And while mine may certainly differ from yours, here are my picks for the best ones: Best: Ulysses III The best cross-platform apps know what to leave behind when switching from a 21-inch-screen to a 9.7-inch one, and they do it without trampling over any of our individual writing styles and preferences. Simply put, the essence of a great text editor is more than the sum of its fonts or keyboard bars. Also, a pure writing space is nice, but menus and sidebars aren’t an immediate turnoff. A good use of fonts is important, but a wide selection isn’t necessary-for example, Vesper doesn’t let you stray very far from Ideal Sans, but it absolutely would be on this list if a Mac component were available. It’s hard to say definitively what makes a good cross-platform writing app, but I instantly know when I’ve found one. When I come across a new writing app in either the iOS or Mac App Store, the first thing I do is check the other to see if a companion is available.

Having a digital notepad within constant arm’s reach is one thing, but staying in a writing groove is quite another-the feature and font familiarity across my Mac and iOS devices keeps my eyes and concentration from wandering. My writing sessions are no longer tethered to a desk, but it’s not just the freedom I enjoy-the cross-platform congruity has become just as important to my productivity, letting me literally pick up where I left off without losing any momentum my train of thought may have.īut even more than that, the tailored interfaces help maintain my focus no matter the size of the screen I’m working on. From iAWriter to Pages and even Microsoft Word, the streamlining of the word processor has created a world of smart, lightweight interfaces built to adapt to whatever device we happen to be using.Īs someone constantly switching between my Mac, iPad, and iPhone, the seamless experience has become an indispensable part of my workflow. And as formatting bars and font menus became obsolete on our iPhones and iPads, a funny thing happened: They became less important on our Macs, too. The result left us with minimal, distraction-free environments where the only things that matter are our words. In an effort to maximize every pixel of screen real estate, developers rethought what was necessary for productivity and efficiency on our mobile devices, from the size of the canvas to the way we interact with buttons, bars and ribbons. Not only has iOS given us the flexibility to quickly jot down our thoughts wherever and whenever they strike, it’s fundamentally flipped our expectations of the humble text editor. IOS devices have completely changed the way we write.

Good application for mac to text