ScanWave Pro vs PureOpen
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side ā with what reviewers say about each.
ScanWave Pro
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Scanwave Pro is a scanner you buy once and own forever ā no subscriptions, no monthly fees, no "unlock pro" pop-ups. Built for the Japanese practice of copying ID cards onto A4 paper. Capture an ID and lay it onto a page in Actual Size or Fill Page layout ā the standard formats for Residence Card, Driver's License, and Health Insurance Card copies that landlords, banks, and city halls ask for every day. ONE-TIME PAYMENT ⢠Pay once, use forever ⢠No subscription, no in-app purchases ⢠All updates included for life ⢠No "free trial that auto-renews" tricks DOCUMENT MODE ⢠Multi-page capture with automatic edge detection ⢠Manual corner adjustment with magnifier loupe ⢠Filters: Original, Grayscale, Black & White, Enhance ⢠Drag-to-reorder pages, retake, swipe-to-delete ⢠Multi-page PDF export with 1-up, 2-up, or 4-up layouts ID MODE ⢠Front-only or front + back capture ⢠Composed onto A4 in actual size or fill-page layout EXPORT ⢠Save as JPEG or PNG to Photos ⢠Save as PDF to Files (visible under On My iPhone ā ScanWave) ⢠Share to AirDrop, Mail, Messages, or any installed app ⢠Multi-select on the Home screen for bulk share or delete PRIVACY ⢠All processing on device ⢠No cloud, no account, no analytics, no tracking ⢠No third-party SDKs ⢠Photos and documents stay on your iPhone or iPad LANGUAGES English, ę„ę¬čŖ, ą¤Øą„ą¤Ŗą¤¾ą¤²ą„. Switch any time from the globe button on the Home screen.
PureOpen
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PureOpen is a Markdown editor for Mac and iPhone built for right-to-left writing. Most editors treat RTL as a switch: turn it on and the whole document flips, which breaks the moment you write Hebrew or Arabic with English words in it. PureOpen decides direction per block instead. Every paragraph, heading and list item takes its direction from the first strong character in it ā so a mixed document displays correctly with no setting, and with no direction marks written into your file. Files open in tabs, the way a browser opens pages, and your changes are on disk 600ms after you stop typing. RIGHT-TO-LEFT, PER BLOCK ⢠RTL and LTR live side by side in one file. A Hebrew paragraph aligns right, the English paragraph under it aligns left, and each stays that way as you edit. ⢠A Hebrew or Arabic sentence with English terms, code spans and links inside it reads correctly ā the block stays RTL and the Latin runs sit where they belong. ⢠A block with no strong character inherits the direction of the block above it, so blank lines and numbers don't break the flow. ⢠Nothing is added to your Markdown to make this work: no RTL marks, no wrapper tags. The file stays portable. OPEN IT FROM THE FILE, NOT FROM THE APP ⢠Right-click a Markdown file in Finder ā or long-press it in Files on iPhone and iPad ā and PureOpen sits at the top of "Open With". One click and the document is open in a tab in the window you already have. ⢠No launching the app first, no file picker, no importing into a library. Double-click works the same way, and so does dragging a file onto the window. ⢠Registered as the owner and editor of .md, .markdown, .mdown and .mkd. TABS ⢠Every file opens in its own tab. ā1āā9 jump by position, Ctrl+Tab cycles, middle-click closes, and āW closes the tab rather than the window. ⢠The tabs you had open come back the next time you launch. SAVING ⢠Autosave writes 600ms after you stop typing, and again on tab switch, tab close and window blur. A grey dot marks a tab with unsaved content. ⢠If the file changes on disk ā another editor, a sync client ā it is reloaded quietly and your scroll position is kept. If it is deleted, editing locks so stale content is not written back over it. ⢠Opening a file doesn't reformat it: an edit that didn't actually change the content doesn't trigger a write. EDITING ⢠17 formatting buttons: headings 1ā4, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, bullet, numbered and task lists, subscript, superscript, quote, inline code, code block and horizontal rule. ⢠Each button reflects the block and the marks under the cursor, and updates as the cursor moves. ⢠Underline, subscript and superscript are kept as HTML rather than dropped when the file is saved. PRINTING AND PDF ⢠Print what you see. The page is the document as the editor renders it ā headings, tables, task lists, code blocks, Hebrew and English side by side ā without the tabs and the toolbar around them. ⢠Export the same page straight to a PDF file, without going through the print dialog to find "Save as PDF". ⢠Nothing is rendered a second time for paper, so what prints is what you were looking at. Pages break between lines, and the page is always light even when the app is in dark mode. ALSO ⢠On iPhone and iPad, files opened from Files are edited in place ā not copied into the app. ⢠Dark mode follows the system setting. ⢠Files past roughly 4 million characters open read-only as raw text, so the interface doesn't stall. ⢠No network, no account, no telemetry. Your files stay on your device. PureOpen is free, with no in-app purchases.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: PureOpen at weekly against ScanWave Pro's every 2 weeks. PureOpen also leads on device support (4 vs 2). On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
ScanWave Pro ships an update every 2 weeks, PureOpen weekly. The most recent releases landed on September 8, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | ScanWave Pro | PureOpen |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Weekly ā better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac ā better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 15.0 ā better |
| Further details ā not scored | ||
| Size | 41 MB | 5 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Bhupesh Gurung | Yechiel Ben David |
In-app purchases
ScanWave Pro
No in-app purchases
PureOpen
No in-app purchases





