Ulysses: Writing App 4+

An Elegant Alternative to Scrivener

I use Ulysses for writing ficiton. I was a Scrivener user for years. It's a powerful program that reminds me in some ways of Photoshop - incredibly powerful yet complex in ways I often never get around to using. The #1 reason I choose to write in Ulysses is the ability to sync and access my Ulysses projects from all my Mac devices - iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro. This is where Scrivener falls apart - their iPad app is a different program, and syncing across multiple devices requires third party programs and platforms ... and then it still doesn't work that great. I can write anywhere, anytime. My other favorite feature is being able to write in Markdown -- so with two keyboard clicks, I can leave inline notes to myself within the text that do not export to the finished document and don't exist in a sidebar. The simplicity of the design in relationship to the variety of function is great. Two feature requests - I still use Pacemaker for project wordcount setting and goal keeping. I'd love it if Ulysses' in app goal setting features were so robust. I also wish the color coding on keywords was more saturated/ high contrast, and that colors could be assigned to elements in the Library.

Nearly Perfect Writing Tool

As a novelist and short story writer, I'm enjoying using Ulysses on both my Mac and my iPad. It's biggest strength against any competitors is the seamless iCloud syncing. Other apps are too finicky or have very limited syncing options. With Ulyssees, the writing I do on my Mac just appears on my iPad and vice-versa. I can write and edit virtually anywhere. The otheer feature I think is a strength is that all of your writing is in one container, which you can organize however you want. I like this over having separate files for each project and wondering where that story you worked on three years ago is on your disk. Features that would get it a fifth star would be better planning tools (like a spreadsheet view that showed part of the first line of a sheet, or the first comment, keywords for each sheet, the target word count, and the current word count, with rows that can be rearranged by dragging), an ability to add meta data to a group and include it in the export (for example, author name, word count, story title, and the like for a manuscript suitable for submission to a publisher), and more formatting options in the export styles.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for leaving a review. We are happy to hear you enjoy working with Ulysses. I've +1'd the feature requests for a planning mode as well as for storing and exporting sheet meta data in your name, so please consider your vote counted. Regarding the latter, would you mind sharing your specific use case for this? You can do so by contacting us directly via help@ulysses.app Also, we'd be interested what formatting options you are missing. I assume you are already aware of the fact that export is fully customizable. If not, here are our tutorials explaining how you can adjust existing style sheets or even create your very own: ulysses.app/styles  Should you need any assistance, please don't hesitate to get in touch. —Andrea