Plain and Simple Thoughts vs Loops
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Plain and Simple Thoughts
Save articles, recipes, receipts, and important documents from any app. Automatically categorizes saved items and displays them as they were originally saved. Offers a clean reading experience and smart organization for your digital life.
- Save links and text from any app
- Automatic categorization of saved items
- Preserves original page appearance
- Extracts recipe ingredients and methods
- Organizes receipts and warranties
- Stores important papers like IDs
- Offline indexing for Home Screen search
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Share a link. It is waiting when you want it. For anyone who keeps meaning to read something later and has run out of places to put it — a pile of open tabs, a message sent to themselves, a bookmark folder nobody opens. It has since grown three more shelves for the other things that end up in a drawer: recipes, receipts and warranties, and papers like a passport or a licence. Each stands on its own, and the ones you do not need can be ignored. HOW IT WORKS In any app — Safari, a message, a social app — tap Share and choose it. That is the whole of using it. The sheet saves and closes by itself. Start typing before it does and you can leave yourself a note about why you kept it, which three weeks later is the harder thing to reconstruct. It works whether the other app hands over a web address or a lump of text with an address buried inside it. If you would rather not use the share button at all, there is a + on your library: paste an address straight in. IT SORTS ITSELF Saved things are grouped by what they are — an article, a video, code, a reference page, a post — and by where they came from. A long list stays findable without you filing anything. What you have not read yet is what you see first. They turn up in your Home Screen search as well, from an index built on your own device and offered to nobody. IT LOOKS LIKE THE THING YOU SAVED It fetches the page's title and its preview picture, so a saved link reads as the thing it is rather than as a row of characters. That request goes to the site you saved and to nowhere else. It is the one thing this app sends anywhere, and it is described in full on the privacy page rather than left to a label. It strips the tracking parameters off a link before storing it, so what you keep is the page rather than a record of where you found it. READING Tap to read it inside the app, in Safari's reader. Archive it when you are done, or delete it. You can pick several at once to archive them or mark them read — there is deliberately no way to delete a pile, because archiving can be undone and deleting cannot. RECIPES Share a recipe page and the ingredients and the method are pulled out as you save it. That is reading rather than guesswork — recipe sites publish their recipes as structured data — so nothing is invented and no step is dropped. You can also paste an address, write one out yourself, or photograph a cookbook page and let the phone read the words off it. Amounts double, halve and convert, and a cooking mode shows one step at a time with the screen kept on. RECEIPTS AND WARRANTIES What it cost, where it came from, and when the cover runs out — listed by whatever expires soonest. Photograph the receipt and your iPhone reads the shop, the total and the serial number off the picture and offers them to you before anything is saved. Search finds them by the serial number too. PAPERS A passport, a licence, an insurance card: the number, the expiry, and a picture of it. The tab can be put behind Face ID or your passcode, and that is off until you turn it on. Pin one and its number can sit on your Home Screen or Lock Screen. A warranty or a paper can carry a reminder before the date, scheduled and delivered by your own iPhone. There is none unless you ask for one. YOUR OWN iCLOUD Your library syncs through your own iCloud account, so a link saved on the phone is on the iPad — where it lays itself out as an iPad app rather than a stretched phone screen. It sits in your private database, under your Apple Account. There is no server of mine — I have no access to it and no way to read it. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO • No adverts, no purchases, no subscription • No account to create and nothing to sign into • No analytics, no tracking, no reading history shared with anyone One thing to know before you start: iOS makes you switch a share button on by hand the first time. Tap Share, scroll the icons to the right, tap More, and switch it on. You only do it once, and the app explains it.
Loops
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I think a lot. You probably do too. Loops is a notebook to help you think. It won't answer, remind you, or connect things. It holds your reasoning until you come back. Writing something feels like learning it. The friction is the point. THE COLD OPEN Come back to a Loop you've left alone for a week or more and the composer is withheld. You get the day count, the last thing you wrote, and your open prediction with three answers: it held, it didn't, still open. Only then do you get to write. CARRY ONE WITH YOU Put a question in your pocket and it moves to your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island for as long as you're chewing on it. When the answer turns up on a walk or in the shower, tap it and you're writing before the thought is gone. THINGS DIE Every Loop shows how cold it is and fades as it goes. Untouched for sixty days and it archives itself. If it mattered, open it again. YOUR REASONING CAN LEAVE Copy any loop out as Markdown — the question, why it mattered, the whole trail, every prediction and how it turned out. Straight into any notes app, or as a file. WHAT IT DELIBERATELY WON'T DO No AI. No suggested connections. No daily review. No streaks. No notifications. No account, no sync, no analytics. Totally FREE.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Plain and Simple Thoughts at every 5 days against Loops's every 10 days. On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Plain and Simple Thoughts ships an update every 5 days, Loops every 10 days. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and October 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Plain and Simple Thoughts | Loops |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 5 days — better | Every 10 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 2 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Plain and Simple Solutions LLC | James Jackson |
In-app purchases
Plain and Simple Thoughts
No in-app purchases
Loops
No in-app purchases









