Ariv vs Igneous

Ariv is a local-first second brain for notes, tasks, journaling, study, projects, and personal knowledge management. Capture ideas, organize work, search your vault, ask questions about your notes, and keep your thinking connected without building a complicated plugin setup. Everything is built in: - Markdown notes and daily writing - Smart dashboard for active work - Tasks and Kanban - Quick capture - Voice memos with transcription - Ask Brain, an AI assistant for your notes - Calendar-aware planning and meeting context - Graph view and visual maps - Templates and presentation mode - Unified search across files, tags, and content Ariv is designed around a simple idea: your notes have a life. New thoughts land in your inbox. Active notes stay visible while you are working on them. Older notes move out of the way but stay searchable, linkable, and ready to resurface when you need them. No manual filing system required. No weekend spent setting up plugins. Open the app and start thinking. Your files stay yours: - Notes are stored as plain Markdown - Works with existing Markdown folders and vaults - No proprietary format - No account required to use the local app - Optional end-to-end encrypted sync is available AI is optional and on your terms. Use your own API key, run supported local models, or use Ariv's managed AI add-on. Ask Brain can answer questions from your vault and point back to the notes it used. Whether you are a student, writer, researcher, developer, founder, or lifelong learner, Ariv gives you one place to capture, connect, and use what you know. Think freely. No setup required.

Igneous is a notes app you drive with one thumb. On iPhone there's no toolbar at the top of the screen: everything lives in one dock at the bottom, and it moves the way Safari's tab bar does. Your notes are plain Markdown files in a folder you choose — on your device, in iCloud Drive, or anywhere Files can reach — so they open in any other app, today and in twenty years. No account, no database, no analytics. GET ANYWHERE WITHOUT REACHING • Tap the pill in the dock to search every note, like tapping Safari's address bar. • Swipe it sideways to move between open notes, and keep going past the last one for a new note. • Swipe up on it and your open notes spread out as cards. • Swipe in from the left edge for your notebook, and from the right for the Inspector. • Pull down on a note to find a word in it. Hold any button for more. • While you read, the dock folds into a slim pill out of the way. Liquid Glass on iOS 26; solid with Reduce Transparency. • On iPad: a floating notebook pane, a real tab bar, and as many windows as Stage Manager will hold. CAPTURE THE MOMENT • Press the Action Button, a Lock Screen widget or a Control Center tile and you're typing in a new note — even from a closed app. • Record a voice note from the Action Button, Siri, the app icon or the note you're in. Igneous transcribes it on your device while you talk, shows the words on the Lock Screen, and saves the audio and transcript into today's note or a note of its own. • Copy a voice note — recording and transcript together — and paste it into Messages, Mail or another note. WRITE IN MARKDOWN, SEE IT BEAUTIFULLY • A live editor that renders headings, lists, tasks, tables, callouts, highlights, maths and diagrams as you type, while the file stays plain text. • A formatting bar just above the keyboard, and Writing Tools that keep your links and structure intact. • Wikilinks, embeds, backlinks, tags and a graph of how your notes connect. • Search every note instantly, including handwriting on your canvases. • Daily notes, a calendar, tasks gathered from every note, templates and a board view. DRAW WHEN WORDS WON'T DO • Canvases for sketches and diagrams, with Apple Pencil on iPad, beside cards and links to your notes. • Opens JSON Canvas and Excalidraw drawings. WORKS WITH YOUR MAC — AND OFFLINE • Keep a notebook in iCloud Drive ▸ Igneous and it's on all your devices. • Or pair with Igneous on your Mac over your own network: the phone keeps a full offline copy and sends its edits when it's back. Changes to different lines are combined, and if you both changed the same words, both versions are kept. Drawings merge shape by shape. • Nothing ever passes through a server of ours — there isn't one. SHORTCUTS, SIRI AND WIDGETS • Actions for new notes, today's note, tasks, search and voice notes, ready for Shortcuts and Siri. • Home Screen widgets with buttons you choose, Lock Screen widgets, Control Center controls, Focus filters and Live Activities. YOUR NOTES, YOUR FILES Igneous reads Obsidian-flavoured Markdown as written and never adds anything you didn't ask for. Point it at the vault you already keep.