use powerful search to find anything instantly. Perfect for students, professionals, writers, and anyone who values clean, distraction-free note-taking.

About

Captured!

This app acts as a universal clipboard, saving links, photos, videos, audio, files, and texts shared from other applications. It offers on-device processing for previews, AI descriptions, OCR, and transcription, with smart organization and full-text search capabilities.

Highlights
  • Universal content capture from any app
  • Automatic previews and AI enrichment
  • On-device OCR and transcription
  • Smart organization with folders and views
  • Full-text search and Spotlight integration
  • iCloud sync for selected folders
  • JSON backup and restore
Features
Read full description

Tired of losing links, photos, videos, audio, files or texts shared from your apps? Captured is your universal clipboard. Tap Share from any app and choose Captured — everything is instantly saved, previewed and enriched, on-device by default. UNIVERSAL CAPTURE Accepts URLs, photos, videos, audio, files and text from any app. Automatic source detection (Safari, YouTube, Instagram, X, Photos...). AUTO-GENERATED PREVIEWS Every item gets a thumbnail: web pages via live browser, photos/videos from first frame, files via QuickLook, audio as waveform, text as typographic render. Thumbnail gallery with on-demand regeneration. AI DESCRIPTION, OCR & TRANSCRIPTION AI image/video description: Apple Vision (free, on-device), OpenAI GPT-4 Vision or Anthropic Claude. Built-in OCR on photos and videos. Audio speech-to-text transcription — all on-device by default, no cloud required. SMART ORGANIZATION Folders with batch move/delete and drag-and-drop reorder. Smart Views: All, Recent (7 days), Unread, With Location, With AI. Configurable sort: manual, newest, oldest, title, source. Filter by type: URL, file, photo, video, audio, text. FULL-TEXT SEARCH & SPOTLIGHT Instant search across titles, URLs, notes, AI descriptions and transcriptions. All items indexed in system Spotlight — searchable from the home screen. RICH METADATA Auto-fetch of web page title and last-modified date (bold title signals updated content). Reverse geocoding of GPS coordinates in photos. WIDGET WidgetKit widget in small, medium and large sizes showing unread items in real time. BACKUP & RESTORE Full JSON export/import (items, folders, settings, thumbnails) with Replace or Merge mode. PRIVACY All your data stays on your device. No account, no server, no ads. Network calls only when you explicitly enable web fetching or AI description via your own API key. iCloud sync, folder by folder Choose exactly which folders you want to find on your other devices. A long press on a folder offers "Sync with iCloud": its photos, videos, files and links — including previews — automatically appear on your iPhone, iPad and Mac linked to the same Apple account. Folders that are not synced remain strictly local. A "Resync iCloud" option lets you reconcile state across devices in one gesture. Link previews: lock, zoom, crop You can now lock a link's preview so it never changes, or enlarge the preview by a factor of 2 to better see thumbnails from your favorite sites. A new setting automatically crops the white or black bands surrounding some previews. Organization: everything by drag-and-drop Reorganize your folders by dragging them in the sidebar. Move an item from one folder to another simply by dragging it onto the destination folder. No more drop-down menus. Paste a link from the clipboard A new menu entry lets you directly add the currently copied link, without going through another app's "Share" menu. Manage your space better The info panel now shows the space used in iCloud when sync is active. A long press on each line gives access to quick actions. The "Delete local data only" option frees up space while keeping your synced folders intact.

Screenshots

SmartNotes4 screens
Captured!3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: SmartNotes at 13.0 against Captured!'s 17.6. On price, ads, in-app purchases 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
SmartNotes versus Captured!: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSmartNotesCaptured!
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—2 — better
Update frequency—Fortnightly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
Monetization—Free
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS13.0 — better17.6
Further details — not scored
Size18 MB4 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperHUGHES BRIANAlexandre Fenyo

In-app purchases

None

SmartNotes

No in-app purchases

None

Captured!

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is SmartNotes free?
SmartNotes is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Captured! free?
Captured! is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do SmartNotes or Captured! have ads?
Neither SmartNotes nor Captured! shows ads.

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