Nixly vs Plain and Simple Tools
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Nixly
This app helps you reclaim storage space by identifying and deleting duplicate photos, similar shots, screenshots, and large videos. It offers an honest approach to cleaning your device, ensuring your memories are preserved while freeing up gigabytes.
- Finds exact duplicate photos
- Identifies similar shots and bursts
- Detects and removes screenshots
- Locates and shrinks large videos
- Swipe-to-clean interface
- On-device photo analysis
- Privacy-focused design
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Your photo library is quietly eating your storage. Nixly finds what's actually reclaimable and shows you the real gigabytes you can free, with none of the fake "boost" tricks other cleaners use. Nixly is the honest photo cleaner. Photo analysis runs on your device. Your photos never leave your phone. WHAT NIXLY FINDS - Exact duplicates: true byte-for-byte copies - Similar shots: bursts and near-identical photos, kept separate so counts are never inflated - Screenshots: the ones you never look at again - Large videos: the real storage hogs SWIPE TO CLEAN Flick through your camera roll: keep the best, clear the rest. Nixly pre-picks the highest-quality shot in each group so you never lose the good one. SHRINK VIDEOS, KEEP MEMORIES Re-encode storage-hogging videos to a smaller size on-device and reclaim real space. RADICALLY HONEST Deleting photos moves them to your Recently Deleted album for 30 days, so storage isn't truly freed until you empty it. Nixly tells you this clearly and shows you exactly where the space really goes. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account. Your photos and videos stay on your device. FREE TO START Scan your whole library and see everything for free, including a set of free deletions. Upgrade to Nixly Pro for unlimited cleaning, video shrinking, Smart Clean, and unlimited swipe-to-clean. Nixly Pro subscription options: - Weekly, with a 3-day free trial - Yearly (best value) Payment is charged to your Apple Account. Subscriptions renew automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel anytime in your App Store account settings. Terms of Use (Apple standard EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://nixly-app.vercel.app/privacy.html Recommendations for our other apps load online. Their views and taps are counted as daily totals, without personal profiles or user/device identifiers. See our privacy policy.
Plain and Simple Tools
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A shelf of small tools, each doing one thing, with nothing attached. This is the one app here that is not about a single thing: a container that gains tools over time. Every tool says what it does, what it will ask you for, and what — if anything — it sends off your phone, before you tap it. Pin the ones you use to the tab bar. A tool you have never opened is never even started, and never asks you for anything. Three ship today. CHARGE — IS THAT CHARGER ANY GOOD? Plug the phone in and leave it a few minutes. Charge times how fast the battery is actually filling and tells you roughly how many watts are arriving, and whether that counts as fast or slow. There is a Lock Screen tile for the last one you tested. It is honest about the figure, which is the part most apps are not. iOS does not tell an app how many watts a charger is delivering — there is no way to ask, and any app showing you an instant number is making it up. Timing the fill is the only method available, it takes a few minutes, and it gets within about a fifth. The app shows that it is still measuring rather than inventing something, and explains the method on the screen. NEGATIVES — FILM, TURNED BACK INTO PHOTOGRAPHS Point the camera at a negative on a lightbox — or let a second phone be the lightbox — or pick one you have already photographed. Colour film, black and white, and slides. A single frame or a whole strip. The conversion happens on your phone, and the result saves straight into your own photo library. STEPS TO HA — YOUR STEP COUNT, ON YOUR OWN DASHBOARD If you run Home Assistant at home, this sends today's step count to it, so you can put it on a dashboard or use it in an automation. It reads your step count from Apple Health, read-only, and never writes anything back. It sends that number to the address you typed in, and nowhere else. There is no account and no server here. Nothing goes to Plain and Simple. Your Home Assistant address and webhook ID are kept in this phone's Keychain, marked device-only, so they are not in iCloud and do not travel to a new phone. If you do not run Home Assistant, this tool has nothing for you — and it stays switched off and silent. PERMISSIONS BELONG TO THE TOOLS, NOT TO THE APP The shell — the shelf, the tab bar, Settings — asks for nothing at all. Health is only requested once you open Steps to HA and choose to connect it. The camera is only ever on while Negatives is the screen you are looking at, or while you are scanning a pairing code, and it explains itself before iPhone asks. Saving a photograph uses the add-only permission, which lets the app put pictures into your library and never lets it see one that is already there. That is the least it could ask for; the cost is that it cannot file its results into an album, and that was accepted rather than asking for more. Tests read the app's own source and fail the build if permission code appears outside a tool, if the app declares a permission that no tool asked for, or if any tool other than Steps to HA gains the ability to reach the network. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO • No adverts, no purchases, no subscription • No account, no analytics, no tracking • One tool sends one number, to one address you chose. Nothing else in the app can reach the network at all, and a test fails the build if that changes • Nothing downloaded after you install it If none of the three is a job you have, this one has nothing for you yet. The shelf is honest about being short.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Plain and Simple Tools at none against Nixly's 2. Plain and Simple Tools also leads on update cadence (weekly vs every 5 weeks). On price, 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
Both are free to download. Nixly sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per 7 days. Plain and Simple Tools asks for nothing beyond the download.
Nixly ships an update every 5 weeks, Plain and Simple Tools weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Nixly | Plain and Simple Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (5 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 5 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Levin David Schwab | Plain and Simple Solutions LLC |
In-app purchases
Nixly
- Weekly3 Days trial$4.997 Days
- Yearly$29.991 Year
Plain and Simple Tools
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Nixly free?
Is Plain and Simple Tools free?
Do Nixly or Plain and Simple Tools have ads?
Which is updated more often, Nixly or Plain and Simple Tools?
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