PureWrite vs Inkstone Notes
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side ā with what reviewers say about each.
PureWrite
Read full descriptionHide full description
PureWrite is a writing tool with no distractions. Your documents are Markdown files in your own folder, and other apps such as Obsidian can edit them too. Writing and exporting are free. Writing Studio, a one-time purchase, is for making a longer work: a screenplay, a novel or a paper. The free app: ⢠Start typing and the file sidebar and the table of contents leave the screen. Move the pointer back and they return. ⢠Open a folder you already have. There is no import step and no database, and the folder can stay an Obsidian vault or a git repository. ⢠Edit the document as it looks, while the file on disk stays ordinary Markdown, tables and links included. ⢠Hebrew and English in one document: each paragraph takes its own direction, and nothing is written into the file to do it. ⢠Search the whole folder, with the context around every match. ⢠Keep footnotes and images in the file as you wrote them. ⢠Use focus mode, typewriter scrolling, find and replace, and quick open. ⢠Export a folder or a single document as Word, PDF or EPUB. ⢠Autosave runs a second after you stop typing. Writing Studio: ⢠Screenplays in the standard page format: Courier 12, (MORE) and (CONT'D), dual dialogue, locked scene numbers and production revision marks. Scripts are plain Fountain files, written with nothing else on screen. ⢠Export to PDF, Word and Final Draft, and import from Final Draft. Final Draft does not support right-to-left text, so a Hebrew or Arabic script goes out as PDF or Word. ⢠Templates for fiction, life stories, academic work, Torah study and screenplays, with questions and a length target for each part. The prompts appear in the editor and stay out of your files, so you can switch structure without touching your text. ⢠A sources desk: keep a passage with its source, and leave a short reference in the document. Citations come in seven styles, and a source is looked up only when you ask. ⢠Two languages side by side: a document and its translation, each in its own file, with the matching paragraph marked. ⢠Versions of a document, saved as you write, compared word by word and restored. ⢠An on-device assistant: translate, reword or shorten a selection, then compare the result with your original. Ask a question about the folder, or look for contradictions between chapters. It needs Apple Intelligence on a supported device. PureWrite never sends your documents anywhere: no account, no telemetry. The network is used only when you ask the studio to look up a source. macOS, iPhone and iPad. The download is free. Writing Studio is a one-time purchase, not a subscription, shared across your devices with the same Apple Account.
Inkstone Notes
Read full descriptionHide full description
Inkstone keeps your notes as what they already are: plain Markdown files, in a folder you choose, on your own device. There is no database, no import step and no proprietary format. A vault another Markdown app created opens here, and a vault created here opens there. If Inkstone disappeared tomorrow, you would still have a folder of Markdown. WRITING Headings, bold, quotes, callouts, checkboxes, tables and code all render in place as you type, with the syntax revealed only on the line the cursor is on. Reading mode is a separate, read-only view for when you want the page without the scaffolding. Body font, code font and their sizes are set independently. LINKING [[Note]], [[Note#Heading]], [[Note^block]], ![[Embeds]] and aliases declared in frontmatter all resolve into one index. Every note shows what points at it, what it points at, and which of its links have no target yet. Rename a note and every link that pointed at it is rewritten across the whole vault, in the same action. SEEING THE SHAPE The graph view draws your notes as nodes joined by their links, and the simulation is deterministic ā the same vault draws the same picture every time, so you can learn its layout instead of re-reading it on every open. SPATIAL NOTES The canvas puts cards, files and connections on an infinite sheet, saved as JSON Canvas 1.0 ā the same open format other implementations read and write. FINDING THINGS A fuzzy switcher opens over every note with one gesture. Full-text search understands tag: and path:, and tags work inline or in frontmatter, nested, in any script. TYPOGRAPHY THAT HANDLES CJK Chinese sets solid ā no word spaces ā so a Latin word dropped into a Han sentence collides with it. Inkstone sets the gap between scripts properly, and lets you choose fonts and sizes that suit both. TWO DEVICES Sync a vault through iCloud, or push it to a GitHub repository with conflicts settled once rather than left as two copies. Per-file-type filters decide whether attachments and media travel with it. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION No account. No telemetry. No network call you did not ask for. Your files are on your device and go only where you send them. Interface in English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is device support: PureWrite at 4 against Inkstone Notes's 2. PureWrite also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases 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.
| Parameter | PureWrite | Inkstone Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 5 days | ā |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac ā better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 ā better | 26.0 |
| Further details ā not scored | ||
| Size | 7 MB | 15 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Yechiel Ben David | Orris |
In-app purchases
PureWrite
No in-app purchases
Inkstone Notes
No in-app purchases









