markru vs Keepout

Markdown notes are easy to write — and easy to forget. markru is built for what comes after writing: shelving, binding, and rereading your own notes like books. (Some features — tag suggestions, summaries — use Apple Intelligence on supported devices.) YOUR NOTES, SHELVED LIKE BOOKS Promote finished notes from drafts to your bookshelf. Browse by shelf, search, and sort by what you read last. BIND NOTES INTO ONE READABLE BOOK Combine related pages into one book. Reorder pages, add new ones, and read them as a single piece — or unbind anytime. WRITE IN CLEAN MARKDOWN A focused editor with live preview and a formatting bar for headings, lists, checklists, tables, code, and more. Some writing helpers — tag suggestions, formatting, and summaries — are partly powered by Apple Intelligence, right on your device. Note: These AI-assisted features require a supported device and OS version. Where Apple Intelligence isn't available, they simply fall back to manual entry — everything else in the app still works, and no note content is ever sent to an external server. CAPTURE IDEAS IN SECONDS Quick Capture works like a paper memo: jot it down, the title can come later. Import .md and .txt files, or send text from any app with the share sheet. KEEP YOUR SHELVES IN ORDER See your note, shelf, and book counts at a glance. Clean up, compress, or bind notes as your library grows. PICK UP RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT OFF markru remembers your reading progress in every book, so returning to your notes feels like reopening one. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account required. Your notes live as plain Markdown files on your device or in iCloud Documents — never on our servers. Write lightly. Reread deeply.

Keepout is a private notes app for iPhone and iPad. Your writing stays on your device, encrypted at rest, with local tools for connecting and understanding ideas. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • AES-256-GCM encryption protects every note at rest. • Your vault key stays in this device's non-synchronizing Keychain. • Opaque filenames keep note titles and links out of the file system. • There is no account, cloud sync, analytics, remote prompt processing, or plaintext search index. CONNECTED KNOWLEDGE • Link notes with familiar double-bracket wiki links. • Follow backlinks and suggested related notes. • Explore an interactive knowledge graph built with Apple's local sentence embeddings. • Search decrypted notes in memory while the vault is unlocked. LOCAL AI • Ask questions, summarize a note, and suggest connections without sending note text to a server. • Use Apple Foundation Models on supported devices. • Choose the optional MLX engine for local inference. Its compact model downloads once on first use; inference then stays on your device. FOCUSED WRITING • Open the transient action bar from the toolbar or with Command-K on a hardware keyboard. • Type / in the editor for headings, lists, tasks, quotes, code blocks, dividers, and links. • Switch to a centered typewriter view that hides the side columns and softly fades the page edges. • Navigate with touch or hardware-keyboard shortcuts on iPad. • Markdown syntax and link destinations stay visually quiet until the caret enters them. Keepout stores each encrypted note in a .md file so your vault remains a collection of Markdown documents without exposing their contents at rest.