Comparison

smalltype vs Keepout

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

Head to head
About

smalltype

Read full description

Short notes, many times a day, saved as plain .md files in real folders. Open the same folder on your Mac in VS Code, Vim, or any editor. Calm, minimal, and ready for iPhone Duo. smalltype is for your notes. The small ones, the quick ones, the big ones, the unpolished ones. It's a fast, quiet place to type. ## Start No tutorial, no setup screen. Tap New Note and start typing. Leave one empty and it quietly disappears, so you never end up with a pile of blank untitled notes. That's the whole app. ## Yours Every note is a real .md file, sitting right there in the Files app. You can open it, copy it, or back it up yourself, anytime. Delete one and it still goes to Recently Deleted, same as any other file: nothing's gone for good. ## Sync or Don't Keep notes in iCloud Drive to have them on every device. Or keep them On My iPhone, fully local, never leaving your device. Either way, you can switch anytime. ## Visible Markdown Markdown markers stay gently visible as you type. What you see is exactly what's in the file. A bar above the keyboard types the markers for you, with undo and redo a tap away. ## Organize Folders, search, and quick note-making, all from one screen. Nothing to set up first. Put "daily" in a folder's name and new notes inside it get today's date as their name. ## No Catch No ads. No subscription. No tracking. No account, ever. Markdown notes. Yours to keep.

About

Keepout

Features
Read full description

Keepout is a private notes app for iPhone and iPad. Your writing stays on your device, encrypted at rest, with local tools for connecting and understanding ideas. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • AES-256-GCM encryption protects every note at rest. • Your vault key stays in this device's non-synchronizing Keychain. • Opaque filenames keep note titles and links out of the file system. • There is no account, cloud sync, analytics, remote prompt processing, or plaintext search index. CONNECTED KNOWLEDGE • Link notes with familiar double-bracket wiki links. • Follow backlinks and suggested related notes. • Explore an interactive knowledge graph built with Apple's local sentence embeddings. • Search decrypted notes in memory while the vault is unlocked. LOCAL AI • Ask questions, summarize a note, and suggest connections without sending note text to a server. • Use Apple Foundation Models on supported devices. • Choose the optional MLX engine for local inference. Its compact model downloads once on first use; inference then stays on your device. FOCUSED WRITING • Open the transient action bar from the toolbar or with Command-K on a hardware keyboard. • Type / in the editor for headings, lists, tasks, quotes, code blocks, dividers, and links. • Switch to a centered typewriter view that hides the side columns and softly fades the page edges. • Navigate with touch or hardware-keyboard shortcuts on iPad. • Markdown syntax and link destinations stay visually quiet until the caret enters them. Keepout stores each encrypted note in a .md file so your vault remains a collection of Markdown documents without exposing their contents at rest.

Screenshots

smalltype4 screens
Keepout3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Keepout at 17.0 against smalltype's 26.0. 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
smalltype versus Keepout: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParametersmalltypeKeepout
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 4 days—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS26.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size8 MB27 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHerman HaidinAlex Richard Fiore

In-app purchases

None

smalltype

No in-app purchases

None

Keepout

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is smalltype free?
smalltype is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Keepout free?
Keepout is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do smalltype or Keepout have ads?
Neither smalltype nor Keepout shows ads.

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