FEATURED APP
Focus on your writing
iA Writer
Laser-focused writing
It happens all too often: we sit down to write but get distracted by other apps and notifications, or even by the menus, options and windows in the app that we write in. iA Writer is different. It provides a writing environment where you can concentrate on your words and forget about everything else.
The idea is that you should get your thoughts on paper, so to speak, before you obsess about how it all looks. iA Writer uses plain text with Markdown formatting for the basics, including bold, italics, headings, lists and links.
But the app’s Focus Mode is where you really get to work. Switch to full-screen view and you get a blank screen with just text, no distractions. Focus Mode can even dim everything but the current paragraph or the current sentence, so you can concentrate on what you’re writing, not on what’s around it.
If you want feedback on your writing, iA Writer’s syntax highlighting colour codes text so you can see how your sentences and paragraphs are constructed. It’s a quick way to tell whether you’re edging closer to Joyce than Hemingway.
Reveal iA Writer’s sidebar for easy access to all of your documents, including those saved to iCloud. (iCloud documents sync automatically with iA Writer for iOS, so you can work on any device.) You never have to leave the app, which also helps with focus.
When you’re done writing and want to share, iA Writer can export to a Word document, HTML, PDF or publish directly to Medium and WordPress blogs. The app’s Preview mode shows how your writing will look when exported; you can even view your text and the preview simultaneously, with the latter updating live as you make changes to the former.
Every writer needs a distraction now and then, but iA Writer gives you power over those distractions – at least on the screen.