iA Writer for Mac and iOS

I’ve been using iA Writer on my iPad for awhile now, and just realized I could get it on my Mac. Apparently, it’s half price right now, so it was totally worth the $4.99 price tag. I’d have paid full-price for this app.

On the iPad, it’s a distraction-free, full-screen writing app with minimal bells an whistles. It’s the same on the Mac. Full-screen, iCloud-sync, “Focus Mode” writing no matter where I am, or what device I’m using.

And it supports Markdown.

I’m no expert at Markdown. I had heard about it before, but until recently, hadn’t taken the time to learn how to write with it. Since learning the basic syntax, its usefulness has become obvious. It doesn’t matter what text editor I’m using (as long as it’s a plain text editor,) I can style a document without hunting for formatting buttons or typing shortcuts.

On the iPad, the combination of iA Writer and Poster (a blogging app,) lets me write a formatted blog post in a distraction-free environment, and send it to my WordPress blog.

This post wasn’t actually meant to be a post at all–I was just testing the app on my MacBook. But I think I’ll send it along anyway. I need to get better about sharing the apps I really, really like.

Have I mentioned Evernote?

(Apologies if this post is wonky… Still learning the whole Markdown thing.)

One more thing I discovered while posting. I could’ve sworn that three days ago I was able to send text directly from iA Writer to Poster on the iPad. For some reason, Poster is missing from the “Open in” list in iA Writer now. I don’t recall either app having an update recently, so I’m not sure why that functionality is now missing. Even without the direct link between the apps, a cut and paste of the Markdown-formatted text will still work.

UPDATE: The direct integration between apps is actually between Drafts and Poster. iA Writer seems to be limited to cut and paste between the two for now. I’ll write about Drafts in a later post.