Prompts for Writing

Category

Description of App

No more writer's block, just open the app to write and follow the suggestions.

Prompts uses a creative, intelligent, patent-pending AI to help you write!

Whenever you sit down to write, Prompts suggests a few words to get you started. And as you write, if you ever get stuck, Prompts is there to give you advice on how to keep going.

The app even reminds you to write a little every day, and shows you progress on your writing goals as you go.

"Getting stuck with writer's block is a huge pain. Prompts provides inspiration." - Mashable

More than 300,000 unique writing starting lines and creative writing prompts to inspire you and give you ideas for creative writing. Whether it's poetry writing, journal writing, storytelling, or anything else! All using a patented technology.

Prompts is great for students in the classroom, amateur writers, or professionals who want to free write more often.

** Part of the Apple Education program, so teachers and schools get a discount when buying this app! **

• Prompts gets you writing, even when you don't know where to start
• More than 300,000 unique starting lines and creative prompts like that of Brian Eno
• Set a custom, daily writing goal and use the app to hit it
• Backup and sync your writing to iCloud
• View custom writing stats like how often you write, how long you write, and more
• Set daily writing reminders to keep yourself motivated
• Categorize your writing with custom, color-coded tags
• Auto-save so you never lose a word of writing
• Write in either landscape or portrait view, on your iPhone or iPad
• Adjustable font size and styling
• Share your writing by email, Twitter, or Facebook, and more

Why use Prompts for creativity writing?

• Prompts is full of unique writing prompts. Feeling stuck or creatively blocked? Press the lightning bolt at any time and you'll be presented with a prompt to help inspire you.

• Even if you don't know where to start writing, just open the app and press the plus button to get a random and totally unique idea in the form of a starting line. There are hundreds of completely original ideas to start from.

• On the bus, in the break room, anywhere you are, Prompts helps you become a better writer and build a writing habit with just a few minutes a day.

• Share your writing by email, Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, or Day One

Write full screen and swipe down to bring the menu back into view. It's a great way to write without distractions, using as much of the screen as possible!

Set daily reminders to keep your writing habits healthy, bookmark the projects you're working on, and even monitor your writing stats to see which days and times you're at your best. Adjust font style and size to match your writing style, whatever style that is for you.

Whether you want to write more just for fun or if you write for a profession, you are going to love how Prompts helps you write.

Prompts is perfect for writers, bloggers, journalists, educators and students (college or kids), copywriters, marketers, or anyone who just likes to write.

Version

1.8.3

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

Yes

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

11.4.1

Accessibility Comments

Most of the app’s layout is easily navigable via voiceover. Save for a slight mislabeling of buttons, you can get around the app very easily, but there is one function of the app that cannot be utilized, and it’s very important. I’ll explain this in the other comments field below, but for general accessibility purposes, this app is pretty good if you need a note taking app that can provide you with daily writing reminders, as well as some interesting starting lines. The inability to use this one function is my primary reason for giving it the rating I have chosen, however.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads most page elements.

Button Labeling

Most buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

There are some accessibility issues with this app, but it can still be used if you are willing to tolerate these issues and learn how to work around them.

Other Comments

First, let me start off by highlighting the app’s positive notes. As I’ve stated before, the app is easily navigable using voiceover, to my great surprise. The button labeling shouldn’t be difficult at all to get used to, because I know most of us have seen apps with similar button labeling schemes. The buttons are mostly easy to figure out, so using this app, for the most part, shouldn’t give you any trouble. Basically, it’s a great way to take notes, and you can set a time for a daily writing reminder to keep yourself in a good habit for writing every day. If you are stuck on figuring out what to write, you can enable their starting line feature, which will place a starting line that you can easily read in the text field provided, then take off from there. The writing stats are easily readable, and you are able to adjust the settings, as well as set a daily writing goal. For those who enjoy writing, this is a great way to jot down your thoughts, and if you’re extremely picky, like me, you can use this app in conjunction with apps like Pushto, which will push your text from a computer to the Phone’s clipboard. This way, you can paste everything you’ve typed on a computer keyboard right into the app, which makes for an excellent writing experience.

There are two main problems I have with this app, and they are big ones. First, developer response is lacking, so this is why I’m posting here to hopefully generate enough interest to encourage them to make changes to the app that will benefit us voiceover users. When my research led me to this app, people were saying mostly good things about it. In the past, there was an update that would crash the app, and when a further update fixed those issues, it unfortunately deleted all the hard work of some very unhappy customers, and even though current users shouldn’t be experiencing problems, I did notice that past users weren’t too thrilled when they emailed support and got no reply. I still wanted to give the app a try, because I have been dealing with writers block for a while now lately, and I thought this app might get the wheels in motion again. Before I made the purchase, however, I did what I always do. I check Applevis first, and if the ap isn’t there, I contact the developers to ask if their app supports voiceover, then begin the dialogue of how beneficial it would be to implement it if voiceover is not supported. Usually, most developers will get back to me, but I got no reply with this one. Still, there were the glowing reviews about the app that made something in me want to try it, and I’m glad I did.

I’m not regretting the purchase of this app one bit, but one reason I’m glad I bought it is to point out one very huge area where voiceover support is lacking in this app, and I certainly hope this can be fixed. If you remember in the description, a very unique feature of this app is the lightning bolt feature, that will give you that burst of inspiration when you are stuck and can’t think of something to write. The button is labeled, and you can activate it, but you can’t read the information provided as a result of pressing this button. From what I understand, the text pops up somewhere on the screen so people can read it, but then goes away to leave room for your project, and that’s just what I’ve discovered while testing. Whether it remains on the screen or not, I’m unsure. Pressing the bolt button doesn’t pop up an alert box containing the text so that it’s readable by voiceover, nor does it present a new element on the screen that I can navigate to. Voiceover does not read the lightning bolt text out loud, so if you’re stuck and need some inspiration, you won’t find any if you can’t see it, sadly.

This was a huge disappointment for me, because that was the main reason I purchased the app. I have many note taking apps on my device, and even Scrivener on my Mac, so writing and saving projects could have easily been done without this app, but it was the prompts, those little lightning bolts, that I really could have benefitted from, and so could other voiceover users if this functionality was available. What I would like to see is a way for us to be able to read the text when we need it, such as a pop-up alert box, or even an element that we can navigate to on the screen. Ideally, it would be nice to have voiceover read the prompt out loud, but if that can’t be done, the aforementioned options will be most helpful. I hope that bringing this app to others who are interested in using it will generate enough activity to encourage the developer to accommodate voiceover users who may want to use a great app with even greater potential!

Developer's Twitter Username

@getprompts

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Comments

By Amir on Sunday, September 23, 2018 - 21:16

Hi Melissa,

First and foremost, special thanks are in order for having published such a comprehensive and useful review! I'm sure preparing it has been time-consuming, but as someone who also tends to read and write a great deal, I enjoyed each and every word of your post. The "Other Comments" section of your post should be picked up by guinness world record officials!
Back to the app, I am going to contact the developer to see if they can fix the issue you mentioned regarding the text popup feature. If fixed, this will be the best writing-oriented app out there overall.

Keep up the good work!