How to find the best writing software for you? Do you want to write a novel or article? To be a good content creator should you own a computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone, right? Absolutely. We can call them The Modern Writer’s Command Center.
In this article I’ll show you the best apps for writing on Mac OS, I’ll also mention other productivity tools for writers you might need in addition to your creativity powerhouse machines which are going to make your publishing dreams finally coming true.
Google Docs
Best for web-based writing and secure storing of content online.
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Google Docs, in many ways, is a fairly straight forward web-based writing tool with all the features you need to write content online. Similar to MS Word, you get to write content, format it and store it in your personal Google drive for future reference.
The reason why Google Doc is so popular is its ability to save your written content in a secure cloud database. With Google Docs, you can rest assured that your content is safe and impervious to lose and theft.
Apart from that, it is a fairly simple writing tool that enables writers to collaborate with other Google users to edit and post comments on the written content in real-time. Perhaps it’s most appealing, and the seldom-used feature is its ability to write content by using voice rather than traditional typing. Go ahead and give this fascinating feature a try.
Features:
- Use voice to type-in content
- Clear formatting
- Extensive list of fonts
- Suggestion mode
- Tag others in comments
- Bookmark
- Offline mode.
Verdict: Google Docs is a very simple web-based writing tool to use. If you have Google account then there is no harm in using google docs to write and store your content online. Its voice based typing feature is only like the icing on the cake.
Price: Free
Website: Google Docs
Now Novel
Best for novice and aspiring authors with a passion to publish their own book.
Now Novel is a writing tool that caters specifically to fiction writers only. It provides writers with an intuitive writing tool that helps them write a fun, engaging plot for their book. With Now Novel, writers can create compelling characters, map out a story outline, and craft an engaging narrative by working in collaboration with coaches and critiques from the writer community.
Features:
- 400+ free article on improving your craft on writing
- Coached and Free writing courses
- Scene builder to add structure
- Develop ideas and outline in Story dashboard
- Coaching by expert authors and editors
Verdict: Now Novel is an educational app that helps in molding your fiction writing skills. Writers can get coached by expert authors and editors to sharpen their skills as an author. We highly recommend this tool to those who want to learn the intricate details of novel writing.
Price: Billed at the basic plan of $149/year, coaching plan of $799/year, and coaching + plan of $1499/year.
Website: Now Novel
A Soft Murmur
Best for producing ambient sound to focus on writing.
A Soft Murmur is technically not a writing app, but it does help in creating a distraction-free environment, which is needed when embarking on a creative journey. Writing, in particular, is a vocation that requires utmost focus from writers.
A Soft Murmur ensures that by producing an ambient sound changes the mood of your surroundings and allows you to engage more with the process of writing. Mesmerizing sounds of waves, wind, rain, birds, etc. can be used effectively to improve your focus.
Features:
- Fully offline operability
- Mix multiple sounds
- Create your own sound
- Play in the background
- Smooth gapless playback
Verdict: A Soft Murmur is not your traditional writing app. It has nothing to do with writing but does help in creating a mood for effective writing. We highly recommend this app to create an environment that will help you focus more, especially if you are a creative writer.
Price: Free
Website: A Soft Murmur
Microsoft Word
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Who hasn’t heard or tried this writing app for Windows in their lifetime? You have to be living under a rock to not have heard of Microsoft Word. Despite new writing apps in the market, MS Word has maintained its place with constant updates and advanced features pertaining to changing times.
An integral part of Microsoft Office, most users have known no other way to write on Windows except MS Word.
It is very simple to use, allows users with an exhaustive list of features that include convenient formatting pertaining to font size, style and color, easy alignment of pages, convenient bifurcation of content with headers, footers, page, and section breaks, use many clip arts, word art, and colors to make your work stand out, find and replace and a ton of other features that make it a mandatory tool to have for any writer.
Features:
- Basic Grammar and Spelling check
- Formatting and Font adjustments
- Insert an image, table, clip arts, stat, and graphical figures
- Find and Replace the word
- Bifurcate content according to headers, footers, page, and section breaks
- Highlight content
- Align content according to preference.
Verdict: MS Word has been around since what seems like forever. It has taken advantage of the changes in technology to remain relevant and is still the go-to choice as a legendary writing app.
Price: It comes included in the Microsoft Office app, Free trial for 30 days is available. Billed at $99.99/year for a family plan, $69.99/year for the personal plan, and $149.99 for student plan.
Website: MS Word
iA Writer
Best for writers who prefer simplicity in their writing tools.
iA Writer’s minimalistic design and easy to use interface are designed keeping only one salient goal in mind, a tool simply made to write. It also uses the Markdown formatting method that Ulysses employs, however, iA Writer is a much simpler tool to use than Ulysses.
Its major feature includes an upper hand toolbar that facilitates the highlighting of speech like nouns, adverbs, adjectives, etc. However, its purpose is singular, i.e. to offer writers with a tool that provides distraction-free writing experience impervious to clutters.
Features:
- Clean interface
- Markdown formatting
- Dark mode to highlight speech
Verdict: iA Writer is meant for those writers who aren’t technically sound and simply want a tool that will allow them to write without any distractive features according to their own skills. There isn’t much more to the tool.
Price: Free 14 day trial, buy-in $29.99 for Mac, $19.99 for Windows.
Website: iA Writer
Squibler
Best for authors and writers who want to write books with compelling prose, outline, and publish books.
Squibler provides an intuitive writing tool to satiate the creative geniuses of the story-telling world. It perhaps acts best as a productive hack that helps writers of novels and other books to write and produce content faster. Its ‘Note Cards’ feature allows writers to split their display screen, organize their work, and check its progress by creating note cards.
Writers can also store and filter their written material with the help of tags. It provides a convenient drag and drops feature to put elements in their respective places and create a clear-cut narrative structure to your prose. The books you create on Squibler can be easily shared with editors when you are done working on them.
Features:
- Drag and Drop editor
- Content management
- Notecards to track progress
- Tags to store and filter content
Verdict: Squibler is a great creative writing app, which works phenomenally to create and produce content faster for screenplay writers, authors, and other forms of fiction writers. If you have a story to tell, then you might want to use Squibler to help you tell it to the world.
Price: 30-day free trial, then billed at $9.99/month
Website: Squibler
Scrivener
Best for long-form writers and novelists.
None of the lists for the writing app is complete without the mention of Scrivener, which is a widely renowned tool among novelists. Scrivener provides its users with a tool that is both comprehensive and sophisticated in its structure. It allows writers to choose a template that best fits the nature of their written content. Templates for essays, screenplays, or novels are all readily available on the tool.
The left-hand sidebar displays sections like notecards and other elements that can come in handy in your writing. You also get to track the progress of your content while creating material such as front and back matter to personalize your work.
Features:
- Outline and Publish long-form written content
- A wide gallery of templates for writing
- Notecards
- Track progress of content and research
Verdict: Scrivener masquerades as a great writing app that was designed to cater to novelists and other such creators of long-form content. Its affordable price and sophisticated features make it a must-try tool for creative writers.
Price: 30 Days free trial, $45 license fee.
Website: Scrivener
Ulysses
Best for productive formatting of written content.
Ulysses is a standard writing app that has so much in common with Scrivener. It is designed to make the formatting of your work easier. It offers several informative tutorials alongside its pragmatic features.
It uses the ‘Markdown’ approach in the formatting of content, thus helping writers maintain the flow of their prose while writing. It offers all of the standard features you’ve come to expect from tools like this to organize your written content effectively. The one thing that might bother users of this tool is its reluctance to appear outline friendly to its writers.
Features:
- Organize content with Keyword labels
- Intuitive sidebar to display your work
- Split view
- Track progress of content
Verdict: Ulysses is a great app if formatting is the only thing you seek from an app. It is a fairly standard writing app that allows writers with a focused writing experience at a reasonably charged cost.
Price: $4.99/month, $39.99/year
Website: Ulysses
Evernote Web
Best for organizing and creating written content of all sorts.
Evernote is perhaps the best free writing app when it comes to catering to all kinds of multitalented writers. Its interface is home to oodles of creative templates that facilitate the creation of content like essays, novels, and simple classroom note-taking.
All of the templates we have mentioned above are available to writers for free. Apart from the templates, writers get to collaborate on writing projects with other users, chat with them, and even tag their content in specific categories. Its web clipper feature is its most appealing selling point, allowing users to save any excerpt from the web they might come across.
Features:
- Wide gallery of writing templates
- Collaborate with other users
- Chatbox to converse with other users
- Categorize content with tags
- Web clipper to save excerpts from the web
Verdict: Evernote is a great app to save both time and money and caters to all sorts of writers, whether they are bloggers or novelists. We highly recommend you try the tool for its sleek interface and pragmatic features.
Price: Free basic plan, $4.99/month premium plan.
Website: Evernote
Conclusion
When I feel the need to write something, whether it’s just a shopping list or an extended essay, I turn to one of these apps. Most are designed for creative writing, including novels, screenplays, poetry, and more. Some are collaborative tools that can help you develop characters with other writers. Most are available on multiple platforms so you can use them on your smartphone or tablet.