Notedown vs PureOpen
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side ā with what reviewers say about each.
Notedown
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Notedown is a featherweight markdown notes app for people who just want to write. No accounts, no sync, no clutter ā every note is saved as a plain .md text file on your device and never leaves it. WRITE IN MARKDOWN Use familiar markdown to structure your thoughts: headings, bold and italic, bulleted lists, checkboxes, quotes, code, and links. A one-tap formatting toolbar inserts the syntax for you, so you never have to remember it. EDIT OR PREVIEW Flip between a distraction-free editor and a clean rendered preview with a single tap. See exactly how your note looks, then jump back to writing. FULLY OFFLINE, FULLY YOURS Your notes are stored as standard markdown files in the app's own folder on your device. There is no cloud, no login, and nothing to set up. What you write stays with you. FIND ANYTHING FAST Search across all of your notes instantly. The list keeps your most recently edited notes at the top. SHARE WHEN YOU WANT Export any note as markdown text through the standard share sheet. SIMPLE BY DESIGN - Light and dark themes - English and Japanese - Portrait, one-handed friendly layout - Free to use (contains ads) Notedown is the calm, lightweight alternative to heavy note apps ā just markdown, and nothing in your way.
PureOpen
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PureOpen is a Markdown editor for Mac and iPhone built for right-to-left writing. Most editors treat RTL as a switch: turn it on and the whole document flips, which breaks the moment you write Hebrew or Arabic with English words in it. PureOpen decides direction per block instead. Every paragraph, heading and list item takes its direction from the first strong character in it ā so a mixed document displays correctly with no setting, and with no direction marks written into your file. Files open in tabs, the way a browser opens pages, and your changes are on disk 600ms after you stop typing. RIGHT-TO-LEFT, PER BLOCK ⢠RTL and LTR live side by side in one file. A Hebrew paragraph aligns right, the English paragraph under it aligns left, and each stays that way as you edit. ⢠A Hebrew or Arabic sentence with English terms, code spans and links inside it reads correctly ā the block stays RTL and the Latin runs sit where they belong. ⢠A block with no strong character inherits the direction of the block above it, so blank lines and numbers don't break the flow. ⢠Nothing is added to your Markdown to make this work: no RTL marks, no wrapper tags. The file stays portable. OPEN IT FROM THE FILE, NOT FROM THE APP ⢠Right-click a Markdown file in Finder ā or long-press it in Files on iPhone and iPad ā and PureOpen sits at the top of "Open With". One click and the document is open in a tab in the window you already have. ⢠No launching the app first, no file picker, no importing into a library. Double-click works the same way, and so does dragging a file onto the window. ⢠Registered as the owner and editor of .md, .markdown, .mdown and .mkd. TABS ⢠Every file opens in its own tab. ā1āā9 jump by position, Ctrl+Tab cycles, middle-click closes, and āW closes the tab rather than the window. ⢠The tabs you had open come back the next time you launch. SAVING ⢠Autosave writes 600ms after you stop typing, and again on tab switch, tab close and window blur. A grey dot marks a tab with unsaved content. ⢠If the file changes on disk ā another editor, a sync client ā it is reloaded quietly and your scroll position is kept. If it is deleted, editing locks so stale content is not written back over it. ⢠Opening a file doesn't reformat it: an edit that didn't actually change the content doesn't trigger a write. EDITING ⢠17 formatting buttons: headings 1ā4, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, bullet, numbered and task lists, subscript, superscript, quote, inline code, code block and horizontal rule. ⢠Each button reflects the block and the marks under the cursor, and updates as the cursor moves. ⢠Underline, subscript and superscript are kept as HTML rather than dropped when the file is saved. PRINTING AND PDF ⢠Print what you see. The page is the document as the editor renders it ā headings, tables, task lists, code blocks, Hebrew and English side by side ā without the tabs and the toolbar around them. ⢠Export the same page straight to a PDF file, without going through the print dialog to find "Save as PDF". ⢠Nothing is rendered a second time for paper, so what prints is what you were looking at. Pages break between lines, and the page is always light even when the app is in dark mode. ALSO ⢠On iPhone and iPad, files opened from Files are edited in place ā not copied into the app. ⢠Dark mode follows the system setting. ⢠Files past roughly 4 million characters open read-only as raw text, so the interface doesn't stall. ⢠No network, no account, no telemetry. Your files stay on your device. PureOpen is free, with no in-app purchases.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Notedown at every 4 days against PureOpen's weekly. PureOpen's advantage is device support (4 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). 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.
Notedown ships an update every 4 days, PureOpen weekly. Both last shipped on September 23, 2026.
| Parameter | Notedown | PureOpen |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 4 days ā better | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac ā better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.0 ā better |
| Further details ā not scored | ||
| Size | 24 MB | 5 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Yuki Okawa | Yechiel Ben David |
In-app purchases
Notedown
No in-app purchases
PureOpen
No in-app purchases








