iA Writer App Reviews

I love this app for taking notes in school or watching tutorials online. I just split my screen and have great fun with it. It would be perfection if I could export it directly to Evernote, because of iA Writer’s great—and simple—formating and writing tools.

I’m a customer of the original iA Writer. I was excited to upgrade because of the synchronized scrolling feature, but it doesn’t work. The preview scrolls much too far; the source does not keep up. (This is on a Macbook Pro 15", not sure if the screen size affects it.) It seems to work a little better if you scroll all the way to the bottom first, and then all the way back up, but you have to do this every time. Also, the syntax highlighting is not super accurate. It seems to have trouble with words that are sometimes adjectives, sometimes verbs. Not a problem for me because I don’t use the feature, but I thought I’d mention it for those who are interested in this feature.

I have to say that this app is money well spent. Having the ability to look up verbs, nouns, and adjatives are something I really enjoy when using this application. Of course, it is no replacement for Word, but this application does get the job done. It is not meant to replace Word, it is meant to be for those who like to use Markdown when formatting their work.

The writing experience is exceptional. However, the file management doesn’t quite live up to its fame. For example, you can’t go to the parent folder in the library, and there is no tree-like expansion where you can easily see all the files in a folder.

Everything you need and nothing you don’t. A focused app that helps you focus.

I hate the toolbar at the edge, give us a setting to choose between sidebar and toolbar, seriously.

The overall software is very pleasant now but it has become very unstable. I continuously gets error popups “you don’t have the permission to write” when I attempt to save (note: it becomes really annoying with autosave!). The window also disappears spontaneously sometimes. At this price, it’s a little bit disappointing...

I have been experiencing problem uploading files to and downloading from iCloud. I had followed instruction form Writer, including unchecking my documents and data for iCloud. It’s anoying and it didn’t work.

I like three things the most about iA Writer Pro: 1. It’s clean. There’s not a bazilion of tools and panels that gets me distracted 2. It’s designed to make you focus. Use it in full screen and forget about everything else, just write 3. It has a workflow. I like how it suggests me a methodology to write something. First: starting making notes. Second: just write, don’t copy edit. Third: edit, edit and edit. Fourth: visualize the end result and iterate over it again till making it awesome. I recommend this software. It may seen “expensive”, but even if you write just a single blog post using it, it’s already worth the money.

This app is quite powerfull and I’ve writen a good number of long pieces on it. However, after testing some other apps such as Ulysses and Write, I’ve come to the conclusion that iA Writer Pro still has several aspects in which to evolve. Simplicity is always a must. And the two other apps I just mentioned take this approach to the next level: while they offer us a beautiful, minimalist interface, they still deliver basic colour controls – to select tones for text, background etc. It means that those apps are highly customisable; and iA Writer Pro users are likely to be stuck with the same design forever. At least it’s a good design and a wise colour combination, we must admit. But it would be great to be more options and themes. I’d say iA Writer Pro is much better than Byword, Writeroom and the like. But it’s still not as powerful (and fun to use) as Ulysses and Write. I long for the app that combines the best of these worlds: a great minimalist interface with an awesome dark theme (like the beautiful Writer); powerful editing features and plenty of templates (like the full-featured Ulysses); and a good syntax control (like the smart iA Writer Pro).

Give us the old version, please!

I totally love it! Try out the workflow for a few weeks and then judge, it takes some time to get into it, but then it´s awesome!

Please add German language in the iA Writer Pro App. Thank you.

Havent really found out wht makes the pro version so different from the free version. But Kudos to the app makers, I use it for every text related work.

A very good tool for writing, even though I almost always use NOTE and WRITE only. But it really does help you stay focused. There’s only one bummer: since I have to use both systems, OS X and Win7, I would LOVE to have the program on both devices. For now, I have to use a simple markdown writer for Windows, which is much more directed towards programmers and not towards writers/authors. Why not have a PC version, as well, guys?

iA Writer Pro is a great update on an already good text editor. The syntax control is really helpful, enabling you to write far more succinctly and avoid unnecessary repetition. The night and day modes are handy too. Haven’t come across any problems whatsoever. Simple, elegant and a great distraction free environment to work with text.

by reducing the features and therefore the distractions iA writer is by far the best writing app on the market. beautiful typography, unbelievably intuitive interface and just the right amount of »tools« to enhance your writing/thoughts. fantastic work, iA!

I bought the app in 2013 for Mac OS and iPhone when it was version 1.3. Today I could not update to the newest version as it showed “Buy now” instead of update. Followed the FAQ troubleshoot > got charged again and now I have 2 iA Writer apps on my Mac.

Favourite writing app. That is all.

I’ve gone back and forth between iA Writer and Byword for the past 4-5 years and while I mostly favoured Byword for the majority of that time, iA Writer 3 has firmly become my main text editor over the past few months and it’s an absolute pleasure to use. The UI is beautifully refined and finally the developers have found the right balance between simplicity and just the right amount of rich editing functionality. The preview mode makes so much sense and generally, I don’t have many complaints at all. But I have one big one. Version 3 has introduced functionality where documents auto-save even before you’ve manually saved them the first time, which is contrary to how any other OS X software I’m familiar with operates. About 40% of the time, I use these types of text editors for temporary notes: rough ideas, briefly noting some sensitive information etc. and I, like I assume most users, don’t plan to save these files. iA Writer saves them automatically anyway, so you need to develop a habit of clearing the file and then deleting it from the Finder again. There is a workaround (Option + CMD + N), but you need to have iA Writer open already, meaning for some temporary files you need to open a blank file, THEN open another blank file that won’t be autosaved. I contacted the developer and they gave no compelling reason why the feature even makes sense. There really should be an option to disable this. I know it’s partly so the developer can push the Library feature (which I also don’t find useful), but it’s not a justification for risking users having a full folder full of sensitive data they didn’t realise was being saved...