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AI-generated summary
Let me tell you about the best writing app on Mac. Ulysses is a universal app, so you get the same features on both Mac and iOS.
It might be the only app that keeps me on iPhone — that tells you something about its quality.
Target audience
The target audience is primarily those who know Markdown, since the whole concept of Ulysses is built around it. It’s not complicated at all and I encourage you to use it as much as possible! Once you’ve mastered it, say goodbye to wrestling with Word’s page layout and chapters that refuse to restart from the beginning 😂.
Users of this app include:
- budding writers
- bloggers
- Evernote users?
- people who keep a journal (Day One)
Personally I use it for blogging and keeping a journal inside the app. Content syncs with iCloud — you can do the same with Dropbox — which keeps you up to date across all your devices and automatically backs up your content.
The style
Let’s start with the style of the app, because the point of a writing app you spend all your time in is to feel comfortable inside it.
You can customise the interface for absolutely everything — from the font to the colour of links in the text. I love the default theme with the dark background, which I find restful. Especially in full-screen mode: the dark theme makes it easier on the eyes.
Speaking of full-screen, you have the option of putting just the text in full-screen to avoid any distraction.
I’m a fan of typewriter-mode writing. It’s an option that scrolls the text as you type. As you write the article, the baseline stays at the chosen level and the text scrolls upward on its own — it’s genuinely great. Your eyes don’t have to move while writing. Not having grown up with a typewriter, I can assure you it was genuinely comfortable.
Organisation
The app lets you organise yourself however you like. You can file your notes in folders and subfolders just as you would in Finder. You can also add tags to your notes to find them more easily.
Search is solid too, letting you find a note with extreme precision by filtering on almost every parameter imaginable (search within titles, bold words, italic words…). One regret: you can’t save searches the way Evernote lets you.
You have the option of adding descriptions to notes and associating images with them so they show up next to your article.
Another nice feature for goal-setters: you can add a word-count target to an article. You then just swipe right to reveal the stats column and see your goals in real time — how many words you still need to write. You also get an estimated reading time for your article.
Export
Export capabilities are not lacking. You can export your notes in several formats:
- ePub
- docx
- text
- html
- blog
For each export format you can associate a template — the default templates are nice for ePubs.
Blog export is powerful: you can export to WordPress or Medium. There’s no option yet for exporting to a Ghost blog, but a quick tweet to the team leaves me thinking it could be possible.
Version history
No more worrying about going back to a previous version — Ulysses handles that by default. You wrote something silly and want to get back to a paragraph you deleted? No problem! ✌️
You’ll never lose your work again as long as you’re working in Ulysses. You can sync your notes through iCloud, so you’ll find all your writing on all your devices.
Built-in spell checker
I’m a fan of spell checkers — I even have an Antidote licence I wrote about here . The problem is that software isn’t integrated into iOS, so you had to correct your mistakes on a Mac. Recently Ulysses added a spell checker directly inside its editor — no more needing a Mac around to proofread your texts, and that is very cool! 😎
On each sheet you can check spelling with suggestions. It’s not at Antidote’s level, but it’s genuinely solid correction.
Conclusion
Ulysses is included in the SetApp subscription I wrote about here. You’ll need to subscribe to more than one screen to enjoy it across multiple iOS devices. We haven’t talked about cost, but at nearly €60 as a subscription the app isn’t cheap — and I’d recommend going through SetApp, especially since you get access to many more apps that way.
As you’ve probably gathered from the start of this article, I’m a huge fan of this software. I know plenty of Markdown writing apps, but Ulysses gives me the best user experience.
