Your everyday files, the way they should look.
hYYa ink opens the files developers and writers deal with every day — Markdown, JSON, YAML, TOML, XML, CSV, Mermaid, LaTeX, Jupyter and more — and renders them the way they're meant to look, instead of as walls of raw text. No IDE to boot up, no cloud, no account. Just tap a file and read it. Built natively for Mac (Apple Silicon + Intel), iPhone, iPad and Android, and your documents never leave your device unless you run an optional AI action with your own key.
Many formats, one calm reading view.
Turn a scan into a document
A scanned page is a picture of words rather than words, so searching it finds nothing and you cannot select a line. Make Searchable reads the page and puts the text back — the scan becomes searchable and selectable.
Recognition runs on your device — nothing is uploaded. It picks out the language automatically.
Find your way around it
In a PDF, Find in document highlights every match and keeps a live count as you type. Pages and contents shows page thumbnails and the document’s own outline — on iPad, beside the page itself rather than over it; on Android, tap Pages, then Contents. And a password-protected PDF simply opens — hYYa ink asks you for the password.
All three are free — no trial, no account.
Mark up PDFs by hand iPhone, iPad & Mac
On iPhone and iPad, mark up any PDF by hand — with Apple Pencil or a finger, using the system tool set. A single session can span several pages. Your ink stays adjustable while the document is open; saving writes a new PDF and leaves your original untouched.
On the Mac, draw with your trackpad or mouse using pen, marker, pencil and eraser, in five ink colours with adjustable thickness, and undo stroke by stroke. One session spans several pages and saves once — and, exactly as on iPad, your ink stays adjustable until you do. Only in the saved copy does it become part of the page.
PDF: add text, sign & export
Open any PDF and add text anywhere — tap the exact spot you want and type. hYYa ink never hunts for fields or boxes. Sign by hand in black or blue ink, then resize, rotate and reposition it. Undo any step, and save a copy that leaves your original untouched — all on device. Close a PDF with unsaved text, a signature or markup and hYYa ink asks first, so nothing is lost by accident.
Organise, protect, compress, compare
Organise Pages reorders, rotates and removes pages, and pulls pages in from another PDF. Protect sets a password and decides whether printing and copying are allowed. Compress shows the before-and-after size before you commit to it. Watermark previews live as you set the wording. Compare shows which pages differ between two versions. And Mark Up Text highlights, underlines or strikes through the text you select.
The PDF you opened is never modified. Every change is written to a new file, and Compare only shows you the result.
Redact, and mean it
Select a name, an address, an account number — Redact takes those words out of the file rather than drawing a box over them. They cannot be selected, copied or searched afterwards, because they are gone. Cover and replace removes them the same way, then writes your replacement in their place. On iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android.
Only the pages you redact are rebuilt, and hYYa ink re-reads them on your device afterwards — so the text you kept stays selectable and searchable. It does not touch document metadata, attachments or embedded files.
Markdown, rendered
Headings, bold/italic, links, lists, code blocks and quotes, in a clean reading layout.
Structured data trees
JSON, YAML, TOML and XML as collapsible, color-coded trees — structure at a glance.
CSV & TSV grids
Spreadsheets as tidy tables, with the header row highlighted.
Live diagrams
Mermaid and Graphviz (DOT) render instantly, fully offline.
Math, typeset
LaTeX math, typeset cleanly with KaTeX.
Jupyter notebooks
.ipynb notebooks as clean, readable documents.
AsciiDoc & Org-mode
Long-form docs in a clean reading layout.
Diff & log files
diff, patch and log files, syntax-highlighted.
Take the text with you
Select any part of a rendered document and copy it — or take the whole thing at once, the way you would anywhere else on your Mac, iPhone or iPad. One drag crosses headings, quotes and table cells. What lands on the clipboard is what you were reading: a heading arrives as a heading, not as the markup behind it. Free on all three.
AI assistance, opt-in
One tap to explain, summarize, reformat or fix errors in any document except a PDF, or write Mermaid code for a diagram of it — off by default, and your own key. On the Mac you can point it at Ollama or LM Studio running on your own machine instead, and nothing leaves it at all.
Quick Look built in
On the Mac, press Space in Finder to look inside a file without opening it — JSON pretty-printed, CSV and TSV as a table, other text files as plain source.
Opens with a double-click
Registers the file types it opens, and shows you how to make it the default — so your documents open in it every time.
Native, fast, private
SwiftUI on Apple devices, where it opens in milliseconds, and native on Android. No tracking, nothing collected by us — works with no internet.
Universal & modern
One app for Mac (Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 14+), iPhone and iPad (iOS/iPadOS 17+) and Android (9+) — with an in-app text-size setting on every platform.
One engine, every screen you own.
Real screens from the app — the editor, then the PDF tools. Everything here is on iPhone, iPad and Mac alike.
Read a scan, find any word, browse by page — on every platform
The PDF tools — Add Text, Markup and Sign, on every platform
One light app that respects your files.
Other tools make you choose: a heavy IDE, a single-format viewer, or a cloud note app that imports your files into its world. hYYa ink is one lightweight, local-first app that renders many formats natively — and respects that the files are yours.
Read, export and print — all free, forever.
No account, and no trial to expire. In a PDF, finding a word, browsing by thumbnail and opening a password-protected one are free too. Editing and the PDF tools come as a 7-day free trial you start when you choose — how long it runs, what stops working after it, and the one-time price are all shown before it begins. Then a one-time Pro unlock: a single purchase, never a subscription. On Apple devices, one Universal Purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac; on Android, Pro is bought separately through Google Play.
| Feature | Free Forever · no account | Pro 7-day free trial, then pay once |
|---|---|---|
| Reading & output | ||
| Open and read every supported formatMarkdown, JSON, YAML, TOML, XML, CSV/TSV, Mermaid, Graphviz, LaTeX, Jupyter, diff, log, AsciiDoc, Org and PDF | ✓ | ✓ |
| Preview mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Export to PDF | ✓ | ✓ |
| ✓ | ✓ | |
| Find in documenton PDFs — every match highlighted, with a live count | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pages and contentson PDFs — thumbnails and the document’s own outline | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open password-protected PDFs | ✓ | ✓ |
| Editing | ||
| Edit in source and split modesFree stays in Preview · split view on iPad, Mac and a wide Android screen | — | ✓ |
| Edit JSON values in the treeFree is read-only | — | ✓ |
| Edit CSV and TSV gridsFree is read-only | — | ✓ |
| Markdown formatting toolbar | — | ✓ |
| PDF tools | ||
| Add Text | — | ✓ |
| Markup by handApple Pencil or finger on iPad and iPhone, mouse or trackpad on Mac | — | ✓ |
| Sign | — | ✓ |
| Save a filled copy | — | ✓ |
| Mark Up Texthighlight, underline or strike through selected text | — | ✓ |
| Make Searchableon-device text recognition, so a scan can be searched | — | ✓ |
| Organise Pagesreorder, rotate, remove, or insert pages from another PDF | — | ✓ |
| Protecta password, plus printing and copying permissions | — | ✓ |
| Compressthe before-and-after size, shown before you save | — | ✓ |
| Watermark | — | ✓ |
| Comparewhich pages differ between two versions | — | ✓ |
| AI | ||
| AI actionsBring your own key — hYYa runs no AI server | — | ✓ |
Reading & output
Editing
PDF tools
AI
Pro is a single in-app purchase — buy it once on iPhone, iPad or Mac and it unlocks on all three. On Android it is a separate purchase through Google Play, tied to your Google account.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is hYYa ink?
hYYa ink is a native app for Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android that opens the files developers and writers deal with every day — from Markdown and JSON to CSV, Mermaid, LaTeX and Jupyter — and renders them the way they're meant to look, instead of as walls of raw text. No IDE to boot up, no cloud, no account: just tap a file and read it.
Which file formats does it support?
hYYa ink renders 16 formats. Markdown (.md) in a clean reading layout with headings, bold and italic, links, lists, code and quotes; JSON, YAML, TOML and XML as collapsible, color-coded trees; CSV and TSV as tidy grids with a highlighted header row; Mermaid and Graphviz (DOT) diagrams rendered live and fully offline; LaTeX math typeset with KaTeX; Jupyter (.ipynb) notebooks; AsciiDoc and Org-mode documents; diff/patch and log files, syntax-highlighted; and PDF, rendered page by page.
Is it free?
Opening and reading every supported format is free forever, and so are Preview mode, exporting to PDF and printing; on PDFs, Find in document, Pages and contents and opening password-protected files are free too — no account, no trial needed. A 7-day free trial you start when you choose then unlocks editing (source mode on every platform, and split view on iPad and Mac and on a wide Android screen), the PDF tools — Add Text, markup by hand, Sign, Save a filled copy, Mark Up Text, Make Searchable, Organise Pages, Protect, Compress, Watermark and Compare — editing JSON values in the tree and CSV/TSV cells in the table, adding rows and columns too, on every platform, the Markdown formatting toolbar, and AI actions with your own key. After the trial those need a one-time Pro unlock, a single purchase and never a subscription; on Apple devices one Universal Purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac, and on Android Pro is a separate purchase through Google Play.
Does it work offline?
Yes. All viewing and editing works with no internet connection at all — including live Mermaid and Graphviz diagram rendering and LaTeX math. Your documents never leave your device unless you run the optional AI assistant, which sends the open document’s text to the provider you connect with your own key, and only when you run an AI action.
Is my data private?
hYYa ink is local-first with no accounts and no tracking, and your documents stay on your device. Reading, editing and text recognition all happen locally, and the app has no server of its own. Your document’s text goes to one place only, and only if you ask for it: the optional, off-by-default AI assistant sends it to the OpenAI-compatible provider you connect with your own key — or, on the Mac, to a local model you run yourself — when you run an AI action.
Which devices does it run on?
hYYa ink runs on Mac — both Apple Silicon and Intel, on macOS 14 Sonoma and later — on iPhone and iPad running iOS/iPadOS 17 and later, and on Android 9 and later, from Google Play. On Apple devices, Pro is one Universal Purchase across your iPhone, iPad and Mac — buy it once on any of them and it unlocks on all three. On Android, Pro is a separate one-time purchase through Google Play that belongs to your Google account; neither store’s purchase unlocks the other.
Does it work with Quick Look?
Yes, on the Mac. hYYa ink includes a Quick Look extension: select a file in Finder and press Space to look inside it without opening the app. JSON is pretty-printed, CSV and TSV appear as tables, and other text formats — Markdown, YAML and TOML among them — show as plain source. For the fully rendered view, with Markdown formatted and diagrams and maths drawn, open the file in hYYa ink.
Can I edit files?
Yes. Viewing is free forever; editing is a 7-day free trial, then included in the optional one-time Pro unlock — a single purchase, not a subscription.
Can I mark up a PDF by hand?
Yes — on iPhone, iPad and Mac. On iPad you mark up with Apple Pencil or a finger using the system tool set; on iPhone with a finger; on the Mac you draw with your trackpad or mouse, with pen, marker, pencil and eraser. Either way you get five ink colours, adjustable thickness and undo stroke by stroke, and a single session can span several pages. Your ink stays adjustable for as long as the document is open — nothing is written until you save, and saving writes a new PDF that leaves your original untouched. In that saved copy the ink is part of the page, so it survives export, print and other PDF viewers. On Android you draw on a pad and place the drawing on the page; with a stylus, pressure sets each stroke’s weight.