Linwood Butterfly vs Xournal++

Linwood Butterfly

• Handwritten lecture notes and PDF markup with a stylus
• People who want a free, AGPL-licensed note app on Android and desktop
• Nextcloud users who want their notes synced over WebDAV

Xournal++

• Handwritten notes with a stylus or drawing tablet on a computer
• Writing over PDFs and exporting the annotated result
• Math and science notes that mix handwriting with LaTeX formulas

Linwood Butterfly

• iOS is a preview only: an unsigned IPA that has to be sideloaded with AltStore or Sideloadly, and it is not on the App Store.
• There is no hosted sync service. Remote storage supports only WebDAV, and it is not available in the web version.
• Collaboration is experimental and has to be switched on with an experiment flag.
• The web app performs better in Chromium-based browsers; the docs say Firefox and Safari lack the WebAssembly features it uses.

Xournal++

• Desktop only: the project says development of the separate Android and iOS app has stalled and the web app is no longer available.
• A journal is stored separately from its background PDF, so moving either file breaks the link unless attach mode is used.
• The macOS release will not open until two terminal commands are run to clear and re-sign the app.
• Annotations exported to PDF cannot be edited afterward, and the export drops annotations built into the source PDF.

Linwood Butterfly

Infinite canvas with editable elements

Handwriting, shapes and imported media sit on an unbounded canvas, and each element can be moved, resized, recolored and reorganized after it is placed.

Pen and drawing tools

Stroke width, color, smoothing and texture are adjustable, and the toolbox adds labels, shapes, polygons, tables, rulers, grids, stamps, a laser pointer and a presentation tool.

Import and export

Imports PDFs, images, SVG, Markdown, Xournal++ files and OneNote sections. Exports to PDF, SVG, image and Xournal++, plus its own documented .bfly and .tbfly formats.

Templates and packs

Templates bundle backgrounds, tools, layers, areas and pages for new documents, and packs hold reusable stamps, palettes and styles that are available across documents.

Local storage with WebDAV sync

Notes are saved to a folder on the device. The native apps can add a WebDAV connection such as Nextcloud and mark remote files for offline editing.

Experimental collaboration

Behind an experiment flag, several people can edit one document at once through an end-to-end encrypted Swamp relay or a WebSocket server run on one participant's computer.

Xournal++

Stylus and tablet input

Supports pressure-sensitive styluses and drawing tablets from makers such as Wacom, Huion and XP-Pen, with configurable pen, highlighter and eraser tools.

PDF annotation

A PDF can be set as the background of a journal and written over. Text in the PDF is searchable, and the result exports back to PDF.

Shapes, images and snapping

Draws lines, arrows, circles, rectangles and splines, inserts images, and snaps objects to a grid or to steps of rotation.

LaTeX editor

A built-in LaTeX tool places typeset formulas on the page. It depends on a working LaTeX installation on the computer.

Audio recording

Records audio while you write and attaches the recording to objects in the note, which the Play Object tool plays back.

Layers, toolbars and Lua plugins

Notes can be split into layers that are hidden or edited separately, toolbars can be rearranged, and plugins are written in Lua.

Linwood Butterfly

• Butterfly$0

  The full app for Android, Windows, macOS and Linux, a web app that installs for offline use, and a Docker image for hosting the web app yourself.

Xournal++

• Xournal++$0

  The full app for Windows, macOS and Linux, as stable or nightly builds. The Windows version is also in the Microsoft Store.