Bike Outliner vs Indenta

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.

Indenta is a free outliner note app for structured notes with Markdown, backlinks, tags, and tasks. Notes are trees of nestable, collapsible lines that can be rearranged or explored by zooming into a branch. Wiki-links, automatic backlinks, saved searches, tags, and date-based search help organize notes. Any line can become a task, and a task view gathers open tasks across notes; the journal stores each day as a branch in one note. Notes stay in the browser's IndexedDB on the user's device, and the installed Progressive Web App works offline. Users can export notes as Markdown files in a ZIP and import an Indenta ZIP or individual Markdown files. Optional sync can transfer notes directly between devices through end-to-end encrypted WebRTC, or use Google Drive. Indenta runs in a browser and can be installed with Chrome or Edge, or added to an iOS home screen through Safari. It has no paid tiers or stated feature or device limits.