Ulysses Turns (Version) 20

Ulysses is one of the most flexible apps for composing and managing prose. Bloggers love Ulysses for its Markdown support and ability to upload posts directly to WordPress and Medium. Writers of long-form works appreciate that the app can break chapters and sections into separate documents, corral those into groups, and export everything in multiple formats.

The recently released Ulysses 15 brings a number of powerful new features. Here are a few of our favorites.

While writing, you sometimes want to see a different chapter or page without losing your place. Ulysses’ split view makes this easy.

While viewing a document (Ulysses calls it a “sheet”), choose View > Second Editor (or press Command-Option-3) to split the Ulysses document area in two. Your current sheet is on the left; click any sheet in your Ulysses library to view that on the right.

Pro tip: Hold down Option to scroll through both sheets at the same time. To quickly switch which of the two documents you’re working in, press Command-Option-Left/Right.

Prefer a top/bottom split to left/right? Click the button at the top of the active sheet that looks like two rings, then choose Second Editor on Bottom.

You’ve always been able to apply keywords to a sheet (Edit > Attach > Keywords, or Shift-Command-K). But Ulysses 15 improves keyword searching.

To display only sheets with a specific tag, click the magnifying glass in the toolbar to reveal the search field, then click the tag icon and select a keyword. Select a group to restrict the search to that group.

If you find yourself regularly performing a particular search, create a one-click bookmark for it by setting up a filter view (File > New Filter).

In the new Keyword Manager (Window > Keyword Manager), you can rename and chose a color for any keyword. But one of the most useful features is the ability to merge.

For example, if you decide that you don’t really need both “fiction” and “writing” tags, Command-click them, click the Merge button, and name your new combo.


Group by color
Keyword colors make it easier to find a tagged sheet, but they also have a hidden power: They let you effectively group keywords.

For example, make all your music-related keywords (jazz, pop, music, concert) blue, then just click the blue circle below the search field to display all sheets tagged with those keywords.

Ulysses has long supported macOS Mojave’s Dark Mode feature while you edit, but version 15 brings a bonus: The app’s web preview—which shows what your document will look like when you export it as HTML or to WordPress or Medium—now shows both standard and Dark Mode versions.

While viewing the Preview (File > Preview, or Shift-Commmand-P), click the sunglasses icon in the toolbar to toggle to Dark Mode and see the formatting you’ve applied to your text, images, links, and more in that snazzy late-night look.

When composing a blog post, you can easily drop in an image. But if that image is already online or uploaded to a server, Ulysses 15 makes adding it even easier.

Just type “(img)” and click “URL” in the panel that appears. Paste the image’s URL, add a title and caption, and optionally add custom dimensions by pressing the + button.

Ulysses: Writing App

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