Ulysses – The Ultimate Writing App App Reviews

Hands down, the best distraction free writing app.

I have been agonizing over what writing tool I should use for my novel - I’ve explored them all, including Scrivener and Storyist! I have to admit, I’ve been intrigued by Ulysses in the past but turned off a bit because I had no kowledge of Markdown. Well, I finally decided to take the plunge and give it a go - probably one of the best things I ever did for my writing career! Scrivener may be good, but I got tired of trying to constantly figure out its features and it has too steep a learning curve. But Ulysses, WOW, it was love at first try … it is simple, elegant AND highly intuitive to use. No need to worry if you are not familiar with Markdown, it is a cinch to learn and makes Ulysses far more versatile for multiplatform publishing. To top it all off - Ulysses for Mac OS X works seemlessly with the iOS version … and the iOS version is amazing to use, whether on the iPad or the iPhone. I love the fact it constantly syncs your work in iCloud and it allows for an incredibly smooth transition from my laptop to my iphone. Truly a high quality writing tool and one well worth trying out if you have an opportunity to do so, you will not regret it!

I’ve used a wide range of word processors and text processors, and Ulysses is the best I’ve come across for writing. What kept me away from Ulysses for some years was that it keeps documents in a single large database (tucked away in the Library folder). That proprietary approach—“do everything in this one program”—strips away many of the advantages of plain text files. Instead of being easily editable in a variety of applications, they are locked into a proprietary format. However, Ulysses can easily handle loose text files in their own folder using its “External Folders” feature. Working this way, you lose a few minor features (for example, the ability to set a typing target for a document) but Ulysses works wonderfully as a text editor for creative writing—better than anything else I’ve used. Some of the features I particularly liked: * Long documents can be divided and split into shorter ones with a single keystroke. * If the split is made at a heading (preceded with a hash symbol), the heading becomes the title of the new document. Change the heading in the document and the filename instantly changes to match. * Automatically created documents can be saved with either a text or markdown extension (this is set by folder), and can be rearranged into an arbitrary order. * Files can be “glued” so they stay together and scroll as a document, even though they remain separate files on the disk. They can also be printed as a group, or viewed and scrolled through as if they were a single multipage document. * Groups of files can be merged into a single document (creating a single text file from many) * Changes made to the files themselves (adding a new folder, moving files around) are immediately reflected in the Ulysses “Library” listing. Using these well-conceived features, it is easy to throw ideas down on the page, rearrange them, extending rough ideas into outlines, outlines into chapters, moving sections around. Formatting is all done with Markdown, which produces well structured documents and offers many options for exporting files. Few of us write methodically from start to finish, and the ability to easily rearrange sections of a document and easily view them by file title is a huge boon as a document gets longer. This mostly addresses Ulysses’ ability to organize documents. As a text processing app, it works well. The interface is clean and logical, and headings with hash marks are outdented, which makes the document structure easy to see. Boldfacing, headings and italics are all done using Markdown codes (or from a menu), which is simple to use.

Thanks guys. This is great!

Since I am a great Markdown fan and everything I write I do in Markdown, Ulysses becoming an advanced Markdown editor really sparked my interest. All in all it makes a great Markdown editor, but for it to get 5 stars this is what I am missing: * The Markdown Ulysses is creating is sometimes not correct. It tends to adds a space at the end of a bolded word (within the bolding tags), but leaves no space afterwards. Other Markdown editors dont recognise that. * The way markdown links are handled is not very typing friendly. If I want to edit the link afterwards, I have to "mouse" around too much. Id rather be able to edit the text for the link completely as text. * Theres no preview/rendering. All other Markdown editors I know have a rendered preview, some even let you edit and create your own CSS for previewing * I can add Dropbox in the left sidebar as another source, but thats just as far as Dropbox support goes… Would be nice to be able to simply make a folder on Dropbox the main source But it really is one of the best Markdown editors around. Great job!

このアプリの魅力は、3ペインのパネル、設定可能なテーマによるカラーシンタックス表示。 それと、シートという概念（シート内での分割、他シートとの結合、Time Machineみたく、バージョンの復元）。このあたりだと思います。 日本語での入力、つまり JIS Kana Mode ではバグといいますか、サポートしてないので、 俗にいう Auto-Pairing は完全には対応しきれてないです。 やっぱ海外のアプリはそのほとんどが 2byte Character（全角文字） に関して、サポートしきれてないのが現状ですね。 細かく説明すると、強調や、強い強調を示すem, strongなどです。 たとえば、*あいうえお* と入力したいとします。 ※このレビューではとりあえず、カーソルの位置を”%|"で表すことにします。 1. “Eisu” キーを押して、”*”（アスタリスク）を入力します。 2. “Kana” キーを押して、"あいうえお” と入力します。 3. *いうえお%|* ← 結果 4. “return” キーで *いうえお*%| ”return” キーで、カーソルが見事に外に出てくれますが、残念ながら 2byte Character ではこんな感じです。 細かくいうと ”あ” の次、”い” を入力した時点で “あ” が消えます。 ただし、”Kana" キーのダブルプッシュでこの問題は回避できます。 これはどういうことか？と言いますと、 1. “Eisu” キーを押して、”*”（アスタリスク）を入力します。 2. “aiueo” と入力します。 3. *aiueo%|* 4. “Kana” キーを2回押し、”return” キー で確定 5. *あいうえお%|* ← 結果 6. “return” キーで *あいうえお*%| だいたいわかっていただけますかね？ 他、外部ソースでのMarkedアプリとの連携にバグ？があります。 プレビューはできても、Live Previewになりません。（リアルタイムプレビューっていうのかな？） これを回避する方法は、その外部ファイルを直接、Markedで1度開くとOKです。 その後はLive Preview（リアルタイムプレビューっていうのかな？）になります。 いちいちバージョンを保存しなくても、リロードした状態になってます。 この連携は少しだけタイムラグがあります。 他は… (img)と入力すると、ポップアップ入力、[Link text]でポップアップ入力という シンタックスなんですが、 これは他の入力補助アプリ、TEとかKMの存在があるので、使う人によりけりかな？と思います。 そういうこと考えると、エディタの部類ではちょっとお高いと思います。 iOS DAEDALUS から書いたものは、Ulysses IIIで開くと、一番上のライン、段落は ## hogehoge となってます。

From crash to crash ;)

Well worth the money.

This app is a pleasure to use. The interface is beautiful and helps me focus on the text. The app stores all my writing in one place and syncs across your devices, which is very useful. Exporting is easy and the documents created in Ulysses look really nice. This app shines especially in smaller writing projects - blog posts, short stories, short research papers etc. One feature that I miss is the focus mode highlighting only the sentence you are working on, a’la iA writer. Apart from that - it’s a gem.

Feels light and has distraction-free mode, but main point is that it does not ignore the problem of organize your texts. For example, I also own iA Writer, its a great product by all means, but for every single text you write, and I believe Writer just does not scale to large amount of different texts/notes/etc

Just an update of former the Ulysses application now they sell it at a strong price. Covetousness is a mortal sin, isn’t so?

ulysses + daedalus = weekly crash

Target for sheets is exactly what I need! Now Ulysses is almost perfect! What could make it even more perfect is the ability to track character and place with preformatted sheets and a place where to put them all together :) However… 5 stars for you!

Incredibly it is not capable of attach images on files stored on "external drives”.. and all your folders on your HD are "external". If you want to have attachmnet in your text you need to save it on iCloud or in a special “on my mac" folder... This limitation is a nonsense.

Now I think it is the best writing app I’ve ever used going all the way back to IBM Displaywriter, Wordstar. Word, Framework, MS Word, Lotus Word Pro, Scrivener, Nissus Writer. German engineering is tough to beat. When some good s/w engineers get serious about designing an application, they can do an amazing job of boiling things down to the essentials. Hidden power behind a drop-dead simple interface. Compare it to a Japanese car with dozens of buttons to access its functions v.s. a German care wirth a few buttons that you need most but lesser used functions hidden behind multiple clicks. It’s there but you gotta look for it. Seriously, I stuck with Pages even through the dumb-down veerison 5 because it gave me seamless integration between mobile and desktop. Ulysses does that now with the latest iOS version. I’ve been watching the Markdown movement for several years. Now that I’ve used it in Ulysses, experienced the simplicity, I’m hooked. I just bought the app after trying the Demo. I don’t think there is a better or more future-proof app for writing.

Its ok if you dont support GFM (GitHub Flavor Markdown), but YOU CANT MESS IT UP!!! When I use code blocks that are wrapped in ```, Ulysses will just change that to ```. UGH. I know you are for writters, not coders, so I dont expect you to display that with code syntax highlighting, but at least give me an option in preferences to not alter files to match your unique format. Markdown is all about an open format; dont be proprietary in your approach.

You don’t need to be a writer for this app to be great. I use it to keep notes as I used to use Evernote. It is an incredible app. There is nothing else out there like it. I love using markdown in my notes, the search works great, and there are all kinds of settings to tweak under the hood if you like that sort of thing. I don’t write many reviews, but this is so good, I had to take the time. Awesome job!

Very happy with this app. I’m writing extremely long chapters and this is helping me keep it together by allowing easy shifting of sections of documents for reordering, archiving, versioning, and simple Markdown for headers when I export. Very pleased!!!! It’s powerful but stays out of the way. Love the built-in backup feature.

Ulysses is, without question, the best app I’ve ever bought, for any platform. It has a level of thoughtfulness and attention to detail that you just don’t see elsewhere. It’s beautiful, functional, and, frankly, just plain fun to use. It’s allowed me to organize all of my writing, which had previously been scattered among folders, cloud storage providers, and computers. Now everything’s right where I want it, and organized logically. Bottom line: I’m much more productive than I ever was before, and I enjoy writing to a degree I didn’t think possible. The Soulmen have made me a customer for life.

Update: Dropping one star (down to 3). Sync ate my 500+ line document. Synchronization is slow, unpredictable and error prone. This is a great app for my writing needs. Ulysses makes writing a joy. The only reason(s) for 4 Star are - Lack of rendering tables using markdown. If you don’t typically use tables in your text then I cannot think of a reason why you should not get this app. For me I depend a lot on tables for my text and that one feature (or lack there of) makes my table tasks a little painful. I have to render them and use images instead :( - iCloud Sync takes forever to sync documents between my two Macs. Maybe it’s just an isolated issue with my setup.