That’s not possible in iA Writer, then again it’s not something you can do in Scrivener or Ulysses either. In Bear Notes, you can create nested tags, allowing you to create a hierarchy, which is pretty cool. ![]() ![]() In this respect, the feature is similar to Bear Notes, but there are a few differences. ![]() In many respects, these behave similarly to keywords in Scrivener and Ulysses, but with one notable exception - tags in iA Writer are embedded within the document text itself. Tags are created by #tagging keywords with the # character. IA Writer 5 introduces the concept of tagging. It’s not the only app that does this, but as far as I can judge, it’s done well in iA Writer. While I don’t personally care for this feature, I certainly appreciate that others do, and it’s a big selling point for the app. You can focus on your current paragraph, sentence or step back to the 1960s with typewriting mode. IA Writer’s key differentiator is its obsession with focus. I also prefer to write in Menlo and screw you iA for thinking your tastes matter more than mine. Even though I’m happy to draft most things in plain text, I still prefer to observe some formatting conventions when I write fiction. While I can accept this for writing non-fiction, the inability to indent lines is disappointing. They look lovely on screen - even on a non-retina display - but if your tastes don’t align with iA’s, or you have a particular theme you like…look elsewhere. iA began life as a type design company, and they are quite proud of their fonts. As for the typography, all you can choose from is the provides Mono, Duo and Quattro. iA Writer Editor SettingsĪs you can see from the settings controls above, all you can do is change text size, typography and the number of characters displayed per line. You still can’t theme the editor to your own tastes as you can in Ulysses. IA Writer still remains incredibly opinionated in matters of design. Still, it’s one up on Ulysses, which doesn’t support this feature at all. Meanwhile, Scrivener 3’s implementation has leap-frogged iA Writer with many more options, including the ability to highlight direct speech, something that’s equally useful to the novelist as hunting down adverbs. Syntax highlighting hasn't changed much since iA 4. Meanwhile, it’s much more useful to keep markdown shortcuts persistent, particularly for those who prefer activating them through the trackpad instead of the keyboard. iA Writer 4’s grammatical syntax toolbar was a waste of horizontal space - and syntax highlighting isn’t something I frequently change, mostly setting it to adverbs and then forgetting it. Splitting these options into separate toolbars makes a lot of sense. Markdown shortcuts are now on the bottom, along with the document statistics. The arrow icon to the right of the drop-down activates the preview - as does a two-finger swipe on the trackpad, which is what I mostly used. They are available from a convenient drop-down box, and then fade away when not used. Syntax and focus controls are now on the top bar. In iA Writer 5, this has changed, and for the better. ![]() iA Writer 5 UI in Dark Mode Tool- and formatting barsīack in iA Writer 4, there was a common toolbar on the bottom of the editor where you could either access markdown shortcuts or configure syntax highlighting. There are refinements both to layout and the general aesthetics of the app. User interfaceīy far the most significant changes - and improvements - are the user interface (UI). As a release it certainly doesn’t lack for shiny new stuff - and, a fresh lick of paint for many of the existing features. Let's find out! What’s newįirstly, let’s look at some of the new features in iA Writer 5. Civic virtue aside, I was also curious to see if the current version addressed my previous niggles. So, not wanting to do them a disservice I decided it was time to review iA Writer 5. Desperately needs an update though as it doesn’t reflect the latest version. When I tweeted that I'd reached more than 1100 views, the developers of iA Writer took notice and called me out stating my original review no longer reflected the current version. My review, which was generally favourable, continues to be one of my most popular posts. It's been about 18 months since I last looked at iA Writer. I'm very impressed, and I make a surprising admission along the way. I return to iA Writer to review version 5, having previously set it aside in favour of Ulysses.
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