Bike Outliner vs Leo Editor

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.

Leo Editor is a free, open-source programmable editor, outliner, and knowledge base for arranging code, writing, and research in flexible outlines. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, through an API, and as self-hosted software. Cloned nodes allow one idea to appear in several outline locations while remaining synchronized. Navigation includes expanding and collapsing, hoisting, promoting, clones, and clickable links, with backlinks available for related sections. Users can automate workflows with Python scripts, commands, and plugins. Outlines export to HTML, MORE, Markdown, Org mode, reStructuredText, and Vim outline formats. Jupyter integration lets @jupytext nodes represent notebook cells and save changes back to .ipynb files. The leoBridge module exposes Leo content to Python host programs. A WebSocket server accepts JSON queries and changes, using password challenge-response authentication; TLS is optional. Leo requires Python 3.9 or later and is distributed under the MIT license.