Comparison

Planck Timer vs Novalist

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

Head to head
About

Planck Timer

Track your time with ease by clocking in and out of tasks. This app allows for multiple concurrent timers and provides detailed reports on how your hours are spent weekly, monthly, and yearly. It offers a private iCloud sync and a native dark interface.

Highlights
  • Concurrent timers
  • One-tap start/stop
  • Categorization with custom colors
  • Weekly, monthly, yearly reports
  • Full history with edits
  • Trim idle time
  • Private iCloud sync
Features
Read full description

Planck Timer is a focused time tracker for people who want to know where their hours actually go. Clock in and out of tasks with a single tap, run multiple timers at the same time, and see honest reports across your week, month, and year. WHY PLANCK TIMER Most time trackers force you to pick one thing at a time. Real work isn't like that. You start a deep work block, then a build kicks off and you start reading docs while it runs. Planck Timer handles concurrent tasks the way your day actually works. FEATURES • Concurrent timers run as many tasks at once as you want • One tap to start, one tap to stop • Categories with custom colors so reports read at a glance • Week, month, and year views with stacked bars and per-task totals • Full history grouped by day, with quick edits and manual entry • Trim idle time on a running entry without losing the start • Private iCloud sync between iPhone, iPad, and Mac (your data, your account) • Native dark interface designed for long sessions • No accounts. No subscriptions. No ads. No analytics.

About

Novalist

A dedicated writing environment for novelists to plan, build worlds, and write manuscripts. It offers a clean editor with advanced features, a comprehensive world-building codex, and flexible organizational tools. Your writing is stored in plain files on your device, ensuring ownership and longevity.

Highlights
  • Clean writing editor with formatting and comments
  • World-building codex for characters, locations, and lore
  • Plotting tools: Grid, Timeline, Calendar, Relationships
  • Multi-book projects with shared World Bible
  • Plain file storage for project ownership
  • Themeable interface and keyboard navigation
Features
Read full description

Novalist is a writing environment built for novelists — a single, focused workspace where you plan your story, build your world, and write the manuscript, instead of bending a general-purpose word processor to the task. WRITE A clean editor with real formatting, paragraph styles, inline comments, and footnotes. Focus Mode hides everything but the page; the split editor lets you work on two scenes at once. Every scene auto-saves with its own snapshot history, so you can compare versions and revert a single scene without disturbing the rest of the book. Smart quotes, em-dashes, and dialogue punctuation are handled as you type, with presets for ten languages, alongside grammar and spelling checks and live word count, reading time, and readability. BUILD YOUR WORLD A full Codex keeps your characters, locations, items, and lore in one place — with images, relationships, custom fields, and long-form notes. Define your own entity types, such as factions, spells, vehicles, or races, each with its own fields. Character details can change per act, chapter, or scene, so someone can age, move, or transform across the story without losing their earlier state. PLAN AND SEE THE SHAPE Plot Grid: toggle which scenes belong to each plotline in a spreadsheet view. Timeline: acts, chapters, scenes, and events in chronological order. In-world Calendar: place scenes on the dates they happen in your story. Relationships: a living map of who knows whom, with automatic inverse roles. ORGANIZE WITHOUT LOCK-IN Work in multi-book projects with a shared World Bible for a series. Chapters carry status, acts, and colors; Smart Lists save the scene queries you return to. And your project is simply plain files on disk — add, rename, move, or delete scenes in Finder and Novalist keeps up. Your writing stays in a format you can read forever. MAKE IT YOURS A themeable interface, keyboard-driven navigation with a command palette, and an extension system for adding new tools. Novalist keeps your manuscript on your Mac, in files you own. Write the book.

Screenshots

Planck Timer4 screens
Novalist4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Planck Timer at 5.0 against Novalist's 4.5. Novalist's advantage is device support (4 vs 2) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases 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.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Planck Timer holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 2 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Planck Timer versus Novalist: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPlanck TimerNovalist
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better4.5 (2 ratings)
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings12 — better
Update frequency—Every 5 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better
Requires iOS17.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size2 MB167 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperYeong KwonDominik Goblirsch

Customer experience

Planck Timer

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Novalist

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Planck Timer

No in-app purchases

None

Novalist

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Planck Timer free?
Planck Timer is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Novalist free?
Novalist is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Planck Timer or Novalist?
Planck Timer is rated higher. Planck Timer averages 5.0 out of 5 from 1 ratings, while Novalist averages 4.5 from 2 ratings.
Do Planck Timer or Novalist have ads?
Neither Planck Timer nor Novalist shows ads.

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