PureOpen vs Inkstone Notes
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side ā with what reviewers say about each.
PureOpen
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PureOpen is a Markdown editor for Mac and iPhone built for right-to-left writing. Most editors treat RTL as a switch: turn it on and the whole document flips, which breaks the moment you write Hebrew or Arabic with English words in it. PureOpen decides direction per block instead. Every paragraph, heading and list item takes its direction from the first strong character in it ā so a mixed document displays correctly with no setting, and with no direction marks written into your file. Files open in tabs, the way a browser opens pages, and your changes are on disk 600ms after you stop typing. RIGHT-TO-LEFT, PER BLOCK ⢠RTL and LTR live side by side in one file. A Hebrew paragraph aligns right, the English paragraph under it aligns left, and each stays that way as you edit. ⢠A Hebrew or Arabic sentence with English terms, code spans and links inside it reads correctly ā the block stays RTL and the Latin runs sit where they belong. ⢠A block with no strong character inherits the direction of the block above it, so blank lines and numbers don't break the flow. ⢠Nothing is added to your Markdown to make this work: no RTL marks, no wrapper tags. The file stays portable. OPEN IT FROM THE FILE, NOT FROM THE APP ⢠Right-click a Markdown file in Finder ā or long-press it in Files on iPhone and iPad ā and PureOpen sits at the top of "Open With". One click and the document is open in a tab in the window you already have. ⢠No launching the app first, no file picker, no importing into a library. Double-click works the same way, and so does dragging a file onto the window. ⢠Registered as the owner and editor of .md, .markdown, .mdown and .mkd. TABS ⢠Every file opens in its own tab. ā1āā9 jump by position, Ctrl+Tab cycles, middle-click closes, and āW closes the tab rather than the window. ⢠The tabs you had open come back the next time you launch. SAVING ⢠Autosave writes 600ms after you stop typing, and again on tab switch, tab close and window blur. A grey dot marks a tab with unsaved content. ⢠If the file changes on disk ā another editor, a sync client ā it is reloaded quietly and your scroll position is kept. If it is deleted, editing locks so stale content is not written back over it. ⢠Opening a file doesn't reformat it: an edit that didn't actually change the content doesn't trigger a write. EDITING ⢠17 formatting buttons: headings 1ā4, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, bullet, numbered and task lists, subscript, superscript, quote, inline code, code block and horizontal rule. ⢠Each button reflects the block and the marks under the cursor, and updates as the cursor moves. ⢠Underline, subscript and superscript are kept as HTML rather than dropped when the file is saved. PRINTING AND PDF ⢠Print what you see. The page is the document as the editor renders it ā headings, tables, task lists, code blocks, Hebrew and English side by side ā without the tabs and the toolbar around them. ⢠Export the same page straight to a PDF file, without going through the print dialog to find "Save as PDF". ⢠Nothing is rendered a second time for paper, so what prints is what you were looking at. Pages break between lines, and the page is always light even when the app is in dark mode. ALSO ⢠On iPhone and iPad, files opened from Files are edited in place ā not copied into the app. ⢠Dark mode follows the system setting. ⢠Files past roughly 4 million characters open read-only as raw text, so the interface doesn't stall. ⢠No network, no account, no telemetry. Your files stay on your device. PureOpen is free, with no in-app purchases.
Inkstone Notes
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Inkstone keeps your notes as what they already are: plain Markdown files, in a folder you choose, on your own device. There is no database, no import step and no proprietary format. A vault another Markdown app created opens here, and a vault created here opens there. If Inkstone disappeared tomorrow, you would still have a folder of Markdown. WRITING Headings, bold, quotes, callouts, checkboxes, tables and code all render in place as you type, with the syntax revealed only on the line the cursor is on. Reading mode is a separate, read-only view for when you want the page without the scaffolding. Body font, code font and their sizes are set independently. LINKING [[Note]], [[Note#Heading]], [[Note^block]], ![[Embeds]] and aliases declared in frontmatter all resolve into one index. Every note shows what points at it, what it points at, and which of its links have no target yet. Rename a note and every link that pointed at it is rewritten across the whole vault, in the same action. SEEING THE SHAPE The graph view draws your notes as nodes joined by their links, and the simulation is deterministic ā the same vault draws the same picture every time, so you can learn its layout instead of re-reading it on every open. SPATIAL NOTES The canvas puts cards, files and connections on an infinite sheet, saved as JSON Canvas 1.0 ā the same open format other implementations read and write. FINDING THINGS A fuzzy switcher opens over every note with one gesture. Full-text search understands tag: and path:, and tags work inline or in frontmatter, nested, in any script. TYPOGRAPHY THAT HANDLES CJK Chinese sets solid ā no word spaces ā so a Latin word dropped into a Han sentence collides with it. Inkstone sets the gap between scripts properly, and lets you choose fonts and sizes that suit both. TWO DEVICES Sync a vault through iCloud, or push it to a GitHub repository with conflicts settled once rather than left as two copies. Per-file-type filters decide whether attachments and media travel with it. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION No account. No telemetry. No network call you did not ask for. Your files are on your device and go only where you send them. Interface in English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is device support: PureOpen at 4 against Inkstone Notes's 2. PureOpen also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | PureOpen | Inkstone Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days | ā |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac ā better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 ā better | 26.0 |
| Further details ā not scored | ||
| Size | 5 MB | 15 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Yechiel Ben David | Orris |
In-app purchases
PureOpen
No in-app purchases
Inkstone Notes
No in-app purchases








