Modrift vs Draftline
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Modrift
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Modrift is a lightweight client for quickly opening, reading, and lightly editing files stored in the cloud — right from your iPhone. Not a heavy notes app: just open, read, and tweak, as fast as possible. Key features - Open Markdown files (.md / .txt / .markdown) with clean formatted rendering - Launch straight from Files or any app via "Open in Modrift" - Keep your own working home (iCloud › Modrift): list, create and organise files there - Switch between Home (by place) and Recent (by time) - Toggle between edit and preview with one tap - A formatting toolbar above the keyboard in edit mode — headings, lists, checkboxes, bold and more, one tap each - Automatic saving (no manual save button) - Full-text search, and sorting by date modified or name - Turn to landscape for longer lines — easier on long paragraphs and tables - Japanese / English interface Beyond Markdown - View images (PNG / JPEG / GIF / HEIC / WebP) with pinch to zoom — free - View PDFs with paging and zoom — Modrift Pro (one-time purchase) - View Word documents (.docx) formatted, with headings, lists and tables — Modrift Pro - View Excel workbooks (.xlsx) as tables, with sheet switching — Modrift Pro Markdown, text and images stay free. Only PDF, Word and Excel viewing is part of Modrift Pro — a single one-time purchase, no subscription. These formats are view-only; they cannot be edited. About your home and editing - Files in your home (iCloud › Modrift) are editable in place, and edits sync to iCloud - Files outside your home (Dropbox / Google Drive, or iCloud Drive outside the Modrift folder) are view-only. To edit one, use "Copy to Home" and edit the copy (the original is not written back) - You can choose whether your home lives in iCloud or on this iPhone, in Settings Relationship to the Files app Modrift complements the Files app rather than replacing it. Leave general folder management to Files; Modrift focuses on formatted Markdown viewing, light editing, and tidying its own home folder. The name combines Mo (Mobile / Motion) + drift — the idea of thoughts and files flowing freely on mobile.
Draftline
This app allows you to write and edit Markdown files directly within your GitHub repositories. It preserves your original content exactly, works offline, and integrates with pull requests for a seamless workflow.
- GitHub repository file system
- Clean Markdown editor
- Preserves original content
- Offline editing
- Pull request integration
- Native SwiftUI app
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Draftline is a Markdown editor that uses your GitHub repositories as its file system. Open a repo, pick a branch, write in a clean editor, and commit when you are done. On iPhone, iPad and Mac. It is built for people who publish from a repository: blogs on Jekyll, Hugo, Astro or Eleventy, documentation sites, and plain notes in git. WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT • Bytes you did not touch come back byte-identical. Edit one paragraph and the commit shows one paragraph. Frontmatter, raw HTML, Liquid tags and anything else the editor cannot render are kept exactly as written and shown as chips, never rewritten. • Real commits on real branches. Edits are kept per branch until you commit them with your own message, and a commit is refused when the branch moved under you, so nothing is overwritten silently. • Works offline. The last repository, branch, file tree and open file come back from the cache at launch. Edits wait until you are back online. • Knows about pull requests. See the branch's pull request, its checks and deployments, and open the preview site in one tap. • Nothing leaves your device except to GitHub. No analytics, no server of ours, no account to create. SIGN IN Sign in with GitHub through the Draftline GitHub App, or paste a fine-grained personal access token. Your credential is stored in the system Keychain. Draftline is a native SwiftUI app.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Modrift at every 4 days against Draftline's every 2 weeks. Modrift also leads on iOS requirement (16.4 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Modrift ships an update every 4 days, Draftline every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Modrift | Draftline |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Number of ratings | — | 1 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 days — better | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 57 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Noriyuki Katahara | Cecil Woebker |
In-app purchases
Modrift
No in-app purchases
Draftline
No in-app purchases









