Comparison

smalltype vs HighMemo

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

Head to head
About

smalltype

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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

HighMemo

Features
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HighMemo saves every memo to your device first, shows how your memos relate, and adds AI, Drive sync, and calendar only when you connect them yourself. No account. No API key. No setup. HighMemo works before you connect anything โ€” and you decide what to connect. Sync across mobile and desktop Connect Google Drive to keep the same memos, images, and attachments in sync across iPhone, iPad, Android, and the HighMemo desktop app. Saving never waits The memo is on your device the moment you send it, and any tidying happens afterwards in the background. If that tidying fails, nothing you already had is erased. Share a link from any app and it lands as a memo โ€” the title, summary and thumbnail fill in behind you. Attach a photo from your library and it stays with the memo. How your memos relate Memos that share a tag gather together, and the tag's name sits at the centre. Link two memos yourself, or mention one inside another with @ โ€” those links are never removed by an automatic rebuild. Folders, tags and pinning work with no account and no AI. Type to filter by title, body or tag; #tag matches that tag exactly. Organized automatically when you connect an AI Once an AI provider is connected, HighMemo automatically creates a title, summary, tags and category for every memo, helping you review and organize captured information with less manual work. On supported Apple devices, choose Apple Intelligence and start using AI immediately without a separate API key or model download. Processing uses Apple's on-device system model. Connect Google Calendar and your schedule sits beside your memos โ€” access is read-only, so HighMemo never creates, edits or deletes an event. Save a memo and HighMemo suggests the events it looks related to; you choose whether to link it. Open an event and tap Add memo to start a memo already attached to it. Reminders that know when and where Put a reminder on a memo โ€” once, daily, weekly or monthly. Or pin a place: when you arrive, the memo comes back. Arrival is decided on the device and the notification is created there too โ€” it fires once per visit. Your storage, not ours Connect a Google account and your mobile devices and HighMemo desktop app see the same memos. They live in your own Google Drive app-data folder โ€” there is no HighMemo server and no HighMemo account, so we cannot look at them. Images and attachments travel too. Sync runs when you open the app and every 5 minutes while it is open, plus a button whenever you want. Your AI, your key โ€” or no AI at all You bring the AI. Paste the API key of a service you already pay for and requests go from your device straight to that provider โ€” there is no server of ours in between. Or use a supported on-device model so your memo text never leaves the device. Or connect nothing at all and keep using the app. Export everything as one JSON file, with your attached photos embedded in it. Before you install - HighMemo shows ads. There is no paid or ad-free version. - On first launch HighMemo asks whether to download a small model (about 330 MB) used for search and related memos. Decline and the app keeps working. - Connecting Google for sync asks for app-data folder access and read-only calendar access together. - Location access is requested only when a memo actually has a location reminder. - The interface is in English. AI output follows the language of your memo, or a language you pick in Settings. Most memo apps decide where your memos live and which AI reads them. HighMemo makes both of those your choice โ€” and works before you choose either.

Screenshots

smalltype4 screens
HighMemo4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is ads: smalltype at none against HighMemo's shown. smalltype also leads on update cadence (every 5 days vs fortnightly). HighMemo's advantage is iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). On price, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

smalltype ships an update every 5 days, HighMemo fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences ยท 3 level
smalltype versus HighMemo: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParametersmalltypeHighMemo
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 5 days โ€” betterFortnightly
AdsNo โ€” betterYes
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad โ€” better
Requires iOS26.017.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size8 MB82 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHerman HaidinJeongwon KO

In-app purchases

None

smalltype

No in-app purchases

None

HighMemo

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is smalltype free?
smalltype is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is HighMemo free?
HighMemo is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do smalltype or HighMemo have ads?
HighMemo shows ads; smalltype does not.
Which is updated more often, smalltype or HighMemo?
smalltype ships an update every 5 days, and HighMemo fortnightly. Most recently, smalltype was updated on October 8, 2026 and HighMemo on October 9, 2026.

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