Smolpad vs Jottle

Smolpad is a smol Markdown editor with respect for your files. Every note is a plain .md file you can open with any app, on any device, forever. Your files are your own. No database. No lock-in. No bloat. Just a tiny, fast home for your notes on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. WRITE IN MARKDOWN, BEAUTIFULLY • Syntax dims as you type, or hides away entirely with one tap • Task lists become real checkboxes. Checkboxes that check. • Headings, bold, italic, code, quotes, and tables, styled as you write • A formatting bar for common touches, plus full keyboard shortcuts • Pictures too: drag or paste one in, resize it by its corner, and it lives as a plain file beside the note YOUR FILES, ANYWHERE • Notes sync through your own iCloud Drive, included free • Open your notes folder in Finder or Files any time • Organize with folders, pins, and instant search • A Trash for deleted notes, and a history of every note's earlier versions • Find notes in Spotlight, and open them with Siri or Shortcuts • Your notes never leave your devices except to your own cloud SMOL ON PURPOSE • On the Mac, Smolpad lives in your menu bar, one hotkey away • Tear off a note into its own window when you want to stay a while • On iPhone and iPad, it opens fast and stays out of your way • Eight hand-picked fonts and a clean, quiet interface MAKE IT YOURS WITH SMOLPAD PRO • Unlimited notes (the free tier includes ten) • Dropbox, pCloud, or Google Drive sync, in a folder that belongs to you • Notepads: open any folder of Markdown files as its own notepad, an Obsidian vault or a Bear export among them • Export to PDF, HTML, or rich text, and print • Widgets on the Mac, iPhone and iPad, Lock Screen widgets on iPhone, and Smolpad on Apple Watch • Twenty-nine editor themes, from Tokyo Night to Catppuccin • Seventeen app icons and the full menu bar icon set Smolpad Pro is available as a monthly or yearly subscription, or a one-time lifetime purchase. The free tier is a real notes app, not a trial. Made by a smol team that believes plain text outlives everything. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://smolpad.com/privacy

Jottle is for the thought you need to get down before it's gone. Open it and there's a blank line, waiting. Type the thought, tap Add Note, and get on with your day. There's nothing to set up and nothing to file. A note is a piece of plain text with a date on it. The first line becomes the title. That's the whole model, and it's why capture takes a second instead of a minute. EACH DEVICE GETS ITS OWN SHAPE • iPhone: the list and the editor, and nothing between you and the blank line • iPad: your notes on the left and a full page for writing on the right • Apple Watch: a real app, not a mirror. Dictate or scribble from your wrist. It syncs straight from iCloud, so it works with your phone out of range • Mac: Jottle is there too, as a notepad that drops in over whatever you're doing with one keystroke Notes sync through your own iCloud account. There's no Jottle account, no sign-in, and no server of ours in the middle. WIDGETS AND COMPLICATIONS Pin the notes that matter and they show up in the Pinned Notes widget, small, medium or large, on the Home Screen, the Lock Screen or in Notification Center. On the watch, put New Note on your face to dictate with one tap, or Recent Notes to read your latest at a glance. LOCKED NOTES, ACTUALLY LOCKED Lock any note and its body is encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a passphrase only you know, derived with PBKDF2-SHA256 at 600,000 iterations. Only the ciphertext is stored and only the ciphertext syncs, so a locked note is unreadable everywhere except on a device where you've entered the passphrase. Face ID or Touch ID unlocks it after the first time, and an open locked note is hidden from the app switcher. There's no recovery and no backdoor. Forget the passphrase and the note is gone for good. That's not an oversight. It's the feature. PLAIN TEXT, NOT A TRAP Export one note or all of them as ordinary Markdown files, with the dates kept in the front matter. Import a folder of them back. They open in any editor and are already covered by whatever backup you run. You are never locked in. THE REST OF IT Pin a note to keep it at the top. Archive one to get it out of the way without deleting it. Search across everything, or find within the note you're editing. MAKE IT YOURS Eight accent colors, light or dark, on a Paper or Bright background, and a text size your eyes agree with. Your watch keeps a color of its own. FREE Jottle on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch is free, with every feature. The Mac app is a separate choice: a free 14-day trial, then a one-time purchase. WHAT IT DOESN'T DO No account. No subscription. No analytics, no advertising, no crash reporting, no third-party SDKs of any kind. Jottle makes no network requests of its own. The only thing it talks to is your iCloud, at your instruction. Nothing about you or your notes is collected, because there is nothing in it to collect them with. Requires iOS or iPadOS 26. The Apple Watch app requires watchOS 26. Syncing needs an Apple Account signed in with iCloud Drive on. Without one, Jottle runs perfectly well on a single device and tells you plainly that it isn't syncing.