“iA Writer creates a clean, simple and distraction-free writing environment for when you really need to focus on your words. It’s delightful to use.” “iA Writer is an example of how powerful simplicity and accessibility can be for creating commercially successful interfaces, applications or services.”. Best Writing Apps for the Mac. Or Editors' Choices in the Mac App Store. Ulysses; Bear; iA Writer. The same small space as iA Writer's Format and Syntax menus. Quick Search is the best way to locate and open files in iA Writer for Mac. IA Writer for iOS now includes it too, right in the keyboard bar. You can search for files or actions such as Open or Export.
There are many reasons why most writers prefer a Mac over a PC. The prominent one is this: compared with any platform, Mac app store has more writing apps. These apps offer a non-distinctive writing environment, writing-oriented features and support — which you can’t find in Pages or Google Drive.
Many writers will tell you that the text editor are not important, and you should just write. Although, this could be true for some people, I don’t believe in it. Text editors really help to get best out of you. For example, with Scrivener you can keep a track of character development, while Vellum is the best choice for exporting eBooks. You can’t find these advance options in basic text editors like Word or Google drive.
The past week, we have been trying out the best writing apps for Mac, from every possible category. Below, we have the ultimate showdown of these apps, based on what they offer and what they don’t. After reading this article, you will have an idea which writing app you should use on your Mac. We have tried almost every sort of writing app, so that you will have the best choices for casual writing and a better one for fiction.
Read: Take a Picture of Handwriting And Convert to Text – Android Apps
Best Writing App for Mac
#1 Ulysses
Ulysses is not an alternative to Word or Pages, however, if you need a simple writing app with support for markdown and seamless editing, you can count on Ulysses.
- Design & USP
As far as the design is concerned, Ulysses is quite minimal. There aren’t any toolbars or button-rich sidebars. That having said, you can access basic formatting options from the writing interface. Probably the best thing about Ulysses is project management and content organization. From its Attachment tab, you can add labels, insert images and even set up a Writing Goal.
- Workflow & Exporting
The overall workflow of Ulysses for Mac is impressive enough. All the features are arranged in a distraction-less manner. In addition to that, the full-screen mode brings absolute freedom for writing. Ulysses also does a great job when it comes to Publishing section. You can always export to formats like PDF, DOCX, HTML and Text. In addition to that, you can connect your WordPress and Medium accounts for direct publishing.
- Backups & Security
The program also takes care of timely backups for your writings. There are options for hourly, daily & weekly backup options you can explore. In addition, there is iTunes sync to make sure that you don’t lose writings due to sudden shut-downs or crashes. However, it’s worth noting that Ulysses is pretty stable and you won’t have to worry about crashes.
- Availability & Pricing
Ulysses is available for macOS and iOS, with cross-device sync. You can access anything you write on a Mac from your iPhone or iPad. While there is no free version, all versions offer 14-day Free Trial. In the iOS version of Ulysses, you miss some features like Minimal Mode. Ulysses has a subscription model, priced at $4.99 per month. You can pay annually to save some money too. It’s also available via Setapp.
#2 iA Writer
iA Writer is a wonderful choice when you are looking for an ultra-minimal writing app for Mac. Compared to Ulysses or any other app in the list, iA Writer has kept the minimum number of advanced features. On the other hand, it focuses on writer-centric options like syntax highlighting and easy formatting.
- Design & USP
If minimalism is a throne, iA Writer will be its king. Everything has been kept so minimal, and users can have the sidebar removed. Of course, there is a full-screen mode, which provides better focus. You can also shift to a Night Mode, where everything becomes dark. The best thing about iA Writer is that you can stay focused all the time, highlighting only the things you want.
- Workflow & Exporting
It feels really easy to blend into the workspace offered by iA Writer. All your writings can be accessed from the sidebar, and the writing interface is big-enough. Although not comparable with Ulysses, iA Writer offers standard customization options too. Coming to publishing and exporting, Ulysses and iA Writer are on the same boat. You can directly publish to Medium or WordPress, or export files to PDF, DOC, TXT etc.
- Backups & Security
All the writings are automatically saved to and synced with iCloud. Still, iA Writer allows you choose other library locations as well. However, unlike Ulysses, iA Writer does not offer customizable backup options. It’s just that all your writings will be synced with iTunes on a regular basis. It is actually great since iA Writer has apps available for Android and iOS.
- Availability & Pricing
iA Writer is available for Mac, Windows, Android and iOS, offering almost the same features everywhere. Of course, you won’t have iTunes sync in Windows and Android devices. But, you can access all your writings via your iPhone or iPad. iA Writer Pro for Mac costs $19.99 while the iOS version has a price-tag of $4.99. It, however, offers a free trial for all the platforms.
#3 Manuscripts
Unlike Ulysses and iA Writer, Manuscripts is a writing app with a specific purpose — scholarly writing. It lets you simplify a Herculean task of following the formatting style, keeping track of references and lots of other things. Of course, you can use Manuscripts for writing blog posts and normal fiction content, but it has the best performance when it comes to a Dissertation or Research Paper.
- Design & USP
Manuscripts has a fully-fledged interface, which is a requirement when it comes to scholarly writing. You will have access to the basic toolbars on top, and the sidebar helps for easy navigation. The USP here is simple: Manuscripts has been designed exclusively for academic writing and the job is done neatly. You can choose from popular templates and set up preferences even before you start writing.
What Is The Format On An Ia Writer App For Mac
- Workflow & Exporting
If you are an academic scholar, you will really love the workflow offered by Manuscripts. Things are simple, but organized from the very start. For instance, before writing, you can choose the Citation style, word count limits etc. Manuscripts lets you export the academic writings into formats like PDF, Word, Text, HTML and more.
- Backup & Security
This is where Manuscripts disappoints most users. In both of the tools we mentioned above, there was support for iCloud Sync or third-party backup. However, Manuscripts does not offer any kind of backup options. In case of sudden crashes, your data will be lost, which is a problem. Since the app isn’t available for any other platform, there is no room multi-device access either.
- Availability & Pricing
Manuscripts is available for macOS only and it’s a completely free to use. If you ask us, Manuscripts has been designed for research enthusiasts and academic writers. There is a powerful community of writers behind this tool, which is great. The developers also say that Manuscripts will be made open-source in 2018. At the end of the day, no matter how much you use, you’ve to pay nothing.
#4 Scrivener
Scrivener is the perfect tool if you are looking for professional writing solutions. It has been made to write both fiction and non-fiction. But, most people use Scrivener for writing novels, screenplays and scripts. You can simply choose the template and start writing with this app. This tool does not rely on minimalism or the focused writing. Rather, its focus is on productivity.
Read: Best Writing Software for Novelists and Writers
What Is The Format On An Ia Writer App For Macbook
- Design & USP
Scrivener was not designed with simplicity in mind. On the other hand, it has a design suitable to help you create a novel, from scratch to publishing. Depending on the type of writing, you can have more templates and control over content. The best part about Scrivener is that it has tools for keeping track of characters and scenes without having to go back and read.
- Workflow & Exporting
In terms of workflow, we’d say Scrivener is more like Manuscript. You can start a document by choosing one template and make changes to that in the long run. When it comes to exporting, Scrivener has a lot of options — apart from common formats like Word and PDF. You can also export your novel into a Kindle eBook or an ePub-based eBook.
- Backup & Security
Scrivener has dedicated options for backup, synchronization and overall security of your writings. You can set up sync between an external storage drive or your mobile device. It will be using Dropbox for sync, which is great. It also has Auto-Save feature so that crashes won’t be a problem. Altogether, the security aspect of Scrivener is impressive enough.
- Availability & Pricing
This is the big deal: Scrivener is available for macOS, Windows and iOS. You can have your writings available on all these devices. As far as the pricing is concerned, Scrivener costs $45 for the Standard macOS license. You have to purchase separate licenses for Windows and iOS. However, on Windows and Mac, you can try the software for 30 days before finalizing. The cool thing is that it’s 30 days of actual use, meaning, if you use it only two days a week, it lasts fifteen weeks.
#5 Notebooks
Notebooks does exactly what you would expect from its name. You can use this writing tool to create many notebooks and store all your notes inside. It’s a great way to organize notes and journals. Compared to Ulysses, Scrivener or any other tools we’ve covered, Notebooks does not have a minimal UI. There are a lot of features to check out, in organization department, though.
- Design & USP
Although not minimal, Notebooks has a non-distractive design. There is a sidebar on the left, where you can manage notebooks and other files. While starting up, you can choose a central Library folder. The USP here is that you have better organization of your documents, be it PDFs, Excel files or something else. This is truly a great feature when you are preparing some serious notes.
- Workflow & Exporting
The writing interface of Notebooks resembles a notebook, with proper ruling. Once written, you can turn to the Formatted View mode to see how the document looks like. The lack of customization is a problem here, though. By default, Notebooks writings are saved as plain text, but you can export to many formats like PDF. Unlike Ulysses or iA Writer, Notebooks does not offer publishing integration.
Read: Best Note Taking Apps for Mac and Windows
- Backup & Security
Like all other tools above, Notebooks too has auto-save feature, but the program does not backup anything. It’s really a problem, since you have to rely on local storage only. It’s quite disappointing that the developers have not included iCloud sync, especially when its iOS version has it. As far as syncing goes, you have to use Notebooks Server, which is a custom WebDAV server for syncing between Mac and iOS.
- Availability & Pricing
Notebooks is available for macOS, iOS and Windows. As mentioned earlier, iOS and macOS can sync writings using the Notebooks server, while Windows users have to rely on Dropbox. Notebooks for Mac comes with a fixed price-tag of $19, and they have some deals if you purchase both Windows and Mac. On all versions, there is a 30-day trial.
#6 ProWritingAid
ProWritingAid says it can be your writing coach and mentor. We think that’s possible only when you have to stay strict to grammar, syntax, diction and style. At the same time, it doesn’t become an alternative to Word or Pages either. But, when you need a kind of simple writing app with grammar-check support, you can count it in.
- Design & USP
Do you remember the design of the old versions of Microsoft Word? Well, ProWritingAid pretty much does the same. There is a toolbar with all the options, and you can click on one to see the details on the sidebar. Coming to the USP, it’s the fully-fledged options for editing, proofreading and grammar-check. ProWritingAid can also check aspects like diction, style, readability and more.
- Workflow & Exporting
ProWritingAid offers the standard workflow compared to other options. Apart from the toolbar on the top, there isn’t anything to distract you. However, features like Focus Mode would have been awesome, since the app doesn’t offer real-time editing. It gets even worse in the exporting department. You can save your writings only as TXT files, not even PDF.
- Backup & Security
Once again, ProWritingAid keeps its mediocrity. Of course, you can take manual backups all your works in the local storage. There aren’t any other options, not even multi-device sync. At this point, ProWritingAid is one of the worst editing tools you can get. Of course, there is an Auto-save option, but the minimum interval time is 1 minute.
- Availability & Pricing
ProWritingAid is primarily web-based and the single subscription gives you access to Mac, Windows apps as well as popular writing tools like Word and Google Docs. The subscription costs $50 a year, and the lifetime plan priced at $175. There is also a Premium Plus plan where you get Plagiarism check. However, for this, it charges something extra, based on the checks you need.
#7 Vellum
Vellum is a wonderful Mac writing app for writing books — full-length books with multiple chapters. It does not matter whether you are publishing print or digital, you can count in Vellum. Don’t even think about using the program for blog writing or research paper writing, though. What matters is that it packs superb stability along with minimal design.
- Design & USP
Despite the wonderful features under the hood, Vellum has kept everything minimal. Customization is not a strong area of the tool, but you can manage. If you don’t need the Preview and Navigator while writing, you can have a rather simple writing interface too. The best thing about Vellum is that it packs everything you’d need from the start to the end of the book you’re writing.
- Workflow and Exporting
This might sound a bit weird: even if you don’t like to write a book, Vellum will make that awesome. Its easy workflow is so cool that you can start writing in the first step. You can also choose from different templates for Chapter Title, First Paragraph, Captions etc. Coming to exporting section, Vellum lets you save the file to Kindle, iBooks, Nook, Kobo and Android. You can also export it to print.
- Backup & Security
Vellum does not offer any feature in this department. The bigger problem here is that it does not even have auto-save functionality. To be frank, this is the only area where Vellum disappoints users. If anything happens to your Mac, your unsaved data will be lost. We really wish Vellum does something here.
- Availability & Pricing
As of now, Vellum is available for macOS only. Concerning the price, things are a bit detailed. While Vellum is completely free to download and use, you need the premium license to generate books, in any format. In that case, you have two options. There is a plan for $249.99 that lets you create unlimited eBooks as well as paperbacks. Its $199.99 plan lets you create unlimited eBooks only.
Wrapping Up: Best Writing App for Mac
Now that you have seen the ultimate showdown of writing apps for Mac, it’s time to decide. It’s quite hard to find the so-called best one from this list. But, we can recommend some quick options.
- Go for Ulysses if you need a simple tool with publishing integration
- Scrivener is your choice when you need more control over professional writing
- Manuscripts works best for research writing; so does Notebooks for journals
- Vellum is the best choice for writing and exporting eBooks
And, if you can compromise better control and features for grammar check, ProWritingAid is good too. This is what we think, and we are eager to know your opinion about these tools.
Whether you are tentatively planning your first ever blog post or are a best-selling novelist working on your latest blockbuster, there are plenty of apps out there designed for writers. But as writers are sometimes known for their procrastination techniques, and choosing the right app could be the excuse for putting off work on your Great American Novel for several days, we thought it would be helpful to provide a few pointers.
All of the apps featured are available for both Mac and iOS, as I feel it’s important that you can work on the move as well as at a desk. In my comments, though, I’m focusing on the Mac versions as that’s the platform on which most people are likely to do the bulk of their writing.
The obvious starting point, of course, is the app Apple gives you for free: Pages. In fact, some might question why you would ever need anything else, so let’s start with this before considering some of the alternatives …
Pages
Pages is a deceptively powerful app on both platforms with a superbly-designed user-interface. That’s because the app is intended to look simple and non-intimidating to new users, while offering plenty of features under the hood for power users. It achieves this by keeping the bells and whistles tucked away out of sight until you need them.
For example, create a new blank document and you’ll see a pretty clean view (below). By default, none of the formatting or page setup features are shown, just a single row of buttons with largely intuitive functions.
But as soon as you want to apply formatting, for example, clicking the Format button opens up a column offering everything from bold and italics through line-spacing, justification, indents, bullets, links, columns and borders – through to more advanced features like widow & orphan control (ensuring that a single word or line from a paragraph doesn’t end up on a new page). If you want to add tables, illustrations or photos, you can.
Pages uses iCloud by default, so you can create a document on your Mac, continue writing it on your iPad and add the finishing touches on your iPhone. That functionality is baked right in, so you don’t need to do anything special to take advantage of it.
If you’re writing for publication, you can export your manuscript to Word to send it to agents and publishers, or choose ePub to turn it into an iBook. Pages doesn’t, though, support other ebook formats like Kindle’s .mobi – which is one of several reasons I recommend using a more sophisticated app for a novel. But if you’re writing shorter pieces, and want to get to work straight away, Pages is a solid choice.
iA Writer
If you’re one of those people who seems to spend more time choosing your typeface and tweaking app settings than you do actually writing, iA Writer may be your saviour. The app has a super-minimalist UI designed to give a typewriter-style feel.
While you are actually typing, everything else disappears from the screen. No toolbar, no status bar, not even the header strip with close, minimize and maximize buttons. All you see is your virtual sheet of paper and your words.
If you want an even more typewriter-like feel, you can select typewriter mode, in which the text you’re typing stays centred on the virtual page and previous text scrolls upwards. This mode has an additional feature designed specifically for those writers who can’t resist going back to rewrite the paragraph they’ve just finished: text grays out as it scrolls up and away. I know some writers for whom this would be a godsend!
The minimalism of iA Writer continues under the hood: the file format is plain text, and the default location to save files is on iCloud. There are no decisions to make unless you specifically want to store the file elsewhere.
If you love the approach but can’t bring yourself to part with basic formatting, like italics, iA Writer supports Markdown. This allows codes to be used to indicate things like **bold** and *italics* while retaining a plain text format. If you’re not comfortable with Markdown, you do have the option of using the usual CMD-B and CMD-I keyboard shortcuts, and you can also select formatting from a status bar that appears when you mouseover the bottom of the page. (The top bar, too, appears only when you mouseover it.) However, the plain text format means that your Markdown codes will be visible.
The status bar additionally holds a wordcount, that you can change to characters, sentences or read-time.
Markdown supports HTML-style structures, so you also have the option of using things like multi-level headers, bullet-points and so on – with sensible keyboard shortcuts for each – but these are all tucked away out of sight.
By default, you see only the document on which you’re working, but you can show a sidebar with other documents if you need to switch back and forth between them – for example, between different chapters of a novel. But really iA Writer is all about that single-page view, with no distractions in sight.
In my view, if you aren’t writing things with complex structures or which require lots of formatting, and you are easily distracted, then iA Writer is the perfect writing app. It’s you, the words and very little else.
iA Writer costs $3.99 on iOS and $9.99 on Mac.
Ulysses
If you like the core idea of iA Writer but are working on more complex documents or are someone who likes to see an overview of their work – such as a series of novels – then Ulysses is well worth a look. This is essentially a more sophisticated version of iA Writer with asignificantly steeper price: $24.99 on iOS and $44.99 on Mac.
Like iA Writer, it is essentially based on plain text with Markdown – though it actually uses a proprietary file format – and offers many of the same features. It has typewriter mode, for example, but in a more configurable form. For example, you can decide whether or not you want the previous text to gray-out. If you do want this, you can choose between having the current line, sentence or paragraph highlighted. And so on.
That proprietary file format isn’t a big deal, by the way, as Ulysses allows you to export your work to HTML, docx (for compatibility with Word and Pages), PDF and ePub.
Ulysses offers three different views when writing. In the screenshot at the top, I have all three panes showing: Library, Sheets and Editor. You can see under iCloud, I have two different books listed, and I’m editing book 1, 2184. Pane 2 shows two chapters of that book, while pane shows the chapter I’m working on. But switching panes on or off is as simple as CMD-1, -2 or -3. This makes it really easy to jump between different chapters or sections while still retaining a clean, uncluttered view while actually writing.
The app can do pretty much everything iA Writer can do, so I won’t repeat features here, but it offers a lot more configurability. Whether this is a good or bad thing, of course, depends on your viewpoint!
For example, Ulysses supports multiple versions of Markdown, so if you have a preferred one, you can either select it from the choices offered – or even configure your own. If you choose one of the standard Markdown versions, you can customize it. For example, a hash mark (#) is the standard way to indicate heading level 1, but if you want to use a different character instead, you can.
You can also use various different themes and templates.
Ulysses automatically creates versioned backups of your work: hourly for the last 12 hours, daily for the last seven days and weekly for the past six months. This could be a life-saver if you do something silly like delete a chapter of your novel after deciding against it, then realizing that it would be the perfect event to happen later in the story.
If you are writing for a WordPress or Medium blog, Ulysses can be configured to allow direct publishing in either or both.
You can set wordcount goals and be notified when you hit them – something I find really useful when working on a novel and setting myself a goal of 2000 words per writing session. You can also tag text with keywords, enabling you to search for them later, as well as attaching notes or images.
In short, Ulysses is the app you want if you like the ‘text with markup’ philosophy of iA Writer but are working on more complex documents or want greater customization options.
Ulysses costs $24.99 on iOS and $44.99 on Mac.
Scrivener
I’ve saved my favorite writing app for last! I’ve written two technothriller novels (11/9 and The Billion Dollar Heist), a rom-com (not yet available in ebook form), a travel guide and – most recently – the first two books in an SF novella series, 2184 (which will be free next week) and Replicate. All of these were written in Scrivener, and it’s no exaggeration to say that I wouldn’t even consider writing a novel in anything else.
I’ve written full reviews of both the Mac app and the iOS one, so I’ll simply summarise the key benefits here.
To me, Scrivener is the app that does it all. Want an iA Writer-like distraction-free interface? Scrivener can do that. I have my Composition Mode set to white paper on a black background.
But the beauty of Scrivener is it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Here are all the available preferences for this mode.
As you can see, you can set foreground color, background color, left & right margins, choose the type of scrolling (normal, typewriter, with or without fading) and more.
The configurability of Scrivener is unmatched by anything else I’ve ever seen. I consider myself a power user of the app, but I doubt that even I have ever delved into more than about 10% of the available settings.
One of the things I love about Scrivener is that it’s as useful for planning and editing as it is for writing. For example, when planning a novel, the app offers a corkboard view. You can write notes on virtual index cards, rearrange the cards, stack them, unstack them and so on until you have a plan.
By default, the corkboard looks like one, with a texture background and lined cards. I’m not a fan of either, but Scrivener’s famed configurability comes to the rescue and with a few clicks I have plain white cards on a plain grey background.
Once you’re ready to begin writing, those corkboard cards can be viewed as binder entries:
Again, I’ve changed the default appearance. I use color-coding to indicate the status of each chapter: green for written, orange for in progress, yellow for planned but not written, white for not planned and red for a problem I need to resolve or research I need to conduct. Once I’ve completed the first draft, I set everything back to yellow and then use the colors to indicate editing status.
You can also assign keywords to do things like bring up all the chapters in which a particular character is present, or which takes place at a particular location.
My technothrillers have multiple viewpoints, and I switch rapidly back-and-forth between them. Each time I switch viewpoint, I need to be able to see exactly where I left things. Scrivener makes it simple to do so, either clicking back and forth in the binder, or placing two chapters or sections side-by-side. Or one above the other. Or one free-floating. Again, customization options for the win.
Like Ulysses, Scrivener allows me to set wordcount targets – and it will by now come as no surprise to learn that these can be as simple or as complex as you like. Want a wordcount target for your current session? Go ahead. Want to complete your novel by 26th of April, writing on Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons? Give Scrivener your target wordcount and it will automatically calculate targets for each writing session, adjusting them as required.
Need to refer to reference materials while you’re writing? You can have free-floating documents off to the side as you right. Same with graphics, be it a blueprint or a photo you’ve downloaded as inspiration for a character.
Researching things on the web? You can save offline copies of webpages and have them to hand as you write.
Oh, and don’t look for a Save button in Scrivener. The app does allow you to do a CMD-S just to make you feel happy, but by default it automatically saves your work each time you pause in your typing, and it also automatically creates versioned backups.
Once your manuscript is finally complete, Scrivener can output to just about every file format imaginable – including ebooks. Again, you can choose between the simplicity of output templates, or an insane degree of configurable options.
Check out the full reviews of Mac and iOS versions for more. But if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the apps available to you and just want a single recommendation, mine would be: buy Scrivener.
Scrivener costs $19.99 on iOS and $45 on Mac.
If you have your own favorite writing apps, do share them in the comments.