Comparison

visualOS vs Deconstruct Sun

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

Head to head
About

visualOS

This app offers an infinite canvas for visual thinkers, organizing notes, folders, images, and to-do lists. It works entirely offline, saving your data as real files in a folder on your device, which can then sync via your cloud service.

Highlights
  • Infinite canvas for visual thinking
  • Offline access and real file saving
  • Syncs with your own cloud storage
  • Organize notes, images, and to-dos
  • Hierarchical boards within boards
  • Markdown file support
  • Freehand drawing and magnetic arrows
Features
Read full description

visualOS is an infinite canvas for people who think visually. It is an infinite canvas for notes, folders, images, to-do’s and sketches. It works fully offline and saves to real files in a folder on your device. YOUR DATA IS A FOLDER YOU CAN OPEN Connect any folder on your disk and visualOS mirrors your canvas into it — every folder on the canvas is a real folder, every document a Markdown file, every image an image. Put the folder in iCloud or Dropbox and it syncs through your cloud, not ours. If you ever leave, everything stays readable. Forever. OFFLINE ISN'T A MODE. IT'S THE ARCHITECTURE. On a flight, on the train, in a studio with no signal — visualOS doesn’t care. There is no server to reach, so there is no spinner, no sync wheel, no login wall. Your canvas opens instantly because everything is already here. BOARDS WITHIN BOARDS Any board can hold more boards. A project becomes a world: moodboards inside client boards inside your studio. Drag elements into a board to file them away; breadcrumbs keep you oriented; a double-tap takes you deeper. NO ACCOUNT. NO SUBSCRIPTION. Open it and work. There's nothing to sign up for, nothing to verify, nothing to cancel. Pay once and it's yours forever — one purchase unlocks every Apple device. FREE IN THE BROWSER BUT THE APP GOES FURTHER Try visualOS free in your browser at visualos.app. When you're ready for it everywhere, the app adds what a browser can't: true offline access on the train or a plane, native pan-and-zoom gestures, Apple Pencil drawing, and your boards saved as real files that sync across iPhone, iPad and Mac through your own iCloud. EVERYTHING ELSE • Notes & rich text • Long-form documents stored as plain Markdown • Interactive to-do lists on the canvas • Images & PDFs — drag, paste or drop them in • Freehand drawing • Magnetic arrows that snap and bend • Search every board at once • Groups, locking and a snap grid Your ideas. Your files. ABOUT US As creatives, we’ve always relied on visual canvas tools to organize our thoughts, plan projects, and make sense of ideas. But one thing kept bothering us: our files and knowledge were always tied to cloud-based services. We wanted the freedom to access everything offline, without worrying about losing our work or giving up our privacy. So why can’t our own files on our device be visualized in the same intuitive way? And that’s how the idea for visualOS was born: a visual representation of your internal folder structure — offline, private, and secure. Your data stays on your device, where it belongs. We’re Sarah and Gerald, a husband-and-wife team who have been living, loving, and building things together for more than 20 years. Creating visualOS has been a ton of fun and thanks to AI we were able to push it further than we initially imagined. Now we’d love to hear what you think. If visualOS helps you work a little more creatively or makes your files easier to navigate, we’d be grateful if you shared it with others.

About

Deconstruct Sun

Analyze solar exposure for any location before building or planting. Trace obstructions on your horizon and receive precise direct sunlight hours for different times of the year. Organize multiple sites into projects and export detailed sun studies.

Highlights
  • Solar site analysis
  • Trace horizon obstructions
  • Direct sunlight hour calculation
  • Year-round sun path visualization
  • Project site grouping
  • PDF sun study export
  • Plant hardiness zone identification
Features
Read full description

Know the sun before you build, plant, or place a panel. Deconstruct Sun turns your phone into a solar site-analysis tool. Stand where a garden bed, greenhouse, patio, or solar array will go, trace the buildings and trees on the horizon, and get the number that actually matters: how many hours of direct sunlight that exact spot receives, today, at the solstices, and at the equinoxes. It works the way a designer thinks. The sun's path is drawn as an arc across a sky chart; your obstructions are a skyline you paint over it. Where the sun clears your skyline, it shines. Where a building or a tree blocks it, it doesn't. The math is honest, a five-minute-step calculation over the real solar geometry for your latitude and date. THE NUMBER BEHIND THE PLANT TAG Full sun, part sun, part shade, full shade. Every one of those is a claim about hours of direct sun, and almost every site is guessed at rather than measured. Deconstruct Sun gives you the real figure for one spot, so you can put the right plant in the right place instead of hoping. TRACE THE REAL HORIZON Don't guess the skyline, trace it. Photograph the view, or import a wide shot, and paint the obstructions directly over your own photo. A guided sun-arc sweep walks you through a few framed shots that follow the sun's band across the sky, and a live overlay projects the sun's path onto the camera so you can see where it will travel before you capture. SEE THE WHOLE YEAR One tap shows direct-sun hours for the summer solstice, winter solstice, and both equinoxes, and today, so you can tell a spot that bakes in June but goes dark in December from one that works year-round. WORK A WHOLE PROPERTY Group sites into a project: a foundation bed, a vegetable garden, the pool surround, all under one address or client. Then export a single combined PDF covering every site. It is the difference between a stack of separate studies and one document you can hand over. KNOW THE HARDINESS ZONE Every US site shows its plant hardiness zone, derived from the 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map and read from a copy stored inside the app. No connection needed, and your coordinates are never sent anywhere to look it up. A site near a zone boundary is told so, rather than claiming a precision the data doesn't have. SHARE A REAL STUDY Export a clean, branded PDF sun study for a client or your own records, one site at a time or a whole project at once. Or share a photo-real composite of the site with the sun arcs drawn over your skyline. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Everything stays on your device. Your sites, coordinates, skylines, and photos are never uploaded. No accounts, no ads, no analytics, no tracking. You can also hide precise coordinates from the app's own screens, and every PDF export asks before printing them, so a study you send to a client need not carry the exact location of someone's home. FREE • Sun-path charts for any location and date • Hand-paint the obstruction skyline • Today's direct-sun, daylight, first-light, and last-light hours • Plant hardiness zone for US sites, offline • Projects, to group sites by property or client • Privacy controls for precise coordinates PRO: a one-time unlock, no subscription • Trace the skyline over your own photos (camera + import) • Guided sun-arc capture with a live sun-path overlay • Full-year seasonal breakdown (solstices and equinoxes) • Photo-real composite and a landscape trace view • Branded PDF sun-study export • Combined multi-site PDF for an entire project Deconstruct Sun does not need an internet connection to do its analysis. Sun position is computed on your device from published astronomical formulas. Hardiness zones are derived from the 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map (USDA Agricultural Research Service with PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University) and are not the official map. Built by a landscape architect in North Carolina. Questions or feedback: design@deconstructterrain.com

Screenshots

visualOS4 screens
Deconstruct Sun4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Deconstruct Sun at Free against visualOS's $12.99. Deconstruct Sun also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.4) and review sentiment (100% vs 80%). visualOS's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and update cadence (every 6 days vs fortnightly). On ratings volume, ads, device support and iOS requirement 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Deconstruct Sun is free to download; visualOS costs $12.99 up front. Deconstruct Sun sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. visualOS asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Deconstruct Sun holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.4. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 5 and 3 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 80% of visualOS's written reviews are positive against 100% of Deconstruct Sun's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

visualOS ships an update every 6 days, Deconstruct Sun fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on November 4, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
visualOS versus Deconstruct Sun: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParametervisualOSDeconstruct Sun
Price$12.99Free — better
Rating4.4 (5 ratings)5.0 (3 ratings) — better
Positive reviews80.0% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings5 — better3
Update frequencyEvery 6 days — betterFortnightly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPod
Requires iOS15.0 — better15.1
Further details — not scored
Size21 MB39 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDorweiler & Reimertz GbRAndrew Harrell

Customer experience

visualOS

All ratings5 ratings
Positive80.0%
Neutral20.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews10 reviews
Positive80.0%
Neutral20.0%
Negative0.0%

Deconstruct Sun

All ratings3 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

visualOS

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Deconstruct Sun

One-time1
  • Pro$11.99

Questions

Is visualOS free?
visualOS costs $12.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Deconstruct Sun free?
Deconstruct Sun is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, visualOS or Deconstruct Sun?
Deconstruct Sun is rated higher. visualOS averages 4.4 out of 5 from 5 ratings, while Deconstruct Sun averages 5.0 from 3 ratings.
Do visualOS or Deconstruct Sun have ads?
Neither visualOS nor Deconstruct Sun shows ads.
Which is updated more often, visualOS or Deconstruct Sun?
visualOS ships an update every 6 days, and Deconstruct Sun fortnightly. Most recently, visualOS was updated on November 4, 2026 and Deconstruct Sun on October 31, 2026.

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