iA Writer

Category

Description of App

“iA Writer creates a clean, simple and distraction-free writing environment for when you really need to focus on your words.” ***** The New York Times

“iA Writer is an example of how powerful simplicity and accessibility can be.” ***** The Guardian

“iA Writer is all about textual production—writing this phrase, this sentence, this word at this moment.” ***** WIRED

4 x Best of App Store Winner

# The Simple Writing App

iA Writer removes distractions. Giving you a calm, focused, writing space, so you can express yourself clearly.

# Focus

Focus Mode dims everything but the current sentence or paragraph, helping you stay in the flow.

# Start

Don’t worry about the format. First, write in plain text. Then preview in HTML.

# Organize

Search, sort, and quickly swap between documents from different clouds.

# Customize

When you tap and hold a key in the command keyboard, you’re given the chance to choose your own layout. Rearrange your keys, or pick new ones from the extensive list.

# Search

You can open documents and launch frequent actions in no time with the new Quick Search. It lives in the keyboard so it’s always close at hand.

# Work

iA Writer includes an inverted light-on-dark-mode, perfect for working day and night.

# Clean

Spot superfluous adjectives, weak verbs, repetitive nouns, false conjunctions and clean your text of the usual rumble.

# Shape

Customize your templates and export to WordPress or Medium, HTML, Microsoft Word (.docx), or PDF.

# 100% Text

Embed links, pictures, tables and text files in plain text and see them in preview.

# Get in Touch

- Visit ia.net/writer for more information

- Visit ia.net/writer/support for support and feedback

- Let us know what you think on Twitter @iAWriter

Version

5.3

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

No

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

13.1.2

Accessibility Comments

As far as I can see the app is entirely accessible except for a few quirks. Buttons that appear in the library also appear in the editor but can't be activated from the latter. Other than that, everything works.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver, but the interface could be easier to navigate and use.

Other Comments

I'm surprised nobody submitted this app yet. I mean this thing's been out for years. Oh well, now you'll better know what to expect as a blind person before you buy.

Developer's Twitter Username

@iAWriter

Options

Comments

By Tangela on Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 22:35

hi, I was wondering whether someone might give me an idea what to expect from the focus mode of this app? Does it work with VoiceOver, and if so, how?

By Justin Philips on Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 22:35

I, too, wonder about it. Also, anybody tried 1Writer? IAwriter and 1Writer have been on my radar.K

By Zoe Victoria on Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 22:35

In reply to by Justin Philips

I'm not seeing a difference with focus mode and voiceover, it seems the same either way. I can't tell the difference sitewise either because my vision is so crappy. I reccommend using a braille display, that kind of is the same thing in a way.

By Tangela on Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 22:35

depending on the area in the focus view, that is very much not the same thing. Not to mention not everyone has access to a braille display, or wishes to use one.

By Tangela on Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 22:35

I'm writing an in depth review of this app and wondering whether people are also seeing frequent voiceOver crashes? This is happening both when writing in braille screen input and while using the standard touch screen keyboard. @

By Voracious P. Brain on Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 22:35

They built the Windows version without any thought to accessibility, so I would need to use LibreOffice or NotePad++ or the like for when shifting from IPad to laptop. Are files in the library plain text .md files that are visible and openable from ICloud Drive, or are they locked in a library archive the way Ulysses does? I don't want to have to export, since I'll be doing it a whole lot, and it seems like the edit-in-place function may also be a bit cumbersome, but somebody can comment on that.
Do bold, italics, etc. work with the VO text navigation custom commands that were recently added? I've read that IA Writer renders them rather than displaying the *markdown* codes for them.
[Update: I plunked down my lunch money on IA Writer to answer my own questions. The library is visible and accessible on ICloudDrive for Windows and other apps. Only issue is that, like VoiceDream Writer and most of these text editors, the files are encoded as UTF-8 with no byte-order mark (BOM). That's great, but Windows uses a different code page by default, which will often make things like curly quotes and international characters turn into garbage when opening one of these files. The latest version of Notepad will open it fine, and Word will prompt for the proper encoding , with UTF-8 as the default, but both will add a BOM when saving the file. That's fine too, but IA Writer will just strip those bytes out again when opening the file. Not a big deal. NotePad++ leaves the file alone and works fine. Jarte needs the file translated to UTF-8 BOM before it can open it, as does LibreOffice. So that's the scoop on moving files between IA Writer and Windows, FWIW.
As for focus mode, I'm with Zoe: exactly the same text remains on the screen regardless of what I set focus mode to, so I don't know what's up with that.
As for my question about bold and italic, turns out that's just on the Preview screen, which is a function I don't find useful because VoiceOver will treat bold and italic text, along with anything else wrapped in a tag, as a separate item, which breaks up the reading of sentences. I haven't ever missed not using the markdown preview, though, since having the formatting codes right there in the text is what I like about markdown in the first place. The only thing I don't believe is accessible in the app is the search function, which is a shame because it has the capacity to parse regexpressions--a very powerful way to search. But the VO search works. The reason to use this app over something slightly cheaper is the ability to export to formatted pdfs and html, including selecting some text and copying that to the clipboard as html, which ByWord also does. IA Writer allows custom templates for the output, like Scriviner and Ulysses and PanDoc. Just like those other options, though, it's a fairly complex endeavor to write CSS and JavaScript if you want to go beyond the basic options on the app's template UI. If someone didn't need to publish to the Web or PDFs a lot, I sort of think VoiceDream Writer is a more pleasant experience overall.]

By Tangela on Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 22:35

I am still noticing a lot of crashes, especially with documents of over 1000 words. Are other people seeing this as well?

I will say I like the preview function of this app very much for getting a sense of how my text reads "by paragraph.

Tangela,
I'll see if I can make it crash, since I'm in the midst of trying to give it a workout. But I need you to tell me more about when it happens: the minute you open a long file? When typing rapidly? When tapping into or out of the edit field? After X amount of time?

By Tangela on Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 22:35

Often when switching out of braille screen input to the text field, when typing on the touchscreen, or sometimes when touching the text field.

By Tangela on Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 22:35

Apologies, it is not the app that is crashing, but VoiceOver.

By Tangela on Thursday, November 21, 2019 - 22:35

Hi. I'm wondering whether folders are a planned feature of this app. I'd love to be able to organize different folders for fiction, blogs, work writing, etc.

You can already add folders, as well as put folders within folders. Just go into edit mode and an 'add folder' button should appear.