Comparison

Outliner by codediary vs ScholarSide

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

Head to head
About

Outliner by codediary

Features
Read full description

Think in outlines. Get things done. Outliner by codediary is a fast, flexible outliner for capturing ideas, planning projects, and tracking tasks — all in clean, collapsible hierarchies that sync instantly across your iPhone, iPad and Mac Whether you're writing a plan, building a checklist, or managing a project, it keeps everything structured, searchable, and in sync. OUTLINE ANYTHING • Build unlimited nested outlines with drag-and-drop reordering • Indent, outdent, expand, and collapse branches with a tap or keyboard shortcut • Automatic heading styles (H1–H5) give every level clear visual hierarchy • Multi-select to copy, cut, and paste items and entire subtrees • Handwriting - draw and annotate right inside your outlines TRACK TASKS WITH SMART CHECKLISTS • Tri-state checkboxes: done, not done, or partially complete • Parent items roll up automatically as you complete their children • Check or clear an entire subtree with a long press • Hide completed items to focus on what's left ADD CONTEXT • Attach notes to any item • Add images from your photo library, or camera • Zoom, swipe through, and organize inline image attachments • Highlight items with colors and custom styles FIND IT FAST • Live in-outline search with highlighting and match navigation • Global search across every outline at once • Organize outlines with tags, including nested categories SYNC & SHARE • Automatic iCloud sync — no manual saving, always up to date • Share outlines with others to view or edit together in real time • Shared outlines and their images stay in sync for everyone BACKUP & PRINT • Export a full backup of everything, or a single outline, to a file • Restore with smart deduplication — no duplicates • Print or save as PDF with your indentation, checkboxes, notes, and colors intact BUILT FOR APPLE PLATFORMS • Native on iPhone, iPad, and Mac • Full keyboard support: Return, Tab/Shift-Tab, undo/redo, and more • Mac menu commands for font size, undo, search, and printing • Shake to undo on iPhone BOOST YOUR PRODUCTIVITY • Focus Mode — zoom into a single outline and hide the rest. • Better note editing on iOS — full-screen editor for distraction-free writing MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SEE YOUR WORK • Progress bar showing overall completion Start with a single line. Grow it into anything.

About

ScholarSide

Features
Read full description

ScholarSide turns a pile of papers into a reading plan. It's a focused reading system for researchers, grad students, and anyone who reads academic papers with purpose — not another PDF dump, but a way to decide what to read, how deeply, and what you got out of it. Add a paper by arXiv link, arXiv ID, or DOI and ScholarSide fills in the title, authors, venue, and abstract for you. Every paper gets a card built around one simple idea: a reason you saved it. No more folders of mystery PDFs. TRIAGE, DON'T HOARD • A pipeline board from Inbox to Finished, with drag-and-drop and one-at-a-time triage • Give every paper a reason: background, method, baseline, to implement, assigned, or just curious • Flags for meeting prep, relevance, and how well you actually understand it READING MODES Not every paper deserves a deep read. Pick a mode and ScholarSide guides you with a timed checklist: • 5-minute skim — should I read this at all? • 20-minute structured read — understand the contribution • 60-minute deep read — own the method and the math • Implementation read — extract everything needed to reimplement STRUCTURED NOTES Capture a paper the way you think about it: problem, method, key equations, algorithm, experiments, results, limitations, and open questions — plus a confusion tracker, so "I don't get this part" becomes a to-do instead of a dead end. PROJECTS & REVIEW • Group papers into research projects with a reading order and open questions • A weekly review that surfaces stale papers, unresolved confusions, and what to read next • Lab-meeting prep built from your own notes OPTIONAL AI ASSIST (BRING YOUR OWN KEY) Add your own Anthropic API key and Claude can draft a summary, fill in the structured notes, or explain a paper at the level you choose — always as an editable draft that sits beside your own notes, never replacing them. Your key stays in the device Keychain and usage is billed to your account. The app is fully functional without it. PRIVATE BY DEFAULT No account. No ads. No tracking. Everything lives on your device. Export notes to Markdown and your library to BibTeX any time.

Screenshots

Outliner by codediary4 screens
ScholarSide4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Outliner by codediary at 18.6 against ScholarSide's 26.5. On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard1 real difference Ā· 5 level
Outliner by codediary versus ScholarSide: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterOutliner by codediaryScholarSide
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 5 days—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS18.6 — better26.5
Further details — not scored
Size7 MB4 MB
Age rating4+4+
Developerjeong kyu leeNeel Roy

In-app purchases

None

Outliner by codediary

No in-app purchases

None

ScholarSide

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Outliner by codediary free?
Outliner by codediary is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is ScholarSide free?
ScholarSide is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Outliner by codediary or ScholarSide have ads?
Neither Outliner by codediary nor ScholarSide shows ads.

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