em vs Filepad Markdown

em is a privacy-first universal Markdown writing app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone that takes advantage of Apple's Foundation Models to give you editorial feedback. It also connects to the Ghost API to publish and edit your website. Your files are yours, and you're the only one who should decide what to do with 'em. WRITE 'EM WITH MARKDOWN Capture your thoughts in a distraction-free Markdown editor tuned for each device, including the iPhone Duo. em counts your words and reading time, but only if you want it to. TRACK 'EM Set a word goal or a deadline for a file, or a daily, weekly, or monthly goal for everything you write. Want 500 words a day? 50,000 by the end of the month? em keeps track, shows your pace and your streak, and holds you to it. MAP 'EM em can remember where you started writing each file, including every place you worked on 'em. See all of them on a map and follow your writing journey in a whole new way. Location is off until you turn it on for a library, and it stays out of anything you share or send to AI. FIND 'EM WITH SMART SEARCH Smart Search lists every file holding your words. Use quotes, +, -, OR, and * for precision, filter by library, tag, status, or year, and save any search as a Smart Folder that stays current. Only remember what a piece was about? Ask em. PROTECT 'EM WITH VERSION HISTORY Every edit is automatically versioned and backed up to iCloud. Compare and restore versions from any device, so an accidental deletion never costs you your writing. PUBLISH 'EM WITH GHOST Connect em to your Ghost site to edit, back up, and publish natively in Markdown that maps to Ghost's cards. em supports 19 Ghost editorial cards, drafts, scheduling, newsletters, and Ghost pages. EXPLORE 'EM WITH AI (BUT ONLY IF YOU WANT TO) Ask em questions and get answers grounded in your files, not the internet. On OS 27, Siri can search, add, or edit notes in the libraries you approve. Get an Editorial Review from a prompt you can read and edit. em doesn't write your drafts; it helps you edit 'em. ALL FEATURES - GOALS: Word and deadline goals, daily, weekly, and monthly, with pace and streaks - CALENDAR: Every day you wrote, in one place - PLACES: Every place you've written, on a map - SMART SEARCH: Search operators, filters, and Smart Folders - VERSION HISTORY: Automatic versioning, stored in iCloud - GHOST SITES: Sync, edit, publish, and send newsletters, for posts and pages - AI ON YOUR TERMS: On-device Apple Intelligence by default; optionally Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini with your API key - SIRI AI: Search, add, or edit notes in approved libraries (OS 27) - ASK EM AND EDITORIAL REVIEW: Answers and feedback from your own writing - APPLE SHORTCUTS: Create files, add visits, or publish to Ghost - APPLE JOURNALING SUGGESTIONS: Capture memories in Markdown (iOS) - READ ALOUD: Hear your draft to catch what your eyes miss - CUSTOMIZATION: Reader and Editor fonts and colors - OFFLINE EDITING: Works without an iCloud or Ghost connection PRIVACY, PLAINLY em has no server. That's not a promise about what the developer does with your data. There's no backend, no account, and no company database where your writing could end up. Your writing syncs through your iCloud and nowhere else. AI features are off by default and, if turned on, run on-device with Apple Intelligence. Want a larger model? Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini with your own API key; your account, your billing, revocable anytime. em names the model answering, every time. Location data is never sent from em with your AI requests. Transparency Statement: AI was used in developing this app, but every feature idea, design call, and architectural decision was made by a human.

Filepad opens the Markdown you already have — in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, or on this iPhone — and leaves it exactly where it is. Nothing is copied into the app. Nothing is uploaded anywhere. FINDS WHAT IS QUIETLY WRONG HTML tells you when you break it. Markdown does not — it just renders differently, and you never notice. Filepad reads your document the way the renderer does and points at the lines that will not come out the way you meant: a heading with no space after the #, a table row with the wrong number of cells, an unclosed link, a footnote with no definition. One tap fixes what can be fixed by adding text. Nothing is ever deleted to "fix" something. READS PROPERLY Headings, tables, task lists, quotes, code blocks, footnotes, front matter, and [[wiki links]] between documents in the same folder. Jump by heading with the outline, or with the four navigation buttons that sit under your thumb. FINDS THINGS Search inside a document with every hit highlighted, or search a whole folder and see which files hold what you are looking for. Sort by name or by when you last changed something. EDITS AND SAVES CAREFULLY Edit the source with a toolbar for the marks you forget, and a line that tells you what the cursor is sitting on. Saving is atomic, and the previous version is kept beside the file so an edit can be undone. If the file changed outside the app while you were editing, Filepad does not overwrite it — it saves your version alongside and asks you. ALSO OPENS PDF, HTML AND TEXT PDFs and web documents are view-only. HTML is drawn with network access blocked at two independent layers, and when a document tries to reach the internet for an image or a script, Filepad says so on screen instead of quietly fetching it. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO No account. No sync service of ours. No analytics, no advertising, no tracking. The app makes no network requests at all. Your folders, your files, your device. Free, and staying free.