Emend vs Igneous

Emend is a quiet place to write fiction on your iPhone. Your library is a shelf of books. Each book has chapters, and each chapter is one continuous page of prose — no cards, no blocks, no formatting toolbar in the way. Open a chapter and you are back exactly where you stopped, caret and all. Ideas that don't belong to a book yet go in Ideas: a searchable list you can tag, attach to a book later, or start a new book from. Every save keeps a revision. Wander down the wrong path for an afternoon and you can read the earlier draft, restore it, or keep both as alternatives. Anything you remove goes to Trash first. For working with an AI in another app, Emend prepares a focused passage for the clipboard and brings the response back as a draft you review before it touches your manuscript. Nothing leaves Emend on its own. Everything stays on your device. There is no account, no sync service and no analytics. When you want a copy elsewhere, export a book as Markdown or back up the whole library as a single file you keep wherever you like — and restore it on a new phone in one step. • Books, sections, chapters and one continuous page per chapter • Ideas with tags, search and one-tap attach to a book • Saved revisions, alternative drafts and a per-book dictionary of names • Trash with restore • Markdown export and full-library backup and restore • Works entirely offline Made for people writing a novel a few hundred words at a time.

Igneous is a notes app you drive with one thumb. On iPhone there's no toolbar at the top of the screen: everything lives in one dock at the bottom, and it moves the way Safari's tab bar does. Your notes are plain Markdown files in a folder you choose — on your device, in iCloud Drive, or anywhere Files can reach — so they open in any other app, today and in twenty years. No account, no database, no analytics. GET ANYWHERE WITHOUT REACHING • Tap the pill in the dock to search every note, like tapping Safari's address bar. • Swipe it sideways to move between open notes, and keep going past the last one for a new note. • Swipe up on it and your open notes spread out as cards. • Swipe in from the left edge for your notebook, and from the right for the Inspector. • Pull down on a note to find a word in it. Hold any button for more. • While you read, the dock folds into a slim pill out of the way. Liquid Glass on iOS 26; solid with Reduce Transparency. • On iPad: a floating notebook pane, a real tab bar, and as many windows as Stage Manager will hold. CAPTURE THE MOMENT • Press the Action Button, a Lock Screen widget or a Control Center tile and you're typing in a new note — even from a closed app. • Record a voice note from the Action Button, Siri, the app icon or the note you're in. Igneous transcribes it on your device while you talk, shows the words on the Lock Screen, and saves the audio and transcript into today's note or a note of its own. • Copy a voice note — recording and transcript together — and paste it into Messages, Mail or another note. WRITE IN MARKDOWN, SEE IT BEAUTIFULLY • A live editor that renders headings, lists, tasks, tables, callouts, highlights, maths and diagrams as you type, while the file stays plain text. • A formatting bar just above the keyboard, and Writing Tools that keep your links and structure intact. • Wikilinks, embeds, backlinks, tags and a graph of how your notes connect. • Search every note instantly, including handwriting on your canvases. • Daily notes, a calendar, tasks gathered from every note, templates and a board view. DRAW WHEN WORDS WON'T DO • Canvases for sketches and diagrams, with Apple Pencil on iPad, beside cards and links to your notes. • Opens JSON Canvas and Excalidraw drawings. WORKS WITH YOUR MAC — AND OFFLINE • Keep a notebook in iCloud Drive ▸ Igneous and it's on all your devices. • Or pair with Igneous on your Mac over your own network: the phone keeps a full offline copy and sends its edits when it's back. Changes to different lines are combined, and if you both changed the same words, both versions are kept. Drawings merge shape by shape. • Nothing ever passes through a server of ours — there isn't one. SHORTCUTS, SIRI AND WIDGETS • Actions for new notes, today's note, tasks, search and voice notes, ready for Shortcuts and Siri. • Home Screen widgets with buttons you choose, Lock Screen widgets, Control Center controls, Focus filters and Live Activities. YOUR NOTES, YOUR FILES Igneous reads Obsidian-flavoured Markdown as written and never adds anything you didn't ask for. Point it at the vault you already keep.