Comparison

Folio vs BLISS Note

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

Head to head
About

Folio

Features
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Every PDF tool you need — and not one byte of your document ever leaves your device. Online PDF tools are convenient until you read the fine print. Your contract, your payslip, your client's financial statement — uploaded to a server you don't control, retained for purposes you didn't agree to, mined for data you didn't consent to share. Folio makes that trade-off unnecessary. Folio is a full-featured PDF toolkit that runs entirely on your iPhone and iPad. No network connection. No account. No cloud sync. No analytics. Your files go in, your files come out — nothing in between. WHAT YOU CAN DO Organise — Merge multiple PDFs into one document — Split a PDF into separate files by page range — Reorder, rotate, or delete individual pages Reduce & Prepare — Compress PDFs to shrink file size without rebuilding content — Add watermarks or page numbers — Flatten form fields and annotations into a fixed document Convert (best-effort, on-device) — PDF to images: export pages as JPG or PNG — Images to PDF: combine photos into a single document — PDF to Word, Excel, or PowerPoint — conversion is handled entirely on-device using Apple's document frameworks; complex layouts may not reproduce with pixel-perfect fidelity, but no file is ever sent to a remote service to achieve it Protect — Password-protect a PDF with your chosen password — Remove password protection from a document you own Fill & Sign — Fill text fields in PDFs — Add your signature to any document Extract & Search — OCR: turn a scanned or photographed document into searchable, selectable text using Apple's on-device Vision framework — Extract all text from a PDF for copying or reference ZERO NETWORK DESIGN Folio ships with no networking capability. It cannot phone home. It cannot upload a file even if it wanted to. Every operation — compression, conversion, OCR, signing — runs on your device's own processor using Apple's built-in frameworks. This is not a marketing claim; it is a technical constraint we built in by design. This matters most when you are handling documents that should never leave your hands: NDAs, medical records, legal filings, HR documents, financial statements, tax returns. NO ACCOUNT REQUIRED Open the app. Use every feature. Close the app. No sign-up screen. No email address. No subscription prompt. No paywall on any v1.0 feature. BUILT FOR PEOPLE WHO HANDLE SENSITIVE DOCUMENTS Folio is built for lawyers, accountants, HR professionals, and anyone else who regularly works with documents that are nobody else's business — and for anyone who is simply tired of feeding their files to free websites that profit from what they read. Your documents are yours. Folio keeps them that way.

About

BLISS Note

Features
Read full description

One pencil across every note. Ink on text notes, annotate PDFs, and keep notes inside notes — an all-in-one notebook for iPad, iPhone and Mac, built for Apple Pencil. ā–  One pencil, every note • The same pen, highlighter and tools on text notes, PDFs and drawings — ballpoint, fountain pen and more • Handwriting and annotation right over your typed notes — page breaks keep ink on its page as you edit • Free-form canvas and A4 landscape, Letter, Square and B5 pages, lasso select & move, vector shapes • Convert handwriting to text, and write note titles in your own hand • Write small text comfortably in a magnified zoom-write strip ā–  Planner & tasks • Task management — keep your to-dos in one place • Planner notes — add your schedule to a handwritten diary, sync with your iCloud calendar, and link a note to every event • Recurring events & lunar anniversaries — repeat daily to yearly or by the lunar calendar, and edit or delete this one, the following, or all ā–  Exam prep & memorization • Question bank & wrong-answer notes — split an exam PDF into individual questions to drill; the ones you miss collect automatically and return on a 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30-day review schedule • Vocabulary flashcards and a memorization sheet (red sheet) — hide highlights and tap to reveal • D-day countdown — the days left until an exam or deadline, on the Home screen and inside notes ā–  Record, transcribe & translate • Record meetings & lectures and turn them into text — organize & summarize with your AI • Live translation — transcripts and notes translated on-device, so it works offline (59 languages) • Play a recording from the note header, and save a transcript with its translation as a new note • Recording-handwriting sync — tap ink you wrote while recording to play from that moment, in a floating mini-player ā–  Search anything • Full-text search across text and PDFs — plus your handwriting and recordings (transcripts) • In-note search — find text right inside the open note ā–  Notes inside notes • Embed PDFs, drawings and other notes inside a text note • Organize a list of notes within one note using Shelves • List, Thumbnail, Bookshelf, Tabs, Tiles and Pinned view modes • Page grid view — all pages of PDF & drawing notes as thumbnails • YouTube playlist embed — play a playlist inside a note and track your watch progress • Split view — two notes side by side, to copy across and compare ā–  Papers & documents in PDF • Import PDFs and mark up with pen, highlighter, underline • Reading mode — Sepia, Dim and Night soften the glare of white pages, while ink and annotations keep their colors • Automatic paper citations — title, authors, year & journal detected, with APA, MLA, IEEE & BibTeX ready to copy; use the detected title as the note title • Export original or with annotations (text stays selectable) ā–  Annotate the web • Open a web page in the app, highlight it, add notes, and write on top with your pen • The original page is never stored — only your own annotations, kept on your device ā–  Make it your own • Add a cover page to the front of a note and draw or write on it • Use your own images as note covers, or as the paper (background) for drawing notes • Turn any image into a sticker or washi tape to decorate your notes • Place your own drawing behind the Home screen — position, size and opacity ā–  A powerful editor • Headings, lists, tables, checklists, code blocks • Clean paste from anywhere — AI answers and web pages keep their Markdown & HTML formatting ā–  Privacy first • No sign-up to start — your notes live on your device • No note servers of ours — optional cloud sync goes only through your own iCloud or Google Drive • Available in 24 languages Study notes, research, lecture notes, planning, quick sketches — all in Bliss Note. Terms of Service: https://blissnote.app/terms.html Privacy Policy: https://blissnote.app/privacy.html Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Folio3 screens
BLISS Note4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Folio at none against BLISS Note's 2. BLISS Note's advantage is device support (4 vs 2) and iOS requirement (15.5 vs 17.0). On price and ads 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

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Both are free to download. BLISS Note sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Folio asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard3 real differences Ā· 3 level
Folio versus BLISS Note: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterFolioBLISS Note
PriceFreeFree
Update frequency—Every 6 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better
Requires iOS17.015.5 — better
Further details — not scored
Size1 MB143 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperVuyo NkadimengBLISS AI Inc.

In-app purchases

None

Folio

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

BLISS Note

Subscriptions2
  • Bliss Note Pro (Monthly)$0.991 Month
  • Bliss Note Pro (Yearly)$3.991 Year

Questions

Is Folio free?
Folio is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is BLISS Note free?
BLISS Note is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Folio or BLISS Note have ads?
Neither Folio nor BLISS Note shows ads.

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