Bike Outliner vs Bulletlist

Bike Outliner is a macOS app for thinking, writing, organizing lists, notes, and documents. Its outlines support headings, ordered lists, task lists, and other row types, while a rich text editor handles formatting. Full-screen, typewriter, and focus modes provide distraction-free writing. Navigation includes keyboard movement by focus heading, back and forward controls, breadcrumbs, inline buttons, and a navigation bar. Deep links remain valid when an outline file is moved or renamed. Bike uses an HTML-based .bike format and also supports .opml and .txt files, with Markdown support, printing, Quick Look previews, and Finder thumbnails. Scripts, Shortcuts, and AppleScript can control the app. Free mode never expires and covers reading, writing, and editing outlines; additional row types, rich text formatting, Shortcut Actions, and AppleScript require purchase.

Bulletlist is an infinitely nested outliner for organizing material as bullets, with any bullet able to open as its own page. A bullet can hold multiline comments or a complete Markdown document, and the app includes nine templates such as Zettelkasten, PARA, and Getting Things Done. Users can paste nested lists from Workflowy, Notion, Google Docs, or Markdown, or import OPML files; entire outlines can be exported as OPML or plain text. It works offline, saves edits on the device first, and merges edits made across separate devices. Keyboard shortcuts include ⌘K to find a bullet by name. The web app can be installed from a browser, and native apps are available for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Mac. Every feature is free, with no caps or locked tiers. Sign-in uses a code sent by email instead of a password. The maker says outline content is not used for ads, sold, or used to train anything; Google Analytics measures usage without seeing bullets, notes, or searches.