AyumiJournal vs Bifolio
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
AyumiJournal
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Ayumi is a local-first journaling app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Write quick daily notes and save them as Markdown files you can keep under your control. Entries are organized in a simple date-based structure and are designed to work well with Obsidian-compatible workflows. Ayumi helps you capture more context around each note: Add your current location Attach current weather information Save photos, audio, PDFs, and other files alongside an entry Record audio notes and turn them into text with transcription Your journal stays file-based and easy to move, inspect, and back up.
Bifolio
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Bifolio is a private journal that opens like a book. YOURS, AND SEALED What you write, and every photo, video, recording and drawing with it, is encrypted on your iPhone before it syncs to your iCloud. The keys travel between your devices in iCloud Keychain, and an optional recovery key of your own lets you back in if they can't. There is no Bifolio account, no server of ours and no tracking of any kind. Settings shows whether iCloud is up to date. YOUR WORDS STAY YOURS Bifolio never writes your entries. If a blank page is hard to start, it offers a question. Where Apple Intelligence is available, it can suggest questions drawn from your recent entries, worked out on your iPhone. Journaling Suggestions can start an entry from a moment your iPhone remembers, and Apple's Writing Tools are there when you want them. One switch in Settings turns all of it off. JOURNALS LIKE BOOKS Keep as many journals as you like, each a book on your shelf in its own cloth. Write as many entries a day as you want, and add photos (several at once, or straight from the camera), video, audio transcribed on your iPhone where your language is supported, and drawings or handwriting. Mark how you felt, and let Bifolio note where you were and the weather. An entry's own menu moves it to another journal or shares it. LOOK BACK Search everything you have written, even what you said in your recordings. The calendar marks the days you wrote, and On This Day brings back the same date in earlier years. YOURS TO TAKE WITH YOU Export everything, one journal or one day as a PDF, or as a ZIP of Markdown files with the original photos, video, audio and drawings. Share a single entry as a PDF. Bring journals in from Day One, Apple Journal or an earlier Bifolio export, and undo an import that wasn't what you wanted. A weekly backup can keep copies in a folder you choose. Exports and backups are plain files, not encrypted, and Bifolio says so wherever it makes one. QUIET BY DESIGN No streaks, no badges, no congratulations. A few lines is a full entry, and so is a single photograph. An optional daily reminder stays quiet on days you have already written. AROUND YOUR IPHONE Widgets for today, On This Day and the month, and a New Entry control for Control Center. Siri and Shortcuts can start an entry, open today, record audio or search. Lock the journal with Face ID, Touch ID or a passcode of its own: after several wrong passcodes it makes you wait, longer each time, and with the lock on, widgets never show what you wrote. AN OPEN BOOK ON IPHONE DUO Folded, Bifolio is a pocket journal for a quick note. Unfolded, it becomes a spread: your days on one side, the page you are writing on the other. Read your journal as a book and the crease becomes its spine, with two facing pages that turn like paper, one day after another. On other iPhones it is the same journal in a single, unhurried column. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is device support: AyumiJournal at 4 against Bifolio's 1. On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement 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.
| Parameter | AyumiJournal | Bifolio |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Weekly | โ |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch โ better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 26.0 |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 10 MB | 13 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Naoki AINOYA | Canopus Labs Ltd |
In-app purchases
AyumiJournal
No in-app purchases
Bifolio
No in-app purchases









