The Mac is said to be the machine of creative people; starting from graphic designers to musicians and sound engineers. There are lots of heavy applications available to cater for their needs.
But what about writers? What options do they have? Mac’s word processors are always identical to the low profile TextEdit or the heavy duty MS Word or Open Office. There’s also previously mentioned LyxLyx - The Ultimate Scientific Paper Writing ToolLyx - The Ultimate Scientific Paper Writing ToolRead More, but neither of these are built specifically for writers.
As a self-proclaimed writer myself, I constantly looking for the ultimate ‘creative writing’ tool. These four are the best free options that I’ve found so far. And with NaNoWriMo closing in, you definitely could need some help in the writing department.
Babbling With Bean
Ulysses is your one-stop writing environment for Mac, iPhone and iPad. Its pleasant, focused writing experience, combined with effective document management, seamless sync, and flexible export, make Ulysses the first choice for writers of all kinds.
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Along comes the Bean (not the British comedy movie) – a simple yet comfortable writing environment. Bean is a little bit more powerful than TextEdit while a lot more uncluttered than those ‘powerhouse’ word processors.
Best Free Creative Writing App For Mac
At the beginning, Bean was built to accommodate the creative writing hobby of the app creator. But it is not limited only to that. Just like TextEdit, Bean also could be used for general text editing purposes from quick jot of phone number and to do list to creating web page and writing programming code.
To taste the Bean, just download the latest version of this app. It’s free.
Everything that you need to write a standard document is here, and more. To make your writing life easier, open the Inspector window. Bean also supports a full screen writing environment and alternative background and font colors.
Beside the default RTF (Rich Text Format), you can save the file as RTFD, TXT, DOC, XML, and also Webarchive. There’s another option of exporting the document as HTML, PDF, RTF and DOC.
The Jer is in the Hut
There’s Jabba and there’s pizza, but this time the Hut belongs to Jer. If you’re into writing more than other common word processor users, maybe you should take a look at Jer’s Novel Writer. This ‘free for personal use’ application – with a little ‘donating reminder’ every now and then – will help any creative writer organize their disorganized ideas.
The app will give you a two-pane display – the main writing area and a small area on the left where you could put some tiny notes related to your writing. There’s also a collapsible right sidebar drawer with three tabs to make your writing life even easier: Outline, Database, and Notes.
The how-tos of Jer’s Novel Writer can be a little confusing for first time users, but there’s a quick tutorial to help you which will start the first time this application is opened. Be sure to check it out.
CopyWrite your Copies
The third candidate is CopyWrite. This one is the first creative writing application I stumbled upon and – to me – the easiest to use. This one could be used and downloaded for free but with limitations: five documents per project maximum, and without an exporting capability.
The two-pane mail-style display will give any Mac users a familiar environment to work with. The upper pane will show you the documents of your project (this could be chapters, character data, description of the settings, plots, anything) and below is the content of your selected document.
Just like Jer’s Novel Writer, CopyWrite also has a collapsible right sidebar Notes drawer with two tabs: Document and Project. Any note you write in the “˜Document’ tab will only relate specifically to one document, hence it will only open while that particular document is selected; while any note you write in the “˜Project’ tab can be opened no matter what document is being selected.
Scribbling with Scrivener
Finally, writers with a big writing project – academic writing included – could freely try Scrivener for 30 days. Tiny-project writers (doing one page reports, really short stories, that kind of things), please step back slow and easy. I’m not saying that this app could not be used to write shorties, but looking at the features Scrivener has, it’s like killing an ant with a bazooka.
Best Writing App For Mac
There’s too much to describe about Scrivener’s features in the writing space I have here, but for a quick introduction, you might as well watch the introduction video. One feature that I like the most is the Corkboard where you could put every bit of your writing and (re)arrange them as needed.
I’ve barely scratched the surface here. To find out the details about each app, please try them out yourself. If you want to have a longer list of writing tools available to find out which one suits you best – because every writer has their own unique working style – “Literature and Latte” has already made a list available here. Or search on MakeUseOf in our Mac section or use our search engine.
Now, the only thing left to do is start writing those best sellers. Good luck!
Screenshots
Description
Ulysses is your one-stop writing environment for Mac, iPhone and iPad. Its pleasant, focused writing experience, combined with effective document management, seamless sync, and flexible export, make Ulysses the first choice for writers of all kinds.
++ Apple Design Award Winner 2016 ++ Best of App Store 2015 ++ Best of App Store 2013 ++
“The app is amazing. An absolute delight to use. Well done.”
– David Hewson, Bestselling Author (The Killing)
### A Text Production Powerhouse
Ulysses’ markup-based, distraction-free editor lets you focus on your most important task: Write, edit, and write some more. Formatting is kept for later, so you can completely immerse yourself in the text. Ulysses’ uniquely streamlined toolset covers the entire writing process, and its clean and simple interface will boost your productivity. From first to final draft, from prologue to closing chapter – Ulysses keeps you in the flow, so you can get stuff done.
### All Your Texts, All the Time
Everything you’ll ever write is stored in Ulysses’ unified library. You can manage projects of all kinds and sizes, be it novels, diaries or study notes – they are always saved, and automatically in sync. And since Ulysses offers feature parity across macOS and iOS, it doesn’t matter where you are or when inspiration hits: All its tools, and all your texts, are always at your fingertips.
### Create eBooks, DOCX, PDFs and HTML
Ulysses’ export is flexible enough to cover any writer’s needs: Transform your text into beautiful PDFs, Word documents or eBooks. Or export HTML code, ready to be used anywhere on the web. You can even choose between a variety of pre-made formatting styles for all kinds of purposes, or create your own and share it with other users.
### Publish to WordPress, Ghost & Medium
Do you blog? Ulysses’ offers best-in-class publishing to WordPress, Ghost, and Medium. You can post to WordPress and Ghost from right within the app – complete with images, tags, categories etc. Publishing to Medium works just as easy, and all three offer a built-in preview to proof-read before submission.
### Pricing
Ulysses requires a subscription. We offer monthly and yearly subscription plans. They include a fully functional 14-day trial, so you can test Ulysses (including export and sync). There’s also a special discount for students.
All plans unlock the app on Mac, iPhone and iPad, and feature full iCloud synchronization.
### Questions
Please visit ulysses.app for more information. You can also reach us via help@ulysses.app or on Twitter @ulyssesapp – we’re happily awaiting your feedback!
Terms of Use: https://ulysses.app/app-terms-of-service
Privacy Policy: https://ulysses.app/app-privacy-policy
What’s New
- The completion of tags and categories when publishing to WordPress or Ghost works again.
- Fixed an occasional crash on launch when running OS X 10.11.
- Fixed a crash when importing styles and themes on OS X 10.11.
- Fixed a possible crash while editing keywords.
If you're happy with the app, please rate it, or even leave a review. This is a great way to support us indie developers. Thanks a lot!
The note taking app I’ve been waiting for!!
Finally — the right mix of hierarchal-based note taking, lightweight design, and ease of use. As a past user of Scrivener, Evernote, and OneNote, I have long craved something in between — a simple, bare-bones note taking app that would allow me to stash notes in a hierarchy, so I could easily keep related pieces of research and meeting notes together. OneNote and Evernote come close, but recent releases have changed the ease by which you can create and collapse hierachies, that aspect of their features/design feels at times limited or heavy-handed. Scrivener was a great go-to for awhile because of the support for sliding things around in hierarchy, but honestly I find Ulysses to be simpler and easier to manage the hierarchy. I can see this has some powerful markup/structured authoring features as well, but I’m not currently using those. Just basic note-taking, each project in its own folder (group), and it’s really great for just that!!
Sync issues — like most “shoebox” apps
Editing my previous review (bumping it up to four stars from three)...
A couple of weeks ago, I slammed Ulysses for recent iCloud sync issues. Then I did some more research and learned it’s not alone in that regard. Indeed, many if not most so-called “shoebox” or central-library apps — like, to name two very familiar examples, Apple’s own Notes and Photos apps — are prone to them, too. It seems to be the nature of the beast. If you value having all your work together in the same library at all times without having to futz around with individual files and folders, the risks that go with the “shoebox” method are part of the price of admission. So I withdraw that previous complaint.
Indeed, if it were not for that method of file storage and the occasional (but sometimes scary) glitches that accompany it, I’d give Ulysses five stars. For most of my work, I prefer the advantages of MultiMarkdown and a more transparent file structure than what Ulysses offers. That said, I still recommend it highly; it’s a great app and a marvelous writing environment in which you’ll spend many hours working happily and productively.
The Only Writing App I Use
The most clear way I can express Ulysses is this: it's an indispensable tool that I use every day.
I'm currently writing a book, and frequently write articles, podcast episodes, emails, and other web and businessy things. Everything I write starts in Ulysses.
Reasons I love it:
* Cloud syncing to iCloud is flawless
* Fantastic export options
* The minimal interfact has plenty of hidden features, and the Markdown rendering is fantastic
* It exports directly to WP and Medium (though I've moved my site to Squarespace, which can translate both Markdown and Rich Text exports from Ulysses without any additional formatting)
* The organization of text snippets, notes, chapters, etc. is first class
* Dark mode...
There are a few features I wish they'd add though. Here's my short list of cons:
* Tagging could be better implemented, preferably with hashtags within documents
* Linking between docs with an @ mention would be quite useful
* Some mechanism for collaboration would be fantastic
* Export to Google Docs for editing and collaboration help please; exporting rich text into Google Docs renders a poorly formatted text, which may be a limitation of Google Docs, but come on Ulysses team...ubiquity, ya know?
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Overall I absolutely love this app and highly recommend it. If you're serious about writing, and especially if you frequently publish to email or the web, this is your app. Look no further.
Developer Response,
Thank you for leaving a review! We are glad to hear you like our app. I've +1'd all the requests for missing features in your name, so please consider your vote counted. I can't make any promises when or whether we will implement these features, but your feedback is highly appreciated. If you have any further suggestions or questions in general, please don't hesitate to contact us directly via help@ulysses.app –Alex
Information
OS X 10.11.0 or later, 64-bit processor
English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish
Family Sharing
With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.