- Mar 03, 2020 Price: Free trial for 30 days, $45 license fee Runs on: Mac, iOS, and Window Best for: Novelists and other long-form writers who want an elaborate, organized interface You’d be hard-pressed to find a list of writing apps that omits Scrivener, and for good reason: it manages to be both streamlined and incredibly sophisticated at the same time. With Scrivener, you can choose a template for.
- View in the Mac App Store View in the iOS App Store. While Scrivener is excellent for collecting all of your ideas, drafts and notes in one place, there is a lot going on there.
Jun 04, 2020 MuPDF is a super lightweight, free PDF reader for Windows and Android. Immediately after opening the mupdf.exe file, you'll be prompted to choose a PDF before you even see the program interface. Once you have, there are literally no options to be seen but instead the full program window is dedicated to showing the PDF. LibreOffice is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft Office, and that means its word processing app, Writer, has many of the power features of Word without the accompanying price tag.
Apple’s Mac App Store has a highlighted app section called “Apps for Writers” which includes a number of good alternative word processing apps called Manuscript Makers, as well as Distraction-Free apps with minimalist interfaces, apps for Journaling & Blogging and apps for saving Notes & Clippings. Let me recommend what I consider the best choice for each of the four categories.
Manuscript Makers
Apple highlights five apps they recommend for this category, including their very own Pages ($19.99). However, I also recommend either Scrivenor ($44.99) or Mellel ($28.99). The other two apps are Movie Draft SE ($29.99) and Ulysses ($29.99).
Scrivener
One of our editors, Tobias Buckell swears by Scrivener, calling it the “gold standard for writing anything larger than 4,000 words.” He also said that he “adores it. It’s the #1 go to app on my machine.” At nearly $45 it is the most expensive app in Apple’s list of recommendations. However, it seems like a case of “You get what you pay for!” It has overwhelmingly good reviews in the app store.
More than a word processor, Scrivenor helps you organize your work and also offers a distraction free interface, even though it didn’t make that list in Apple’s recommendations (see below).
The Corkboard feature helps you gather all of your reference material and ideas so that you can organize your thoughts and create your masterpiece. My college English Composition professor taught me to research and write this way using 3×5 cards. No longer needed with Scrivener.
Mellel
If $45 seems a bit rich, maybe $28 fits your budget better? One of my pastor friends swears by this app because of its handling of Hebrew, thanks to its Israeli developers. Designed for working on long documents like a book or dissertation, it too includes powerful organization functions. For desktop publishers, you will like the layout features and control.
Distraction-Free Writing
I’m not a fan of distraction-free writing. But a few of our writers here at GottaBeMobile and our sister site Notebooks.com use them. Scrivener stands out as the app of choice, as I said above. Strangely, Apple didn’t include it in this category of recommended apps.
The two highest rated apps are Byword ($9.99) and OmmWriter Dana II ($4.99), with WriteRoom ($24.99) the most expensive of these apps just behind them. They also included iA Writer ($9.99) and Writer ($2.99) the cheapest of the apps.
OmmWriter II Dana II
When you judge an app you look at the features and screenshots and then read the reviews. If the first two look good, but the reviews wildly vary as to the quality of an app, it makes it hard to want to download and check it out. Of these apps, two stand out in this third evaluation category – reviews. OmmWriter II Dana II has 249 ratings with 224 of them being 5 star and 13 4 star ratings. That means that of the 249 users only 12 users think it rates 3 stars or below. That led me to download it first.
Aside from the very annoying music or environmental sounds in the background and the ridiculous noises you get from each keystroke, the app is beautiful. You can also change the backgrounds. I was puzzled as to why the developer included these distractions in a distraction free app is puzzling, but once you turn them off and pick a more subdued background, the app measures up to the user reviews.
I like the concept of this app and, if I preferred distraction free writing, I could see how this app would benefit me. I write mostly shorter form content like blog posts, letters and outlined notes for my preaching. But for a long document that doesn’t require a lot of formatting, this style of app would be perfect. I do wish it had one paragraph formatting option – the ability to either indent automatically or to have a small amount of space between paragraphs. You have to do this manually, which annoys me.
Scrivenor and Pages
My recommendation would be to go with Scrivenor if you need a powerful writing and formatting tool but also want an option for distraction-free writing. If you upgraded to OS X Lion, then use Pages if you don’t want to spend as much. You can use Pages in a full screen mode in Lion (see below) but still have access to the formatting tools by mousing to the top of the screen.
Journaling & Blogging
In this category, one app stands out for bloggers – Mars Edit ($39.99). However, the other four apps do something totally different. They let you record your thoughts in a digital personal diary, something I do not do a lot.
Mars Edit
For bloggers who want to write offline, format offline and then upload to their blog, Mars Edit offers the only really good solution on a Mac that I’ve found until Microsoft ports Windows Live Writer. Don’t hold your breath. At $39.99 Mars Edit is expensive, but also clearly the best. It contains a powerful image insertion tool. You can set up the options for your blog to post as a draft or publish write away. It also handles categories and tags quite nicely. If you post to multiple blogs, Mars Edit will let you set them all up and switch easily between them.
I wish that the formatting options were available on a toolbar instead of one drop down menu. You can use keyboard shortcuts for many of them, but not all.
Day One
The Interface of Day One ($9.99) and the recommendations in the app store give this app the nod. The Menu Bar quick entry tool encourages you to write a journal entry quickly and easily. The reminder system also nudges you to journal each day. You can quickly find your entries based on the calendar view or the list view, each of which shows entries according to the date.
The app syncs with DropBox so that you can then access entries on the iOS app ($1.99) as well. You can set a password to keep your thoughts private. The simple interface offers a few formatting tools, but not so many that you get distracted.
Book Writer Free App
If you want to listen to what you wrote, select it, right click and choose either Speech or Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track. That last feature might be worth the price alone if you want to create spoken word documents quickly for someone who likes to listen to your writing or someone who cannot read for some reason.
Mac Apps For Writers Free Online
Notes & Clippings
Of the four apps here, Evernote has to be the most useful for one reason – more people, apps and services use it than any other note taking, gathering organizing or snipping app available on any platform. The other two note taking/clipping apps are Yojimbo ($38.99) and Together ($39.99). I can’t recommend them due to the cost and lack of ubiquity that Evernote provides.
Evernote
Free Apps For Mac Computer
With Evernote you can do a few things:
- clip info from various sources like the Internet or from email
- organize info in folders and with tags
- sync info between multiple devices including smartphones, tablets, and computers
- take notes, record audio and snap images
I primarily use Evernote as a shoebox for my information and as a notebook. I save things like tax receipts in one folder. I keep meeting notes from my job in another. I tag these so that I can quickly find them. When I take a trip I save things like hotel receipts and itinerary information to a folder made for that trip. When I have a special project, I create a new folder and save notes to that folder that I need to remember.
I use iPad apps that allow me to make meeting notes with my stylus and import them into Evernote, either by sending them via email or in some cases directly from the apps.
One of my most used apps, Bible Reader from Olive Tree, incorporates Evernote by saving all of the margin notes I take on verses in the Bible to an Evernote folder.
The web interface, iPad app, Android app and computer app all work together to sync all of my notes. I paid for the premium membership ($5/month or $45/year) which gives me all the bandwidth I need (up to 1GB/month). However, even as a heavy user, I seldom go past the allotted bandwidth given to users of the free edition.
Below you can learn how a dairy farmer uses Evernote to help him organize his business.
MindNode Pro
If you like to use mind maps to organize thoughts and brain storm ideas, MindNode Pro ($19.99) might help you become more productive. Mind mapping software lets you visually organize thoughts. For example, if you make presentations, you can set up a mind map with your speech. Put main ideas with supporting ideas connected to the main idea in a visual patter. Create a flow chart of the speech with each point in order and with an introduction and conclusion and all of the supporting material in each of those.
Writers might create a mind map to organize a story or article. MindNode Pro lets you put together mind maps with visual tools. It has plenty of tools for quickly and easily creating charts and organizing your mind maps.
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Mac is considered as the most powerful personal computer available in the current times and if you are a professional writer and have a Mac machine, then you should consider using the below apps.
The new generation of writers no longer need pen and paper. Yes, the brain needs to function the same way but the way writers used to put them on plate has changed completely. These free Mac apps for writers will let a writer unleash his / her thoughts as these apps are more than a digital substitute to pen and paper.
All the free apps for Mac for writers are more than text editors. Each app has something different and useful to offer. Check out the below list and see which one would be beneficial to you.
5 Best Free Mac Apps For Writers
Bean
Yes, there isn’t a text editor simpler than Text Edit, but sometimes the simpler stuff does not meet all your needs. So, Bean comes to your rescue. It is a basic text editor with all the features that you missed on Text Edit and this makes it a nice app to write on Mac.
Celtx
Yes, it does serve as a text editor. In addition to that, it offers features which let you use it to write screenplays, develop characters, prepare sketches, scripts, storyboards, create reports for the team. Its like a complete software help for a book writer or a movie / show director.
Dark Room
Honestly speaking, I have loved this app. There are number of writers who love doing their job on type writers. If you are not lucky enough to have one, then you can use this app namely, Dark Room which lets you type and nothing else. If you are one of those who get distracted with the advanced features on the text editor, then try out this app which meant for just and just typing.
Jer’s Novel Writer
Yes, it a basic text editor with one interesting feature which makes it an Unique one. It has a two pane interface, where one serves to your typing needs and on the other one, you can jot down your notes.
LaTeX
Well, if you are looking for help while writing a scientific paper or a book on mathematics or any other subject, then you would love using this app as it would not restrict you from using scientific symbols, mathematical equations, formula and much more.
There are many more free Mac apps meant for writers
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