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Why use creative writing software?

Novel in 30 is another app designed to turn your device into a distraction-free writing environment. Available only for the iPad for $4.99, it offers an enhanced keyboard with commonly used keys at your fingertips along with the ability to set milestones and track your progress. There's often a better option for those of us starving in garrets: free software. Come with us as we discover the best free apps to turn your writing talent into something tangible. Writing a book and publishing a book are two separate processes and often different software would be used for both the stages. While writing a book, the requirements are uninterrupted writing space, ability to keep track of notes, thoughts, ability to make changes easily & quickly etc. Basically you need a good text editor.

There isn’t always one perfect option—you may find that integrating multiple writing programs works best for the writing, compiling, and editing stages. Maybe all you really need is a distraction-free writing space to get the job done. November is National Novel Writing Month; here's the best software to help you write 50,000 words in 30 days. (Win/Mac/Linux, free), which does a lot of the above—tracking characters.

We spent over 30 hours testing 10 creative writing programs and worked with several types of writing, including novels, poetry, song lyrics and screenplays, to see just how easily and effectively each program can help develop stories, edit massive amounts of text and create a full story outline. We recommend WriteItNow as the best creative writing software for anyone needing help with their writing. It is easy to use and has the most extensive and powerful tools for developing all aspects of your story and for editing it afterwards.

FreeWriter is a fully featured writing software suite to assist in writing novels and reports. It provides a fresh, new, graphical approach to writing. It includes our revolutionary 'Thoughts Canvas' technology to harness your creativity - helping deliver clear, consistent, quality writing. November is National Novel Writing Month, an event in which thousands of people attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in the course of 30 days.As a once and future participant in the event, I.

Best creative writing overall

WriteItNow

A creative writing software that is fantastic for organising complex plots

WriteItNow offers the most powerful and comprehensive organizational features of the applications we reviewed. It’s a great tool to use to keep track of your novel, from the planning stages through to publication. WriteItNow offers plenty of tools to help with character development, including a detailed questionnaire that allows you to assign numerical values to certain traits like intelligence. This information is stored in the easily-accessible Character tab, and you can reference it at any point in your writing.

The software has similar tab features for keeping track of other elements as well to keep your story on track. As you write, WriteItNow makes it easy to stay organized with its variety of tools that cater to many different styles of outlining, whether you need timelines, graphs or color coding. In testing, we found all of this was extremely easy and intuitive to use, as the application’s modern interface was straightforward.

WriteItNow includes a built-in word processor and web browser, that make it easy to stay in one application while you work. The in-app editing tools and submissions manager make it a great tool to use through every step of the writing process. The only downsides to WriteItNow is that it isn’t great for other types of writing, and the company does not offer phone support.

Read the full review here: WriteItNow 5 Review

Most versatile creative writing software

Power structure

A great creative writing software that offers a wide range of assistance

Power Structure has a variety of formats to assist with several genres of writing. It keeps all your most important story elements in view at the top of your writing interface, so you can keep them in mind while you write. Its Index Cards feature works to sort out plot points, notes, chapters and ideas, which is a useful feature for plot development and structure, especially since Power Structure does not have genre outlines or brainstorming tools.

The application’s word processor has basic editing tools like spell check, but it does not have a built-in dictionary. In testing, we found Power Structure was easy to use, though we ran into a few glitches when seeking out the PDF user manual. The best thing about Power Structure is that its plethora of tools work not only with long-form prose but also with different genres, including playwriting. It’s a good choice for writers who dabbles in a little bit of everything.

Read the full review here: Power Structure Review

Best for Apple Users

Storyist

Storyist

A super easy creative software to use

Storyist is a Mac OSX compatible creative writing application with a sleek, easy-to-use interface. It has a feature-rich word processor with a dedicated space to jot down notes, so you don’t have to navigate to a new page and interrupt your flow when you think of an idea or question in the middle of writing a sentence. One of the best features of Storyist is its companion iOS app, which lets you write wherever inspiration strikes. Though most creative writing software’s in-app word processors include basic editing tools, Storyist’s are generally more powerful and include word count trackers and formatting functions.

Storyist offers plenty of organization tools to help you keep track of the important details in your writing. It offers customizable style sheets to ensure consistency. I also offers character trait sheets and bulletin-board-like systems to arrange notes and writing elements. One thing we particularly like about Storyist is its autosave and version history features, which make sure that your work is never lost, even if you accidentally delete a whole chapter. Overall, Storyist is easy to use and offers features for use on both OSX and iOS.

Read the full review here: Storyist Review

Best for Screenplays

Best for Screenplays

Contour

Best creative writing software for screen plays

Contour is a good creative writing software application dedicated to movie screenplays. It helps you step-by-step through developing the characters, action and conflict of your movie. When you start a new screenplay file, the program asks you several questions to hone in on your most important characters and their actions. It then helps you outline 44 plot points throughout three acts, drawing examples from successful movies.

Though Contour is a great tool to help you write your screenplay, it acts more as a way to organize your notes and outlines than a place to actually write it out. The program does not include an in-app word processor, so most formatting happens outside of the application. If you need inspiration and a step-by-step process, Contour is ideal as its scripted steps provide structure. It’s not designed for a seasoned screenwriter, however.

Read the full review here: Contour Review

Best for Song Lyrics

MasterWriter

Unlike most creative writing software applications, MasterWriter stays away from big-picture outlining and organization tools. MasterWriter is much more concerned with specific lines and word choices. Its focused specificity is why it is the best creative writing software for lyricists and poets. It has a database with 33,000 common word combinations to help you figure out that saying on the tip of your tongue, as well as 136,000 rhymes or rhyme phrases.

If you want to make a pop culture reference in your work, you can also utilize one of MasterWriter’s 12,000 movie and culture quotes from the Pop Culture feature. Another tool the software provides for finding exactly the right phrase is Word Families, which acts as a combination of a reference dictionary and thesaurus. This feature lets you filter results by part of speech, as well. To help you keep track of your ideas, MasterWriter allows you to keep both written and voice-recorded notes.

Read the full review here: MasterWriter Review

How does creative writing software differ from a word processor?

Creative writing software provides you with tools that are more refined than the ones typically found in word processors. Software specifically designed for writers typically offers developmental tools, storyboards, and features that help you spawn round characters, think through storylines and choose just the right word or phrase to add life to your writing. The software helps you develop and organize info on characters and subplots so you can keep intricate details straight throughout your story.

Some programs are geared toward a specific writing type, such as novels or screenwriting, while others are more general in scope. The best creative writing software helps instill and prompt these qualities through organization and structure.

Creative Writing Software: How We Tested, What We Found

In our tests, we explored each program fully and evaluated how easy it was to download, install and use. We compared the features and functionality of each application to determine which were the best. We also looked for the programs that provide the most comprehensive tools to assist you in the writing process from beginning to end, no matter your writing style or experience level.

We found that the best creative writing software not only accommodates many types of writing – like screenplays or song lyrics – it also has editing tools, a customizable interface and built-in plot and character development tools. The top programs are also backed by prompt, friendly customer service.

The top creative writing programs should have features that spark creativity, help you organize story lines and aid in developing characters, conflicts, settings and plots. It should contain a built-in word processor and be user-friendly so that even a beginning writer can feel confident enough to practice and write with the application.

Crucial factors to consider with creative writing software

Organization Tools The software should offer sufficient features to help you brainstorm ideas, organize your thoughts, create believable characters and keep track of their activities in minute detail. The best software offers structure templates with tools to develop conflict, characters, plots and settings. It will also help you power through moments of writer’s block by helping you brainstorm ideas, outline your story and develop each setting and arc along the way.

Writing & Editing The best creative writing software offers a host of practical tools. If your computer didn’t come preinstalled with Microsoft Word or a similar word processing application, consider one of the programs that has one built into it. The main benefit of using a program with a built-in word processor is that your notes and outlines will be in the same place as your writing. You can easily access your notes, view your storyboard and write in the same window, which means you won’t have to waste time switching between programs. The best programs also provide tools to help you find just the right word, like a dictionary, thesaurus or a vast library of rhyming words or alliterations.

Ease of Use Good creative writing software should be easy to use. It should also have user-friendly features so anyone can download, install and quickly figure it out. The best programs have an intuitive, modern interface that’s easy to navigate with no hidden menus or features.

Help & Support Creative writing software should offer a variety of support options. You can contact any of the software publishers in our lineup via email or contact form, and a few even offer technical support over the phone. While most of these companies don’t offer live chat support, they make up for it by hosting a veritable artillery of informational resources on their websites. From video tutorials to extremely detailed PDF user manuals and community user forums, most of these programs have you covered when you’re troubleshooting.

Supported Configurations If you find a creative writing program that you like, double check that it’s compatible with your computer’s operating system. Most programs are compatible with all recent versions of Windows, though a few only work on Mac OS X. Although a couple can technically run on a Linux computer, there may be further limitations or extra software to install before the program will work properly. As for mobile use, a few programs either have compatible smartphone apps or can be used on a mobile web browser.

Don’t worry if you’re trying to stick to your budget – there are multiple options available for about $40. However, if your budget’s really tight, we recommend MasterWriter, which has monthly payment plans available for just under $10 per month. The software may be simple but it provides you with a place to write and store multiple stories, poems or song lyrics. It even includes an impressive bank full of alliterations, rhymes and other words so you can easily find just the right word.

Our creative writing software reviews can help you find just the right software package. While some programs have a broader focus than others, you can find one to help with just about any type of creative writing project. Whether you want to focus on finishing your novel or getting ideas for a screenplay, our reviews are a wonderful place to start.

Similar Kinds of Programs

Experienced writers know that writing can be a multi-faceted process laden with distractions and that it’s important to have the right tools to get the job done. Luckily, there are tons of programs and tools to help novice and veteran writers alike stay organized and produce high-quality writing. Below, we share a variety of tools to help you through the entire writing process:

For learning how to type. If you hunt and peck at your keyboard, it may be beneficial to learn how to type before setting out to write your best-seller. There are free websites, such as TypingClub, that teach you the basics of typing, or you can pay for entire courses through sites like KAZ. If you prefer to download a program onto your computer, check out our typing software reviews.

For organizing. Many writers have brilliant novel or screenplay ideas in their heads but never get them down on paper because they find it’s difficult to organize everything. There are programs out there designed specifically to help you organize your entire writing project – including tasks, plot points, character info and everything else relevant to your story – in a single place. Gingko is one such program. If you want something made for more of a general task management, consider MeisterTask or Basecamp. Once you have all the logistics written out, it should clear the path for you to focus on writing.

For minimizing distractions. Whether it’s a new email or a neighbor knocking on your door, distractions are everywhere, and they are the enemy of writers. Although we can’t help you with nosy neighbors, we can recommend some applications and other tools to help maximize your focus. Browser extensions, such as Mindful Browsing, limit the type of websites you can access or simply remind you to stretch and get back to work. We also recommend using focusing playlists designed to help you stay energized and on task. Websites like Brain.fm work, as does a quick search on your favorite music streaming service.

For checking grammar and improving vocabulary. Writing a great story is tough enough without having to worry if you misused a word or used incorrect grammar. Thankfully, there are websites ready to help you check your work before sending it off to a publisher. They can check for incorrect punctuation, misused words and spelling errors as well as grammatical errors. Plenty of these sites, including WhiteSmoke, are free, though you can pay for a service, such as Grammarly, should you wish. Some of these sites can also check for plagiarism, which is handy.

For sharing your work. Once you’ve polished your masterpiece, you’ll want somewhere to post it. If blogging is your thing, check out WordPress or Blogger. If you prefer to create a website for your portfolio, check out sites like Squarespace or Weebly or hire a professional website designer to make a custom site for your work.

Related Product Reviews

There are a lot of great options available in this golden age of writing applications for the Mac and iOS, but we believe that Ulysses is the cream of the crop. In our opinion, it’s the perfect combination of power and grace, giving you both the writing tools to help you be productive and a beautiful, distraction-free writing environment to keep you focused.

What is a “pro writing app?”

A pro writing app is a powerful writing tool engineered to meet the needs of people who get paid to write words. This is a broad audience that includes:

• Screenwriters
• Playwrights
• Authors
• Bloggers
• YouTubers
• Podcasters
• and much, much more

If you fall into any of these categories, write more than occasionally, or get paid for what you write, then a pro writing app is probably a great fit for you.

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You could also define a pro writing app as a “focused writing app,” one that assists you in getting your words out of our head and onto the page. The mission of any pro writing app should be to help you produce words that will eventually end up being posted, printed, or published. It’s not something that gives you a ton of formatting options, but rather helps you focus on your words. A good pro writing app should provide an environment that is aesthetically pleasing and makes it easy for you to focus and create, then allows you to export your work to its final destination as quickly (and painlessly) as possible.

Since the words themselves are the end goal, it’s important that the pro writing app you choose provides you with a distraction-free user interface that inspires creativity. It should provide the essential tools necessary to make your job of writing easier, but it shouldn’t provide anything extra that could clutter the interface with options or features you don’t want or need. The design should be as minimal as possible so as not to be distracting, therefore making the features that are not included in a pro writing app just as important as the ones that are.

What makes a good pro writing app?

These are the characteristics we consider important in a pro writing app and the criteria we used when selecting the best one:

• Design — A blinking cursor on a blank page is intimidating enough, so the app must be well-designed in order to provide an inviting writing environment. Design is vitally important as it should strive to eliminate visual barriers so you can enter into a state of flow easily and do your best creative work.
• Ease of Use — The purpose of any tool is to make the work easier. If the app is not easy to use or it’s too difficult to figure out how a certain critical feature works, it can actually make it harder for you to get words on a page.
• Workflow Options — The application you choose to use should adapt to fit your workflow. It should accommodate your preferred methods and styles for capturing and creating content so you can focus on the words — no matter where you are when you decide to write them.
• Export Options — Your words are ultimately going to end up somewhere outside the pro writing app that you select. Flexible export options allow you to quickly and easily move your content from one location to another and make it simple for you to get your content out into the world.
• Sync/Multi-Platform — With the technology tools that are available today, it’s easier than ever to capture inspiration whenever (and wherever) it hits. If the pro writing app you use has companion mobile applications, it can make it even easier to record that perfect word or phrase when you think of it — even if you can’t get to your Mac.
• Update History — The tool you decide to use should be actively developed. Nothing is more frustrating than being fully invested in a platform that is no longer supported because you then have to figure out a way to get everything out and start over in a completely new system (ask anyone who used WordPerfect or QuarkExpress back in the day).
• Price — There have never been more quality options to choose from, and the competition surrounding great writing apps is fierce. This is great news for you as a writer, as it means you have a lot of affordable tools to choose from.

What a Pro Writing App is NOT

Before we dive into this review, an important distinction: a pro writing app is not a word processor. Word processors are very powerful applications that have a lot of unnecessary formatting and layout tools (for our purposes, anyway). These typically don’t translate well on export, so they have limited value unless their proprietary file formats are in fact your ultimate creative destination. And having to support all of these functions and features comes at a price, resulting in a cluttered and cramped writing interface.

All of these options and tools can also get in the way of your writing by encouraging you to tinker with layout options instead of putting words on the page. Many a writer has succumbed to what Steven Pressfield calls The Resistance by fiddling with font settings instead of doing the work.

Word processors also make it very difficult to work on your project outside the application you started with because of their proprietary file formats. Ever open up a Word document you received from someone and were welcomed by a warning message saying a necessary font is not installed? That’s a frustration of working with word processors like Microsoft Word and Pages, and an unnecessary one for our purposes. They tend to cause a lot of frustration when trying to export your words out of their proprietary file format, which quickly makes these additional tools more trouble than they’re worth.

A pro writing app is also not a specialized text editor like Sublime Text, Atom, or BBEdit. These are also very powerful applications with specific use cases, but are overkill for the person who just needs to put words on a page. That doesn’t mean you can’t write in them, just that it’s not the ideal tool to do so. These applications have a lot of very powerful features (like code completion and multiple cursors) that are great for coders and developers, but unnecessary for people who just want to write.

Our Favorite Pro Writing App is Ulysses

Ulysses is an extremely powerful writing tool with well-thought-out features that will provide great support for any writing project. It provides everything you need to be a more productive writer and still maintains a simple UI that limits distractions so you can focus on accomplishing your writing goals. It’s not cheap, but for people who get paid (or want to get paid) to write words, it is a very worthwhile investment.

When you first launch Ulysses, you’ll see the main three-pane window with the library on the left, the list of “sheets” (what Ulysses calls documents) in the middle, and the editor pane on the right. There’s also a fourth slide-over Attachments pane, but it it stays out of your way until you actually need it.

The left pane offers a couple locations for storing your writing files, including iCloud (if you want your writings accessible everywhere) and local storage (if you don’t). You can also set up “External Folders” that can point to a location like Dropbox or Google Drive. This can be handy if you use another location or app to capture ideas but you want to flesh them out and do the actual writing in Ulysses. For example, maybe you use a note taking application on your iOS device to capture ideas to plain text files in a Dropbox folder. By adding that to the Ulysses Library as a source, you’l automatically get access to those text files whenever you open up Ulysses.

This flexibility allows Ulysses to fit perfectly into my writing workflow:

1. When I get an idea (i.e. “Write article on Best Pro Writing App”), I capture it using Drafts,which saves the note to a Dropbox folder called “Notes.” This might also include a list of apps I think would be useful or other tidbits of information I’ll use when writing.
2. When I’m cleaning out my inbox, I’ll find the note and create a task in my task manager. I’ll want to flesh that idea out into a post or article later, so I’ll move the file from “Notes” to another folder in Ulysses which denotes that it is a work in progress.
3. I’ll work on the article in Ulysses until I’m finished with it, then export it and publish it straight to the web.

Your writing workflow may differ, but with the ability to add text from many different sources (iCloud, Dropbox, local Mac storage, etc.) Ulysses is flexible enough to accommodate a variety of workflow implementations.

Achieving Your Writing Goals with Ulysses

If you did a side-by-side comparison of Ulysses with some of the other apps we tested, you’d see a lot of similarities, but you’d also see that there are quite a few features that are available in one or more of those other apps that are missing from Ulysses. I would argue this is not only necessary in order to keep the design simple and clean, but actually helps you focus on using the tools that are available which are specifically chosen to assist you in the writing process. In our opinion, the features the developers chose to include are powerful, useful, and easy to use.

One of these tools is Goals. There are a lot of apps that offer a word count, but Goals in Ulysses are a little bit different. For example, you can set your sheet’s goal to be something specific, like at least 1,000 words, or more generic, like about 10,000 characters. Here are the progress metrics you can select from when setting a writing goal:

• number of words
• number of characters (with or without spaces)
• number of sentences
• number of paragraphs
• number of pages
• estimated reading time

Once you select your progress metric, then you need to select the specific measurement you want to use. You can select about if there are no hard requirements for what you’re writing, or you can select at least or at most if your writing needs to meet certain maximum or minimum criteria.

You can also set a deadline if you have to finish your writing project by a specific date. Check the box to add a deadline and select it from the date picker, and Ulysses will automatically calculate the amount of text you have to write each day to finish in time. If your deadline is at night and you plan on writing that very day, there’s even an option to Write on Due Date so the additional writing day gets taken into account. You can even select which days to take into account by clicking the popout button once you’ve created your goal and then clicking the gear icon, then unchecking any days of the week you don’t want to be writing (like weekends, for example).

As you’re writing and making progress toward your goal, a small circle in the upper right corner of the sheet box (located in the middle pane of the three pane view) displays your progress. You can also see a much larger version of your sheet goal located in the Attachments pane. Once you’ve reached your writing goal and the circle is complete, it will turn green, giving you a very satisfying visual indication that you’ve met your goal:

You can even set goals for groups and have Ulysses track your writing history. Once you set a goal for a group, Ulysses will track your writing history so you can see the daily progress you are making on your larger writing goal. Just right-click the group in the Library and select Goal, then select the History tab to see the words you’ve typed today, your daily average, daily best, and the total progress you’ve made this week.

Keeping Everything Organized

Ulysses also gives you everything you need to keep all your writing organized. One way to do this is by using Groups. Groups are kind of like folders on your Mac, allowing you to store related sheets together in a single location. So if you are the type of person who likes to keep your computer files in a nested folder hierarchy on your computer, you’ll feel right at home using groups in Ulysses. You can even create subgroups inside of groups. For example, you might have a group called Newsletter that contains separate subgroups for Drafts you’re working on and Published newsletters. This allows you to work on your newsletter while it’s in the Drafts subgroup, then once you export it you can move it to the Published subgroup to keep everything nice and tidy.

Ulysses also lets you apply keywords to your sheets. Keywords are basically tags, giving you another way to group your files without the confines of folders and physical locations. Keywords are very flexible and allow you to quickly search for related things, regardless of their location. For example, if you’re writing a book with many characters or locations, you could use keywords to filter all scenes starring the same character or location.

But Ulysses’ killer organizational feature is Filters. Filters are kind of like Smart Folders in Apple Mail and allow you to create living folders that have content in them based on specific criteria. For example, a Filter might include documents that contain certain keywords or be based on when you wrote or modified a document, etc. These are really powerful because they allow you to combine things and quickly find anything you’re looking for — even if you have tens of thousands of sheets in your Ulysses library! Filters look almost exactly like Groups in your Ulysses Library, but the contents are automatically updated based on the criteria. So a filter set up to show us Active documents will always show us only the sheets that we’ve been working on at some point in the last 7 days.

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A Clean, Customizable Interface

One of the best things about Ulysses is that it just looks great. The minimal interface is sharp, and every feature is carefully considered. Writing in Ulysses is based on Markdown formatting, allowing you to style your text as you write without all the clutter of something like HTML tags for web writers. The visual markup style makes it easy to see things like bold and italicized text, and you can also customize just about every aspect of the app to your liking. You can change the theme, change the font (or upload your own), even select different colors for individual style elements for both light and dark themes.

Ulysses also has a beautiful, distraction-free Full Screen Mode. Full Screen Mode makes it easy to block distractions and stay focused on your writing. While Full Screen Mode isn’t unique to Ulysses, there are a couple of additional features (like Typewriter Mode) that when coupled with Full Screen mode make Ulysses the ideal environment to focus on your writing.

Once enabled, Typewriter Mode can be very beneficial for helping you concentrate on your current position as you type. You can set Typewriter Mode to highlight your current line, sentence, or paragraph, which causes the rest of the text in your document to fade into the background, while remaining legible. When combined with the Mark the Current Line feature, this makes the the words you are currently focused on really pop.

Ulysses also offers a feature called Fixed Scrolling. Fixed Scrolling fixes the current line vertically on one spot while you type. You can choose this spot to be on the top, in the middle or at the bottom of the screen, or opt for variable. When using Variable, you can freely move your cursor with the mouse or arrow keys, but once you start typing the current line will remain fixed.

Ulysses also has a gorgeous built-in Dark Mode. The Dark Mode in Ulysses matches the look and feel of other pro Mac apps and can be easier on your eyes as you write.

Exporting Made Easy

Once you’ve finished writing, Ulysses lets you export your text easily to a variety of standard formats using the Quick Export feature.

The Quick Export window has a couple different sections. The first section is the format switcher, which lets you choose the format of your text output. You can choose from Text, HTML, ePub, PDF, DOCX, or, if you want to upload your text to a WordPress blog or your Medium account, Publishing.

In the center of the Quick Export window are the export settings. These vary depending on the format you select. You can, for example, choose an export style and a page size when your output is going to be a PDF document, but not when exporting as text or HTML.

On the top of the Quick Export window are the export actions. From here, you can:

• Preview to see what your exported document will look like
• Copy to Clipboard
• Save, to open Finder and save to a location of your choice
• Open in, which lists all available applications to which you can send your output
• Send, which allows you to export your output as a mail or iMessage, share via Airdrop, or print
• and Publish, which allows you to publish to a Medium account or a WordPress blog if you have your settings configured correctly.

The large button at the bottom executes the default export action. You can also trigger your default action from the Quick Export window by hitting the Enter key.

Ulysses also has a very clever way of solving the image export problem inherent with Markdown files created in sandboxed Mac App Store applications.

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Images in Markdown documents are usually just links to a specific file location (which you can do in Ulysses), but this can cause problems with Apple’s sandboxing rules on the Mac App Store. For example, when sending a file from an app like Ulysses to another app on your Mac, you have to explicitly permit access to image files before they can be displayed in the target application. To solve this problem, the developers of Ulysses have worked with internet genius Brett Terpstra (the developer of Marked) to create a new file format called TextBundle which provides a way to get around traditional sandboxing limitations on the Mac. TextPack — as seen in the latest version of Ulysses for iOS — is the compressed variant of a TextBundle file.

Without getting too deep into the weeds, TextBundle is revolutionary because it basically takes all the assets that the plain text file points to and packages it all together, so if you wanted to edit the plain text file somewhere else (like a PC) all your assets are right there. This opens up some really interesting integrations for Ulysses. For example, you could send an outline in Ulysses in TextBundle format to MindNode and turn your outline into a mind map (with images attached) instantly. Or you could create a Markdown presentation in Ulysses that can be displayed in Deckset. The possibilities are endless.

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Perhaps the best part about this TextBundle format though is that it’s still essentially a plain text file. That means it’s still very flexible to edit and doesn’t lock you into a proprietary format like a word processor does. And best of all, TextBundle is an open standard, making it easy for other developers to implement support for it in their own apps.

Backup & Restore

Backup is one of those things that you typically don’t think about until you really need it, and by then it’s often too late. Fortunately, when it comes to backing up your writing, Ulysses makes it incredibly easy and can even back up your work automatically.

Easy Duplicate Finder uses advanced file comparison algorithms that detect all the duplicate files on your PC and guarantee 100% accurate results. Its intuitive interface lets you delete duplicates in a simple three-step process: add folders, run a scan, delete duplicate files. Mac program to check for duplicate files. You can choose to delete all duplicates automatically, or you can inspect the scan results before you delete, move or rename the duplicates. The program has lots of file management tools that make it easy for you to quickly delete the What's New in Easy Duplicate Finder. Easy Duplicate Finder will help you find and delete all sorts of duplicate files in just a few clicks.

One of the handy backup features in Ulysses is called version history. Version history works a lot like Time Machine for your Mac, only for your writing in Ulysses. So let’s say you delete a sentence in your text, and a couple of days later you change your mind and would like to turn back time to restore it. With Ulysses version history, this is no problem.

Ulysses will also automatically back up your work locally on your device. You can toggle backups on and off if you’d like, but it is enabled by default in Ulysses on both your Mac and your iOS devices. On the Mac, Ulysses stores hourly backups of the last 12 hours of work, daily backups of the last seven days of work, and weekly backups for the last six months of work. These backups are stored inside your user’s Library folder, so to prevent accidental loss of your data you’ll definitely want to make sure that you are backing up your Mac as well.

Backup works the same way on iOS, but because the backups are stored locally, Ulysses doesn’t keep as many backups on your iOS device as it does on your Mac because of space limitations. Also, there is currently no version history on iOS. On iOS, Ulysses keeps hourly backups for the last six hours of work, daily backups for the last five days of work, and weekly backups for the past two months of work.

You Get What You Pay For

The one thing that will keep many people back from Ulysses is the price. You can’t purchase the application outright anymore, and a Ulysses subscription is $5/month or $40/year (which includes access to the iOS version). And while we know that some people will balk at the fact that Ulysses is a subscription, we feel it is a fair price for a professional writing tool.

One of the main advantages of the subscription model is that it provides a sustainable business model for the developers, and when it comes to choosing a tool for your work, you want to know that it’s going to be around for a while. Many a writing app have debuted at a lower price point, and many of them are not around anymore. We believe that paying a subscription fee for a professional tool is a great business model, providing the company the resources it needs to keep the app updated. The recent release of version 15 is evidence of this, sporting a new split-screen feature that allows you to work in two sheets at once as well as enhancements to keyword search and management, and much more.

We believe the decision to subscribe to Ulysses is an easy one — as long as you get more than $5/month of value from the application. So how can you decide if the subscription is worth it to you? There are a couple of things to consider:

First, do you currently make money as a writer? If so, it’s easy to justify $5/month for a tool that helps you achieve your writing goals by improving the speed and the quality of your writing. Subscription fatigue is a very real thing, but if you are going to use Ulysses in any sort of professional capacity, you might want to think of it as an inexpensive business expense.

Freeware Download

Second, do you aspire to make money as a writer? If so, maybe you could take one of those entertainment subscriptions (i.e. Netflix) and convert it over to a Ulysses subscription instead. Then next time you feel like binge watching the latest show, it can be a cue or trigger to work on your writing habit instead.

Third, do you have a SetApp subscription already? SetApp is a great service from MacPaw (the makers of CleanMyMac, Gemini, and several other great Mac utilities) that provides access to a long list of incredible Mac applications. Here’s just a few of our favorites:

• Ulysses
• MindNode
• Timing
• Marked
• BetterTouchTool
• Bartender
• iStat Menus
• CleanMyMac
• Be Focused Pro
• TripMode
• BusyCal
• 2Do

Since Ulysses is a part of SetApp, you can use it with your current subscription if you’re already a SetApp customer. If you’re not a SetApp subscriber and you’re on the fence about whether to subscribe to Ulysses, take a look at the other apps available and see if you can justify the $9.99/month cost that way.

Other Candidates

There were a lot of other high quality writing apps we looked at when writing this review. None of them quite measured up to our top pick in terms of creating a comfortable writing environment, but many have unique features that deserve a mention.

Scrivener

Scrivener ($45) was our previous pick for the best long-form writing app, and it’s done nothing to lose that crown. Unfortunately for Scrivener, Ulysses has just gotten a lot better. With the ePub export in Ulysses being so good, Scrivener is no longer the default choice when you want to publish an ebook. To be fair, Scrivener still does give you a lot more power and options when exporting, and is still your best option if you want to export to the Kindle format.

Scrivener also has an iPad version ($19.99) which is very good. It was even featured in the Best of the App Store in 2016, but requires that you use Dropbox to sync your Scrivener projects instead of iCloud. This makes sync a little more cumbersome, and we still think Ulysses is a better choice for most writing projects.

iA Writer Pro

iA Writer Pro offers a couple unique features like Syntax Control, which scans your document and highlights your adjectives, nouns, adverbs, verbs, prepositions, or conjunctions. This allows you to see if your sentences are balanced. This feature is not limited to just English and supports several other languages as well. iA Writer Pro also has a Focus Mode that highlights one sentence at a time by making the surrounding text fade into the background, reducing the temptation to edit.

iA Writer is $28.99 on the Mac App Store and has companion apps for both iOS ($8.99) and Android (Free). There’s also a Windows version which is $19.99 and offers an installable extension for syncing to iCloud. If you use a PC or Android device and want to write on the go, check out iA Writer as it is the only app we reviewed (besides Microsoft Word and Scrivener) that has support outside the Apple ecosystem.

Focused

Focused has one incredibly awesome feature that makes it worth noting called “Zen Mode.” We published an article over at Tools and Toys on music to help you focus, but Focused actually bakes this right into the app itself by providing curated soundtracks designed to help you focus and concentrate on your writing. I personally listen to a lot of the music mentioned in the Tools and Toys article when I write, and the ability to launch it from the writing app and not have to open Spotify or Apple Music (or rely on an internet connection) is a really cool idea.

Focused is $19.99 and in our opinion doesn’t offer the same level of writing assistance that Ulysses does, but is still a very polished app. Focused is also a part of SetApp, so if you have a SetApp subscription you can try both Ulysses and Focused for yourself and see which one is right for you.

Free Program Download

Byword

We previously selected Byword as our favorite Markdown writing app, and it can certainly be used as a pro writing app today. We believe that Ulysses just offers a few more tools and UI enhancements that make it a better choice for more lengthy writing projects.

Byword is an excellent application, and at $10.99 for the Mac app and $5.99 for the iOS version, it’s a great option for a writer looking to upgrade their tools on a budget. The lower price does mean that Byword receives less frequent updates though, and while the current apps aren’t lacking anything, they don’t get updated nearly as often as Ulysses does. Both the Mac and iOS apps do have an available “Publishing” in-app purchase that must be purchased for each version that allows you to publish your writing straight to an external source (like WordPress). It also offers iCloud sync which works flawlessly (in our testing) between the Mac and iOS versions.

Bear

Freeware

Bear really isn’t a pure pro writing, but it can be used for smaller writing projects and supports Markdown formatting. It has a beautiful user interface and at $1.49/month or $14.99/year, it is a much more affordable option if you don’t need all the power that Ulysses offers.

Bear is limited in its export options though, and you won’t be able to publish straight from Bear, but it does offer some unique features, like cross-linking between notes, todos, and browser extensions to quickly clip things into Bear. Bear is really a note-taking app (one we think does an excellent job), but it’s so well done that it at least deserves a mention here.

Microsoft Word

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We’re including this in the list only because this is what a lot of people think of when they need to write a document, but in our opinion it’s one of the worst options available. Not only is Microsoft Word very expensive (it starts at $70/year with Office 365 and goes up from there), but as we outlined above it locks you into a proprietary file format that is difficult to publish from (if you use the features that it offers). If you don’t use these extra features, then there’s really no reason to use Word as the myriad of features just clutter up the screen.

Word used to be the de facto option for sharing text documents throughout an office, but (thankfully) with the advent of plain text (and Markdown in particular), that is changing. We recommend that you use a tool that affords you the flexibility that these other formats offer.

Pages

Free Programming Software

Pages is also not a great option for the same reasons listed for Word, but at least it’s free on the Mac App Store and offers you an easy way to get started. It’s actually pretty powerful as word processors go, but still has the same drawbacks inherent with that application type we outlined earlier.

Pages does have free iOS versions that sync reliably with iCloud, so you’ll be able to sync your documents wherever you go with your iPhone or iPad. If you just bought a shiny new MacBook and want something that will allow you write on the go but you don’t have any money to spend on a fancy writing app, Pages will work, but you will run into formatting issues.

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Conclusion

Ulysses is an excellent tool for any professional writer. It has a well thought-out user layout, extremely useful features, and a distraction-free writing interface that does a great job helping you focus on the act of writing. It offers a variety of export options and has an excellent iOS companion app for writing on the go. It requires a subscription and isn’t exactly cheap, but we still consider it an excellent value for anyone who wants a tool to help them achieve their professional writing goals.

There are a couple of other interesting options available that offer unique features, but in our opinion none of them provide the blend of a clean user interface and powerful writing tools that Ulysses offers.