Screenshot CotEditor and iA Writer Duo font iA Writer Next week I’ll post the second part discussing all the app contenders that didn’t make it in here, among them apps like Craft, Scrivener and Obsidian, so stay tuned. This is just the first part of my review of the best writing apps for Mac, iPhone and iPad in 2022. I’m always curious about new alternatives. Obviously this list can never be final or complete, so if you have suggestions for apps that are worth trying out let me know about them. Over the past few weeks I installed quite a lot of different apps just to be able to compare them side by side and in their latest versions. In hindsight probably the iA Writer app was not the reason for my data loss but certainly this experience kept me searching for reliable alternatives to iA Writer just to keep up to date and see if I’m missing something while staying a loyal customer. I’ve been using the iA Writer for many years now, both on the Mac and on iOS but just recently I somehow experienced some data corruption and lost some files going through that process. I use such writing apps mainly for keeping my daily journal, for writing mails, letters or long form messages and of course I use them to compose content for my blog. Recently I’ve been testing a lot of different writing apps. This time I will focus on writing apps, but expect more posts to come about other app categories as well. ![]() This post post and also the next one hopefully coming out in the following week will be not so much about images or photography, instead they will be more about getting and using the right apps. Otherwise, you risk turning your Great American Novel into the Great Internet App review.This time I’m going to write a bit off topic. Pick tools that do what you need (outline, text editing, assembly) and stick with them. You may want them, but don’t make the same mistake that I did. So that’s it – you do not need any other tools to get your writing on. The killer feature, for me, is the ability to group your note cards into neat little bundles – if you’re used to writing your outlines by novel section, this is super useful. Index Card gives me all of the functionality and flexibility of physical note cards, with none of the drawbacks. That system worked, but it was slow, the cards had limited space, and if someone at the coffee shop bumped my stack of cards off the table it was a serious pain in the ass to get them back in order. Before the iPad, I did all of my outlining with the help of index cards, onto which I would scribble my fevered scene concepts. Years of painful pantsing made it very clear to me that I require the structure of a good outline if I’m going to write anything worth reading. That’s a personal failing on my part - if you aren’t prone to losing hours fiddling around with your software, then Scrivener is probably the only tool you need. It is so tempting to my inner geek that I cannot use it to actually write, which is why it gets relegated to editing and production work. It has powerful outlining and organizational tools, and every time I open it I’m tempted to tinker with its shiny knobs, buttons, and levers. Scrivener is inexpensive ($45), but packed to the gills with features that writers of all stripes will love. I don’t do any real writing in Scrivener, but I do use it for final edits and assembling finished works for export to ePub and Kindle formats. It’s fast and clean and won’t get in my way. ![]() I use ia Writer for all my actual writing. Plus, it’s cheap – for $10 you can get a useful, pretty text editor on both your Mac and your iPad. It looks nice, has a useful soft keyboard, and won’t get in your way. Third, it blocks out the distractions of font selection, screen color, line spacing, or any of that other fancy formatting jazz that can prevent you from the Serious Business of banging out words with your monkey fists. Second, it allows me to work seamlessly on my iPad or Macbook Air. This isn’t a super-fancy text editor, but it does some very important things. ![]() I know these are the best, because they’re what I use every day. To help you avoid the tedious, time-sucking task of selecting the best writing apps I’ve put together the following list. Maybe even a series of novels, if they were short and trashy with lots of nudity and explosions. If you added up all the hours I’ve procrastinated under the guise of testing writing apps, you’d end up with time enough to write an entire novel. One of my guilty pleasures is loading up on these digital ink wells and experimenting with their functionality for days at a time to see how they’ll fit into my workflow. There are way too many writing tools on the market.
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