Apps Like Scrivener For Mac

Jul 19, 2016  After all, nobody’s building skyscrapers out of sticks. If you’re writing a long manuscript, your tool is Scrivener. Desktop users already know how seamlessly Scrivener binds your inspiration, outlines and writing—but you’re not always at your Mac—and thankfully the iOS app. May 20, 2019  On iOS, there are useful apps like Story Planner that can be flown in from the right side of the screen to give you quick access to character bios or research documents without taking you out of Scrivener. When you’re done, you can simply swipe them away and get back to drafting. Scrivener for Mac 2019 – This app was developed by Literature and Latte Ltd. And updated into the new version at February, 20th 2019. Download Scrivener 3.1.2 for Mac from Apps4MAC.com. 100% Safe and Secure Project management, word processing tool for writers. App is like a slimmed-down version of Scrivener. It has a beautiful interface, awesome distraction-free writing, while also stripping away a lot of the ‘extra’ tool functionality that might get in your way if you usually work on single documents at a time.

If you turn phrases for fun and/or profit, your best option for a Mac writing app depends on what you want to write, and how.

Sure, you could stick with a word processor to pour your thoughts onto the page — but you've got better choices. If you want something a little less stuffy, cluttered, and nine-to-five, or more focused on creative writing, we've found four solid choices that take two very different approaches to helping you express yourself. All are either Essentials or Editors' Choices in the Mac App Store.

Ulysses

The first three apps on this list all take a similar no-frills approach to writing. They sport clean, minimalist interfaces, keep all your writing in a single window, can swap documents between their iOS and Mac versions, and use some variation of the Markdown syntax to handle all text formatting.

Ulysses impressed me most among this crowd for its breadth of features and ease of use. An outstanding series of introductory texts ease you into using Ulysses, one simple step at a time. Their witty writing allows you to learn the program while you're using it.

If you want to track your own productivity, or challenge yourself to meet a certain word count, it's easy to set goals from Ulysses's dashboard. Don't know Markdown XL, Ulysses's native tongue? No worries — a handy cheat sheet of syntax waits behind a button at the top of the program. (Ulysses also supports old faithful keyboard shortcuts for bold, italic, and linked text, if you don't want to type Markdown XL's extra characters.)

Ulysses keeps these two features and a handful of others, including options to export your work to text, ePub, HTML, PDF, or DOCX formats, in pop-over menus that you can tear off and keep onscreen for easy reference.

Ulysses isn't WYSIWYG; you can download themes to change up its color scheme at the Ulysses Style Exchange, but you can't view the effects of your formatting until you preview or export it. The Style Exchange also offers a host of free templates for PDF, HTML, and ePub exports, with different looks, fonts, and styles.

Ulysses comes with built-in iCloud support to hand off documents between its Mac and iOS versions. It can also publish your work directly to your Medium or WordPress site, once you enter your account info. And its subscription model means that your monthly $4.99 fee unlocks the app on both the Mac and iOS.

Ulysses offers a lot of options in a polished, user-friendly package. Unfortunately, it has a good portion of its thunder stolen by…

  • $4.99/month with a 14-day free trial - Download now!

Bear

Nearly everything Ulysses does, Bear does just as well, in an arguably prettier package. Bear's fonts and color scheme, while still clean and stark, go easier on the eyes than Ulysses's utilitarian gray. Its stats panel is much easier to read, though less detailed. And Bear strikes a happy medium between full WYSIWYG formatting and Markdown simplicity by clearly labeling different header tags as you create them, and offering the option to actually show text as bold or italic when properly marked.

I liked Bear's tagging system, which makes it really easy to organize files. Just type in a hashtag anywhere in your document, and Bear will either create a category for it on the fly in its list of documents, or add that document to an existing category. I was also impressed with Bear's ability to share a note to any program you've added to your Mac's Sharing menu, including Facebook, Twitter, and Reminders.

Beyond that, Bear duplicates a lot of Ulysses's virtues, from its overall interface to its friendly help files. And the program's basic version, which packs plenty of power, is absolutely free on both Mac and iOS. However, to match Ulysses's features, you'll need to subscribe to Bear Plus, for $1.49 a month or $14.99 a year. That subscription gets you features like iCloud synching, ePub export, and customizable export themes, all of which Ulysses includes right out of the box.

  • Free to download, $1.99/month or $14.99/year Bear Plus subscription - Download now!

iA Writer

iA Writer is inexpensive -- just a one-time $15 fee -- and it packs a reasonably robust feature set. iCloud sharing and synching with its iOS sibling is built in, as is WordPress and Medium support. Like Bear and Ulysses, iA Writer offers downloadable export templates, and its help files include instructions to make your own with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But for all these virtues, iA Writer still falls short.

Like

Its stark black-and-white interface makes Ulysses look colorful. It feels brusque and utilitarian, not welcoming. On first use, the program dumps you right into its interface with no introduction. Its lean, efficient Help files explain the program well, but after Ulysses and Bear's gentler tutorials, iA Writer's lack of frills can feel jarring.

Scrivener App Review

Word count and other stats are crammed into a tiny menu at the bottom of the window, and you can't set goals for any of those parameters. They're squeezed into the same small space as iA Writer's Format and Syntax menus, which can format text or quickly highlight all the nouns, adverbs, adjectives, or other parts of speech in your document — a nifty feature undercut by lackluster interface design.

Finally, a real-time preview window can show you what your text will look like when it's finished and formatted. But it feels odd to have the same text side by side; if you want to see what text looks like when formatted, why not just have a WYSIWYG editor?

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iA Writer isn't bad on its own merits, but with such impressive competition, it can't help but suffer in comparison.

  • $15 - Download now!

Scrivener

At the opposite end of the spectrum from its spartan rivals, Scrivener is a jumbo-sized Swiss army knife stuffed with a sometimes overwhelming array of fun and useful tools. The other programs in this roundup are undeniably more versatile, lending themselves just as well to note taking, blog posts, journalism, or technical writing as they do to writing fiction. In contrast, Scrivener's built to serve the needs of folks writing novels, short stories, screenplays, and — given its ability to store pictures, cached web pages, and other research material alongside a given text — possibly term papers. For $45, you'll definitely get your money's worth.

Scrivener's somewhat long in the tooth compared to its rivals here, with a dense but coherent interface filled with the kinds of colorful icons that seem to have fallen out of fashion among Mac apps. It arguably needs such a crowd of buttons to display even a fraction of the features stuffed into its every nook and cranny. (My favorite: A ridiculously options-laden name generator for authors in need of inspiration.) Scrivener's user manual, however engagingly written, is 546 pages long. It's not messing around.

Even after years of using Scrivener, I still sometimes find myself hunting through its menus in search of that one command I need. Consistently formatting text files in a given project to anything other than Scrivener's default settings can be a pain, and it keeps its settings for targets and statistics in separate popup windows.

But despite this complexity, Scrivener does a good job of getting out of your way. Scrivener offers an outline mode, and a corkboard mode that displays each of your scenes as virtual notecards on which you can hash out what happens when. But if you just want to start writing without worrying about its bells and whistles, you won't have a problem. Because it's so like the Finder, Scrivener's system for storing scenes in various folders makes sense immediately. And like all the programs mentioned here, Scrivener offers a fullscreen mode that blots out everything but the text you're working on, to avoid distractions.

Scrivener also offers a respectable if occasionally glitchy screenplay mode. It won't replace Final Draft, but if you want to have fun writing a cinematic masterpiece about Dominic Toretto battling Dracula, you'll end up with a decently formatted final product.

Scrivener also shines when it's time to publish your work. Its voluminous list of export formats includes all the usual suspects, plus ePubs, Final Draft screenplay files, and even Kindle books. You can even select only specific chapters or files to compile and export — handy when you've got multiple drafts of a novel in a given file, but only want to create a PDF of the most recent one. However, this versatility has one glaring exception: Scrivener doesn't support iCloud, though it can share documents between its iOS and Mac versions.

  • $45 - Download now!

Which app is best?

If you want a jack-of-all trades writing app with WordPress, Medium, and iCloud support built in, Ulysses is your best bet. If you're not willing to shell out $4.99 a month indefinitely, try the similar Bear first. You may not ever need its advanced features, which would give you a terrific writing app for free.

But if you're serious about creative writing, and you want a stalwart companion to help drag stories out of your brain, Scrivener's your best bet. Its learning curve is steeper, but its powerful features make that climb worthwhile.

Got any favorite apps we haven't mentioned here? Let us know in the comments below.

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Scrivener for MAC: Made for OS X Bigots

First off, I'm going to be right up front with you—I'm a Scrivener for MAC bigot, I'm an affiliate for their software, and even if you don't buy MAC Scrivener via this site, if you're a serious author, go buy it … please. You'll thank yourself later, trust me.

More full disclosure—I regularly maintain a Scrivener Coupon Discount Code post on this site. It contains coupons ranging from 20-25% off of Scrivener and sometimes more.​

For Scrivener's birthday, Literature and Latte even ran a 40% off discount on the retail price of Scrivener, so check that post if you like to save a buck like I do.​

There I said it. Now, let me tell you why, especially if you're a MAC bigot like me, you'll love Scrivener for MAC OS X.

You Will Love Scrivener for MAC

First, the software was designed and tailored for MAC platform users. Scrivener is a native Mac application designed by the Mac-lovers at Literature and Latte and, according to L&L built using Apple’s Cocoa frameworks.

Writers of all kinds, creeds, habits, and quirks use Scrivener. According to L&L, it's used by Novelists, short story writers, screenwriters, playwrights, comedians, lawyers, academics and students alike. The list of ways you could use Scrivener to write are probably endless.

And since it was designed for the MAC platform, the Scrivener MAC version has some sweet features that the Scrivener for Windows version, sadly, is missing​. I know the folks at L&L are working to catch the Windows version up, but that's another post..

This post barely scratches the surface of all of the awesomeness in the MAC version of Scrivener.

Scrivener for MAC is a One-stop Writer's Workbench

Most of us authors are more than just writers. We research, make notes, outline, rearrange and edit text, documents, chapters, sections, and multiple books in a series. Maintaining all of that information, I can tell you first hand, is seriously challenging.

I like to call Scrivener for MAC an author's workbench in a box.

I use Scrivener for MAC OS X to:

  • Gather, store and organize research
  • Outline chapters, sections and multiple books in a non-fiction series
  • Outline, plot, and create the four part story structure for my novels
  • Write uninterrupted in Scrivener for Mac's full-screen writing focus mode
  • Drag and drop documents, scenes, chapters, sections and even entire books to rearrange ideas and events in the binder (Outline section)
  • I even share my Scrivener files with co-authors, editors, and reviewers in Dropbox
  • And so many other indispensable features I can't list them all.

Also, don't forget that you can download to some ready to use templates for your scrivener program which really helps out a lot when getting organized and ready to write.

Scrivener for MAC is Great for Organizing and Research

As both a fiction and non-fiction author, I love having all of my research, notes, and inspiration right next to where I'm writing my book or novel.

From my entire outline, including chapters that I can drag to rearrange in the binder, to storing book cover images, character inspiration images, and research documents in folders outside of published book's folder, the Scrivener for MAC's binder is insanely useful as an organization and brainstorming tool​.

If I want a new chapter, I simply create a new folder. A new scene in a novel, I create a new document. An entire new book in the series is as easy as creating a new top-level folder in the binder.

In fact, I've created a four part story structure template for myself that I simply duplicate in the binder at the beginning of any ​new novel project. That alone saves tons of time.

Scrivener for MAC Makes Writing a Breeze

Let's be honest, you can write in any text editing program. What you can't do with those is skip all of the steps of copying, pasting, editing, and compiling to the many formats that ebook publishers require.

​Inside Scrivener I can write on one scene at a time in Scrivenings mode or I can work on an entire chapter by selecting them on in the binder. In full-screen mode I can write for hours uninterrupted by social media distractions.

And all of that work is already in my self-publishing tool, ready for me to edit, compile and publish it, ready to go.​

Let's be honest, how many of us authors have a foolproof system set up to make sure that we never lose any of our hard written words?

Not many. Even as a 20 year IT veteran, I've been bitten by this one. (Lost my entire laptop—It's another story)

Now, religiously, in Scrivener for MAC I set up my project backups to happen automatically. And in the Scrivener preferences you can set automatic features like:

  • ​Backup on project open
  • Backup on project close
  • Every time you manually save you can force a backup (though this is a little overkill in my ex IT opinion)
  • And now, with the new IOS version, you can back up locally before syncing with your Scrivener IOS devices.
  • You can tell Scrivener where to keep your backups (I recommend another drive outside the one that your Scrivener project file reside on. I've made that mistake—not funny)
  • And you can tell Scrivener how many of the most recent backups to hang onto.

Scrivener for MAC Will Help You Edit Faster

Let me tell you what I used to do before I started using Scrivener for MAC's pretty powerful editing features.

First I would write​ my draft in Scrivener, then I would export it to a Word doc, because that's what most editors were used to editing in. They would make their 'track changes' edits, then I'd go into that doc, accept all the changes and then hand cut-paste all those back over my individual scene documents inside Scrivener.

The horror!

So one day, my writing buddy, Lise, and I decided to require our editors to edit directly inside Scrivener for MAC. Needless to say there was some resistance.​ 'How will we track changes?” was the most common objection.

Well, Scrivener has a thing called snapshots. It works on a document by document basis. That means we can take a snapshot of every one of our documents before an editor edits them.​ And for them to make changes we have them use a revision mode and a color specific to them to edit with. For deleting, we have them format with a strikethrough.

When we get our edits back from the editor, we snapshot the entire directory structure of the book again, and that way we have a before and after document level backup that we can roll back or forward to if something goes wrong.​

Now, editing and reviewing changes is faster than ever and we shave tons of time off of our production schedule.​

Scrivener for MAC is a Self Publisher's Dream

Though the lines are blurring quite a bit, us indie authors are still very much SELF publishers. And what that means is that we have to do the heavy lifting of delivering our manuscripts to the various ebook publishing houses ourselves.

Honestly, I don't know how any indie author does that without Scrivener for MAC. Unless they have Scrivener for Windows.

Now, don't get me wring, compiling in Scrivener for MAC isn't as easy as pushing buttons. However, once you get the hang of it, you can spit out fully packaged ebook, epub, .mobi, .pdf, even .doc files for the various ebook publishing houses.

Scrivener App For Android

Scrivener for MAC is a Show Pony

Here's a small list of some of the awards that Scrivener for MAC has won:

Buy Scrivener for MAC!

Download Scrivener For Mac

If you already went and got one of the Scrivener Coupons on that post, then here's the direct link to purchase the MAC version of Scrivener from Literature and Latte's store.