iA Writer App Reviews

Writer Pro is, first and foremost, a writing app. To that end it suceeds. It has a lot of nice features, but some noteworthy pitfalls as well. The first thing youll notice is the interface. This is a seriously nice looking app, with a dark iOS 7 interface, and a white text field while looking at the files. Theres also a highlight color, which changes depending on the apps state. Speaking of state, thats one of the main draws of the app. They are, in order, Note, Write, Edit, and Read. You can switch between them at will, and the font and highlight color changes with them. This is meant to keep you on task. One of the main features is syntax highlighting, which is delightful when it works, but occasionally falls flat. Ive had "apps" show up as a verb, for instance. Additionally, Markdown, the format youre intended to work with, doesnt highlight in the app, which is a bit frustrating. Writer Pro is the best writing app on the store, and fits nicely with my workflow, but $20 is a bit steep for what it offers now. It really is a writing tool for the hardcore, but at this price, only the hardcore.

Its attractive but it seems like the "seamless" iCloud syncing isnt really there yet. I can sync between my phone and iPad, but there doesnt seem to be any way to sync between iOS and my Mac. What gives?

This is a novel approach to writing that may not work for many people. The most common gripes people have are that the differences between sections ie Note, Write, Read are somewhat nominal. There are a number of things iA should do to make this workable for more people. Personally I would love to see more gestures, a dark mode, Dropbox backup (iCloud is good but lets add reliability and extensibility), and third party integration with stuff like Drafts, as well as markdown support and better export. I ask for all this because its $20 Overall I find its a fresh approach and I look forward to where they go from here.

This is a great tool if you just want to focus on all the aspects of your writing. Only thing missing that I have to complain about is the lack of live Markdown preview. Add that and its 5 stars for me. As of right now, its a great app.

PROS: looks nice, some cool functions and some very good & innovative ideas about workflow. CONS: Irritatingly over-simplified interface. 1) Spent 30 minutes just trying to figure out how to remove the sample documents that come with the app. As theres no "Help" feature in the app, I had to look in iTunes for a link to the developer website, and then search a knowledge base where 90% of the answers relate to complete different products. But once I found the answer, it was easy to use. 2) Font size is locked to iPad general text size setting. On an iPad Mini, I found that I needed to change this outside the Writer before use, then change back for all other apps. This really needs an in-app font size control. Conclusion: Im giving this 4 stars based on its potential, rather than my actual user experience, which suffered from my choice of platform - the iPad Mini screen has proved an awkward compromise.for many other good apps.

No idea where all the hate is coming from. I just dont grok it. This app is the best app for serious writers. I love all the functionality and the UI. Its beautiful and seamless. I love that you can write and export to word and then shove it in Dropbox. Yes you can do this Pages, but its more kludgey.

Oh my god, I just paid $20 to upgrade IA Writer to Writer Pro and gave up Dropbox integration! This is not "better," IA. I cant use this $20 app AT ALL.

I always find myself becoming distracted while writing, but with the app, I find its cut down on that. It doesnt show the time, which is a huge benefit for me. I dislike how I cant customize the punctuation in the bar above the keyboard. Also, I dislike how there are different fonts for each mode of writing. It seems less organized that way. All in all, a great app.

I have been searching for a relatively easy and simple word processor that I could use on my iPad. I found much more, this app lets me work on multiple poems and stories during various edits, at the same time. I think this app is brilliant.

Focus writing, clean design, iCloud sync and more make this my favourite.

This app is so well designed it makes me want to write. As it stands right now its worth the sale price of $4.99 not $19.99. Use the original app till either it goes on sale or they redesign the modes so they dont just change colour/font.

"New version is in the works" has been for some time. still works if you scroll after every line. Frustrating but functional.

I use Writer Pro on my Mac in full screen mode for nearly all my writing— from emails to blog posts, and from research notes to lengthy report. Its the perfect writing tool, and having it available on my iPhone for quickly editing, jotting notes and ideas or pasting relevant URLs, means that I have a seamless experience from on the go to at my desk.

Syntax control is amazing but not really worth the extra money over the basic version of this app. Which ever you choose, though will satisfy greatly.

The idea of different modes for different stages of writing is an interesting idea. Handling the change in modes through a change in file extension is not a terribly good idea. If my file is a text file written with markdown then I would prefer for the file extension to remain .md so other apps that handle markdown recognize it as such. Moving between modes does not feel particularly intuitive either. There doesn’t appear to be much logic to the workflow, and a lot of weird behaviours to the way things are work. For example, if you are in write mode and you select preview from the view button you get what you would see in read mode, but with a little x in the bottom left. When I tried to tap on the little x in the bottom left my document closed all together. I appeared as if there was no way to get out of preview mode without closing the document. What had actually happened was that I had accidentally dragged slightly when I tried to tap the x and when you are at the top of a document you can drag down to close the document. This behaviour, though possibly convenient at times, seems like it would be problematic in more situations than it would be useful, as in the example given. Further, if the behaviour is used in the preview mode it should close the preview and return you to the write view that you were in, not take you back to the documents list. The whole app feels similar. There are a lot of features that feel like they could have been implemented much more simply and consistently given a bit more thought. Mode switching could be better, or quite possibly is just a bad idea no matter how you do it. The only mode you really need in a markdown app is a preview/reading mode. Everything else you can do with the app could be needed at any stage of writing. If the only point of the different modes is to track the state of your document and keep your files organized, then using the file extension to do that is not a good solution. The most disappointing thing is that the standard version of iA Writer is not getting as much attention now that this version has been released. I would rather see an update to the standard version with some of the features in this version integrated in without the awkward workflow.

I downloaded this specially for the ability for the App to sync with other devices. Works pretty well in that regard. Not perfect, but better than others Ive seen.

I used the original ia Writer app to write my first novel (which is still in draft form, but thats not relevant,) and I decided to give this update a try. I havent really used the syntax control aspect very much but the UI updates on iPhone and iPad are both big improvements and I appreciate the separation between note taking, writing, and editing.

This is a nice, minimalist word processing app, as they claim. Seems nice, but its actually not functioning at all in its current version and Ive been waiting for an update for some time now. Cant at this point recommend it until its updated.

Contre-intuitif et « english only ». WTF

I just spent $12 on it and its already changed the titles of my documents, doesnt allow me to open certain documents, and doesnt allow me to rename documents or folders (after having renamed them itself...).