CarbonFin Outliner vs Zavala

CarbonFin Outliner organizes thoughts, tasks, and projects in nested outlines. Tasks can contain subtasks, with progress indicators for parent tasks that have them. Its editor supports inline changes, cut, copy, paste, undo, redo, drag-and-drop reordering, search, and controls to collapse or expand items. Outlines can be tagged and filtered by tag, searched across the collection, archived, and optionally numbered. Each outline can include notes, with configurable checkboxes, note previews, and numbering. The iPhone and iPad app costs $4.99, paid once. Outliner Online is a free browser-based companion for syncing, editing, printing, importing, exporting, and sharing outlines. Outliner users can invite other Outliner users to view and edit shared outlines; published outlines can be viewed read-only by anyone with the URL. The app can sync outlines as OPML files with Dropbox or OneDrive, import OPML, and export plain text or OPML. Shared editing through Outliner Online is limited to iPhone or iPad app users. The app lacks native printing, though synced outlines can be printed through Outliner Online in a browser.

Zavala is a free, open-source outliner for arranging information in related hierarchical rows. Its outlines support note taking, task lists, brainstorming, project planning, project management, and documentation. The app works offline and can sync through iCloud, which requires iCloud Drive setup; outlines can also be shared through iCloud for real-time collaboration with other Zavala users. It imports and exports OPML, Markdown, and HTML, can print outlines, and lists PDF among its export formats. A share extension downloads a web page and attempts to convert it into an editable outline, with results depending on that page’s structure. Apple Shortcuts actions support creating, finding, editing, exporting, and manipulating outlines and rows. Locked outlines encrypt rows and images on disk and during iCloud sync with AES-GCM and a 256-bit key, but titles, tags, and some metadata are not encrypted. Zavala runs on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS; current listings require version 26 or later.