The quotes app for the words you actually want to keep

Yes. Kandou is free to download on iPhone. The free version includes a curated 25-quote Starter library, up to 15 quotes of your own with categories, scheduled quote rotation, a small Home Screen widget, search, the Minimal share style, saving any quote as a wallpaper, and iCloud sync with backup export and import. Kandou Pro is a one-time purchase of $5.99 USD. There is no subscription and there are no ads.

Yes. Kandou has a small Home Screen widget for free, and with Pro a medium widget, a large widget, and on iOS 27 an extra-large one. Every size follows the rotation schedule you set, so the widget changes daily, every other day, weekly, or at up to four custom times a day. Pro lets you style the medium and large widgets with your own photo, a Band or Subtitle text style, font, size, and text color.

Yes, as a wallpaper. Kandou turns any quote into a full-screen wallpaper image you save to Photos and set as your Lock Screen, for free. Kandou does not offer a Lock Screen widget; the wallpaper export is the intended way to keep a quote on the Lock Screen.

Both. Kandou includes a curated library of public-domain quotes: a free 25-quote Starter collection, and with Pro the Stoic Wisdom, Motivation, and Love collections, more than 100 quotes from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, and others. Add a whole collection to your rotation with one tap, and add your own quotes alongside them.

Yes. 74 of the 125 quotes in the Kandou library come from five philosophers: Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Seventeen of them are free in the Starter collection; the Stoic Wisdom and Motivation collections add the rest with Pro. They come from public-domain editions, each attributed to its author, and the library is in English for now. You can add quotes from any other philosopher yourself.

Yes. Type or paste the line, add the book or author as the source, and file it under a category such as Books. Kandou does not scan pages with the camera; it is built for the lines you want to keep and reread, and its rotation and widget bring them back to you.

Yes. Tap Share on the Home tab, or press and hold a quote in Browse and choose Share as Image. Pick a Pinterest Pin (2:3), a Story (9:16), or a full-screen Wallpaper size, choose a font and size, then share it anywhere or save it to Photos. The Minimal style is free; Pro adds the Photo style (your own photo behind the quote, with the text on a soft band or as subtitles) and the Bold style (your own colors).

No. Kandou Pro is a one-time $5.99 USD purchase that includes every future feature. There are no recurring fees, no ads, and no account.

Yes. Since version 1.3, Kandou syncs your quotes and categories through iCloud, free for everyone. There is nothing to turn on and no account to create: when your iPhone is signed in to iCloud, your collection is kept in your private iCloud and appears on any other iPhone signed in to the same Apple Account, including a new one. You can also export the whole collection as a backup file or as readable text.

Kandou is designed for iPhone, including both displays of iPhone Duo, and requires iOS 18 or later. There is no Mac version, and the app is not designed for iPad.

Most quote apps are feeds: an endless stream of generic lines, often with a subscription and ads. Kandou is a collection: the quotes you chose, plus a small curated library, shown on your schedule with no feed, no AI-generated content, and no account.

A commonplace book is a personal notebook of passages worth keeping, a practice that goes back centuries. Kandou is a commonplace book for quotes on your iPhone: save a line with its source, file it under a category, search it later, and let rotation resurface it.

On your iPhone and in your own private iCloud, which keeps your collection in sync and brings it back on a new iPhone. Kandou has no servers of its own, no account, and no analytics tied to your quotes, and the developer cannot see what you save. Share images are rendered on the device.