Search, sort, and quickly swap between documents from different clouds without leaving the window. Giving you a calm, focused, writing space, so you can express yourself clearly.įocus Mode dims everything but the current sentence or paragraph, helping you stay in the flow.ĭon’t worry about the format. “iA Writer is all about textual production-writing this phrase, this sentence, this word at this moment.” -WIRED “iA Writer is an example of how powerful simplicity and accessibility can be.” -The Guardian “iA Writer creates a clean, simple and distraction-free writing environment for when you really need to focus on your words.” -The New York Times To me, it’s the gold standard for Markdown syntax styling. “My favorite iOS app for writing in Markdown, without question, is iA Writer. Ps: this blog post was written in iA Writer.“Leaving life’s mess for an ideal realm of words.” -The New Yorker If you have used such a tool, do share your experiences (good and bad) below. I am currently keeping iA Writer as part of my workflow, using it to draft things, then pasting the results into a word processor or other application for layout and finishing. But it is great for a first draft and if you are primarily writing text. If you use Windows, the options include Darkroom, Focuswriter and Writemonkey but I haven’t tried any of those.īecause of its lack of features, a minimalist writing tool isn’t for everything, certainly not equation-laden articles. You can roll back to different versions using iCloud’s built-in features. IA Writer syncs to Apple’s iCloud, so you can edit on your Mac, iPhone or iPad and not worry about backups. Oh and it does look great on screen, a bit like the typerwiters from days gone by. This keeps your attention squarely on clarifying exactly what you are trying to express in the current sentence.
On iA Writer, one interesting feature - probably its only feature - is the “focus mode” which highlights the currently edited sentence and fades everything else into grey. The experience isn’t like using Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit(Mac) either. The overall effect is that your mind stays focused on paragraph structures, flow and generating interesting content. There are however numbered headings which is useful. There are no obscure Control/Alt/Esc commands to remember. There are no styles, hyperlinks, or colors or fonts. There is no way to underline or italicize text. Even compared to any of those, iA Writer is distraction free.
But it turns out to be a different user experience after all. Initially I was skeptical and thought a minimalist tool was nothing new, just a modern version of Vi/Emacs or any of the LaTeX editors I’ve used.
I have been revising a paper for a journal and when it began crashing every ten minutes, I realized I was totally distracted by having to restart my word processor and guessing what changes had actually been saved. I was led to search for a new writing tool by Redmond’s Law of Large Numbers which states that a large and complex enough document will definitely crash Microsoft Word. They help you focus on actually writing rather than tinkering with fonts, layouts, hyperlinks, grammar checkers and other distractions. It is one of a slew of new programs that are “minimalist” writing tools including Omniwriter and Writeroom. I recently began using a new writing tool, iA writer.
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