Synapse vs FluidNotes

Most apps are built to keep you scrolling. Synapse is built to make you stop, just once a day. It gives you a single fact, carefully written and drawn from the deepest corners of science and history. No feed, no infinite scroll, just one idea worth carrying with you, delivered whenever you choose. These are not trivia. Each fact is a small story: the slow evaporation of black holes, declassified Cold War experiments, animals that bend the laws of physics, words that carry the fingerprints of ancient civilizations. Written to be read in a minute, and remembered far longer. Ten worlds to explore: • Abysses & Cosmos: the physics of deep space and the ocean floor • Dark History: real, documented, and deliberately forgotten • Biohacking: the science of pushing human biology to its limits • Mind & Neuroscience: the strange architecture of perception • Weird Fauna: evolution's most brutal and brilliant solutions • Future Tech: what tomorrow's labs are building today • Etymology Lab: words as archaeological artifacts • Megastructures: impossible engineering, ancient and future • Geopolitics: borders that defy logic • Daily Science: the deep laws hidden in ordinary moments A streak grows with every day you show up, and when life gets in the way a shield protects what you have built, so a single missed day never erases weeks of curiosity. Every fact also carries a rarity, so the more you read, the richer your collection becomes: a private map of everything you have learned. Curiosity is better when it travels. Follow friends, compare streaks on the leaderboard, and share the facts that move you. Synapse asks for one minute a day. What you do with the idea is up to you.

FluidNotes is a notebook for iPad and iPhone that feels like paper: write with Apple Pencil on iPad or with your finger on iPhone – and find everything again with search that reads your handwriting. WRITING THAT FEELS RIGHT • Ballpoint, fineliner, fountain pen, pencil, felt-tip, watercolour, highlighter and more, all pressure-sensitive • Ruler, colour picker and custom colours on all your devices • Hand-drawn shapes become clean circles, rectangles, lines and arrows • Convert handwriting to typed text, with word suggestions as you write – on the device • Cross out typed words to delete them • Lasso: cut out exactly, colour, move, duplicate • Zoom window: write large at the bottom, and it appears small on the page ORGANISATION THAT GROWS WITH YOU • Folders and subfolders, tags, favourites and bookmarks • Headings automatically build an outline; links connect pages and notebooks, and a knowledge network shows topics and connections – in 3D too • Search handwriting, typed text, PDFs, photos and recordings – through Spotlight too • Collect the highlights of a PDF into an excerpt, with links back to the passage • Lock notebooks with Face ID or a passcode THE PAPER YOU WANT • Lined, squared, dotted, planners, sheet music and more – in colour too; plus a whiteboard that grows • Save your own pages as templates; import PDFs, Word, PowerPoint and Goodnotes • Photos, document scans, GIFs, tables, mind maps and reusable building blocks STUDY • Flashcards with spaced repetition and a study plan across all notebooks, with a daily reminder if you like • An exam date per deck, also as a proposal to the group; import and export decks as Anki packages or text files • Flashcards from your handwriting: circle a question or sketch and turn it into a card • Apple Watch: review due flashcards on your wrist, with a complication for the watch face • Study time with breaks, on iPhone also on the Lock Screen • Study tape: cover passages and test yourself • With Apple Intelligence: flashcards, cloze exercises from A1 to C2, summaries and mind maps from your notes – and answers to questions about them • The AI runs on the device only – no internet, no third-party AI service STUDY GROUPS AND SHARING • Study groups: join once and get every notebook of the group, including later ones • Invite others to a notebook with a link or QR code – to write along or just to view • Colour each person’s contributions and see what others have changed since your last visit • Send a copy of a notebook or of single pages, with the recordings if you like – through a link that expires by itself • Comments with replies; everyone shares the flashcards, each person keeps their own progress RECORD AND PRESENT • Record sound while you write; on playback, your note reappears stroke by stroke • Transcripts on the device: search finds spoken words too • Present on a projector or TV: only the current page, with a laser pointer HANDY • Quick Note from the app icon, as a widget, in Control Centre, with Siri or Shortcuts • Widgets for recently opened notebooks and cards due • Sync through your own iCloud and Handoff between iPhone, iPad and Mac • Automatic backups to iCloud Drive; export as PDF, Markdown or FlexiNote package • Select text in a PDF and translate it • Optional: Zotero for PDFs, citations and the bibliography • Getting started in five short exercises; help mode explains every button YOUR NOTES BELONG TO YOU FluidNotes has no server of its own and no account. No ads, no tracking, no analytics, no in-app purchases. Your notebooks live on your device and, if you like, in your own iCloud. FluidNotes is a personal project, built with care. Questions and ideas: j.gomez@web.de