Comparison

Simple Viewer vs TextLab

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

Head to head
About

Simple Viewer

Features
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Simple Viewer opens files. Quietly, quickly, and without asking for anything in return. Share any file from any app — Mail, Messages, Files, a browser, a cloud drive — and Simple Viewer renders it the way it was meant to be read. No account. No upload. Files stay on your device. It is designed for the moment when you just need to see what's inside a file. RENDERED WITH CARE • PDF with smooth scrolling and pinch-to-zoom • Markdown with typography that reads • Source code with precise syntax highlighting • JSON, XML, and YAML, pretty-printed • CSV and TSV, as readable tables • Excel spreadsheets (XLSX) • Word documents (DOCX) • ZIP archives, browsed inside • Plain text, logs, and scripts • x509 certificates BUILT FOR iPHONE AND iPAD • Open from any app via the iOS share sheet • Recent files, one tap away • Orientation-aware on iPad • Works offline. Always. NOTHING YOU DON'T NEED No sign-up. No subscription. No ads. No tracking. No cloud sync. No bloat. Just a clean surface for reading what you already have. Because simple is elegant.

About

TextLab

Transform and clean text with a variety of tools. Convert cases, remove extra spaces, count words, and more. Premium features include workflows, data formatting, and advanced search.

Highlights
  • Case conversion
  • Text cleanup
  • Word counting
  • Reverse and sort text
  • JSON and data formatting
  • Regex find and replace
  • Apple Intelligence integration
Features
Read full description

TextLab is a fast text utility for iPhone and iPad. Paste any text, pick a transformation, copy the result. No setup, no signup, no clutter. Whether you write copy, ship code, edit content, or just clean up messy text from emails and documents, TextLab handles the boring parts so you do not have to. Everything runs on your device. Your text never leaves your iPhone. WHAT IT DOES • Convert case in one tap. UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, Sentence case, camelCase, PascalCase, snake_case, kebab-case. All the formats developers and writers actually use. • Clean up text fast. Remove extra spaces, empty lines, line breaks, duplicate words, duplicate lines. Trim whitespace. Strip rich text formatting in one tap. • Count what matters. Characters, words, lines, sentences, paragraphs, reading time. Live as you type. • Reverse, shuffle, sort. Reverse words, reverse letters, sort lines alphabetically or by length, shuffle randomly. PREMIUM TOOLS • Workflows. Chain any number of actions into a single reusable transformation. Save it, name it, give it an icon, run it on any text in one tap. Edit a workflow once, use it forever. • JSON and data formatters. Beautify or minify JSON. Format XML, HTML, YAML. Convert CSV to JSON and back with custom delimiters. Strip HTML tags. Strip Markdown. • Encoders and decoders. Base64, URL encoding, HTML entities, hex. Encode or decode in one tap. • Find and replace with regex. Full NSRegularExpression support for advanced search and replace. • Extract anything. Pull emails, links, phone numbers, dates from any block of text. Or write your own regex pattern to extract whatever you need. • Line tools. Sort lines, number lines (decimal or Roman), add prefix or suffix to every line, delete lines containing or not containing text, break lines after every word, sentence, or position. • Cleanup pro. Remove diacritics. Remove invisible Unicode characters that break text from web pages. Remove emojis. Filter words by pattern. • Markdown tools. Convert Markdown to HTML. Strip Markdown syntax to plain text. Clean Markdown formatting. • Apple Intelligence. On supported devices running iOS 26, run text through the on-device language model with your own prompt. Translate, rephrase, fix grammar, summarize. All on device. • Shortcuts integration. Every TextLab action and every workflow you create works as a Shortcuts action. Build automations, run them with a tap, a Siri command, or a Home Screen widget. • Share extension. Select text in any app, hit Share, run any TextLab action without leaving the app you are in. • iCloud sync. Your workflows follow you across iPhone and iPad. PRICING Free tier covers basic case conversion, cleanup, counters, and reverse. Genuinely useful with no time limits, no daily caps, no nags. PRIVACY TextLab does not collect any data. No analytics. No tracking. No accounts. All transformations run on your device. Your text is never sent over the internet. iCloud sync uses your private iCloud database, encrypted by Apple. WHO IT IS FOR • Developers who format JSON, debug data, convert case styles, encode tokens, test regex patterns. • Writers and journalists who clean up draft text, fix smart quotes, strip formatting, count words. • Marketers and copywriters who format headlines, generate slugs, count characters for ad copy, prepare social posts. • Students and researchers who clean up scraped text, format citations, transform data sets. • Anyone tired of pasting text into ten different websites just to fix capitalization. Terms: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Simple Viewer3 screens
TextLab4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Simple Viewer at none against TextLab's 1. On price, update cadence, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. TextLab sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Simple Viewer asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Simple Viewer ships an update monthly, TextLab every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on June 26, 2026 and September 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
Simple Viewer versus TextLab: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSimple ViewerTextLab
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—2 — better
Update frequencyMonthlyEvery 3 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
Monetization—Freemium
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size6 MB11 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperShanghai STLink CorporationIgor Bidenko

In-app purchases

None

Simple Viewer

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

TextLab

One-time1
  • TextLab$9.99

Questions

Is Simple Viewer free?
Simple Viewer is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is TextLab free?
TextLab is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Simple Viewer or TextLab have ads?
Neither Simple Viewer nor TextLab shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Simple Viewer or TextLab?
Simple Viewer ships an update monthly, and TextLab every 3 weeks. Most recently, Simple Viewer was updated on June 26, 2026 and TextLab on September 24, 2026.

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