Metis vs Inkstone Notes

Metis is a native Markdown editor and local-first knowledge base. Your notes are just .md files in a folder you own - Metis is a fast, beautiful, native view over them. No lock-in, no proprietary format, no account required to write. WRITE IN LIVE PREVIEW A clean Obsidian-style editor styles your Markdown as you type - headings, bold, lists, quotes and code - while keeping the raw syntax one tap away. It feels like writing in a document, not in code. On iPad it's a full three-pane workspace with hardware-keyboard shortcuts. CONNECT YOUR IDEAS Link any two notes with [[wiki links]]. Backlinks appear automatically, so you always see what references the note you're reading. An interactive link graph shows your whole knowledge base at a glance - zoom, pan, and drag nodes to explore the connections. READ BEAUTIFULLY Reading mode renders the full document: headings, tables, task lists, images, syntax-highlighted code, Mermaid diagrams, and real math (LaTeX) rendered natively - no web view. ORGANIZE YOUR WAY Tag anything with #tags, group notes into folders, and see typed properties (status, owner, due...) that live as YAML front matter and are preserved as you edit. A fast switcher and full-text search get you anywhere instantly. ON-DEVICE AI (Apple Intelligence) Summarize a note, suggest tags or related links, and ask your whole vault a question - all running privately on your device. AI is optional; the app is fully functional without it. SYNC ACROSS YOUR DEVICES Keep your vault in iCloud and the same notes are on your Mac, iPad and iPhone - still as plain .md files you can open anywhere. Edits sync in the background, and Metis helps you resolve conflicts if two devices change the same note. LOCK WHAT MATTERS Any note can be locked with your notes password and opened with Face ID or Touch ID. Locked notes are encrypted on disk and stay encrypted in iCloud - and they're kept out of search and previews. PRIVATE AND YOURS Everything stays in plain files on your device. No tracking, no cloud lock-in. Open the same folder in any other Markdown editor whenever you like. Import an existing folder of notes (from Obsidian or anywhere) and Metis just works. ONE PURCHASE, ALL YOUR DEVICES A single one-time purchase unlocks Metis Pro on your Mac, iPad and iPhone - no subscription. Try everything free for 7 days. Metis is made by Empiric Apps. Questions or feedback? contact@empiricapps.com

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 — 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 — 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 — no word spaces — 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.