Favorite writing apps for iPhone

Scrivener works great on the mac, iPhone and iPad.

I only write for my own enjoyment rather than publishing. Scrivener on iOS is set up to let you make a bunch of small sections or chapters in individual files, then compile them into a document in one of the formats they permit. The standard used to be Word/.docx in 12 point Times New Roman, which is doable in the app, but I seem to remember having to download the font from Apple. You also have to use their compiling codes, which weren't too difficult for me to get used to.
It's usable if that's the way you do your writing. I do most of it in text files over on my main computer, then move the pieces over to the app to have it ready to compile and spit out in .docx. Probably the most makeshift way of doing it.
I tried and tried to use and like Pages on iOS, but VO was so wonky with Pages for a while that I just stopped using it. No idea if it's fixed now. If it is, that might be closer to what you're looking for.

I have a problem with the Word and the Pages app on the iPhone:
On Word latest version 2.94.2, VoiceOver not only VoiceOver continually reads "misspelled" after each word, even though it's correct - I think it's caused if I complete or type a different word from the one suggested by autocorrect - but it does not read the lines when I press up or down arrow on a bluetooth keyboard.
On Pages latest version 14.3, instead, not only I have the same "misspelled" VoiceOver announcement, but VoiceOver doesn't tell me whether pressing Command-B or command-I turns on or off bold or italics, so I can't check if the style is applied correctly or not.
For the "misspelled" word bug, on the sentence:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
VoiceOver reports "misspelled" after brown, jumps, and lazy. If I go to misspelled words in the rotor, however, nothing is reported.

Hi, I use the native Notes app.
I write short things like short storrys or things that I need to remember.
I don't woried about writing style because I use it for myself.
I read it with my Braille display that connected to my iPhone.

They ended up writing all of their papers in it for a music degree at SOAS. No idea if it would fit for your use case or if you'd end up liking it, but clearly it works. Also the guy who wrote Personal Power iOS wrote it all in Ulysses, I'm pretty sure. That book is pretty huge.

I've been using a number of iOS word processing apps for some time now on my iPhone 13. One of my favorites is Ulysses. The interface is quite good, and I like the ability to set goals for yourself, such as if you wanted to write something that's 2000 words in length, for example.
I also like Scrivener and Voice Dream Writer. Scrivener is good if you don't want to go the subscription route like Ulysses does, and I like Voice Dream Writer's proofreading capability where you can listen to your document with any of the supported voices.
Drafts is another good app for writing notes, blog posts, etc. The text can be written using Markdown syntax if you want, and then can be dealt with in a variety of ways, such as saving it to your Dropbox folder as a text file, emailed to someone, added as an entry in a supported calendar app, etc. (I strongly recommend subscribing to Drafts Pro as you can also create actions with keyboard shortcuts among other things.)
One editor I've also heard good things about, but haven't tried yet as there isn't a demo or trial version for iOS, is iA Writer, though I may get it someday when I can afford it.
However, two editors I cannot recommend, at least at this time anyway, are Bear and Microsoft Word.
Bear kept constantly refreshing the screen or something the last few times I tried it, making it virtually impossible to navigate with Voiceover.
As for MS Word, the iOS implementation is unreliable in my opinion. While typing text into the app using a Bluetooth keyboard, characters sometimes wouldn't get entered at random after awhile, forcing me to backtrack through my document to correct errors. Another time, the app crashed while I was writing something, and my document was lost. I think I'll just stick with the Windows version.

While I wouldn't exactly call this a word processor app, I like day one journal. This can be used both as an app and on the web. I only use the app, so can't speak about the web experience. The app is very easy to use with Voiceover on the iphone. You can have multiple journals. And my personal favorite feature, you can passcode the app to keep your journals private.

With Ulysses, you are absolutely able to combine smaller chunks into a larger whole. First, you could cut and paste the contents of sheets into each other. Also, you can export sheets as a group. Each major section of my Personal Power book is a sheet in Ulysses. I can rearrange these sheets whenever I wish. Also, I can take a smaller subsection out of one sheet and put it neatly into another with minimal fuss. Another thing they've added is an ability to generate an active table of contents with links going to the various sections. They just implemented that in today's update.
Frankly, I'm happy to pay the subscription to keeps such an excellent app profitable to develop as smartly as the folks behind it are doing. If you don't want to pay a subscription, I would steer you towards Scrivener as being the closest thing to Ulysses without a subscription. Of course, before doing either thing, people should give Pages a chance. It's free, developed by Apple and totally accessible. If VoiceOver had been as advanced as it is now when I tried Pages, I might never have gone looking for anything else. However, these days, Ulysses has won me over. I'd give up a lot before cancelling my subscription.

Basically, it's a full featured word processor on the same level as Microsoft Word. Along with Numbers and Keynote, these apps are Apple's answer to Microsoft Office. They're free to use with no subscription needed. Most people don't use even a quarter of the features found in word processors with this level of complexity. However, they'll more than likely meet or exceed the needs of most work environments. These apps are built for business employees to use but can absolutely be used by average people wanting to produce professionally formatted documents. They also allow collaborative work on documents to e done by many people.
Pages has a lot of templates for different kinds of documents. The idea is that you can simply write into the various parts of a template like filling out a form. This should result in a good looking resume, letter, or whatever kind of thing your writing.
Meanwhile, apps like Ulysses and Scrivener are more focussed on getting the actual writing down. They often use a system called Markdown which lets you use various punctuation symbols to indicate any formatting choices you want. For example, in Ulysses, I use one or more number signs in a row to indicate titles, headings, and subheadings. Other punctuation might indicate bold text. These marks will be used after you've finished writing your document and export it into a format like EPUB, Richtext or Microsoft Word. At that point, the text immediately after those commands will become headings, links, bold text, or whatever else you have specified. This keeps the menus and other elements to a minimum so you focus on your writing.
Another potential advantage of apps like Ulysses and Scrivener is that they especially cater to writers of longer form documents like books or articles with many parts to them. You can easily organize chunks of writing and also keep notes or research material in the same place. I prefer having my notes in a separate app, but others feel quite differently. Scrivener has a kind of binder system which has different sections of a project binder ready for different notes versus the actual document. Ulysses lets you designate sheets within the same group as material sheets so that they aren't exported or counted as part of the document being written when export happens. They also aren't counted towards your writing goal.

I'm primarily a fiction writer and use Scrivener for content creation. I run it on both my Mac and iOS and easily share files between them using Dropbox. That, alone, makes it worth the price, as it turns my phone into my portable writing environment. But if the price is an issue, note you can often get a free copy simply by completing a NaNoWriMo project.

I place each scene in a separate document within the story project. It's easy to toggle between the one scene I'm working with or the entire manuscript. It's also easy to rearrange scenes, which gets around VoiceOver's limitations with selecting large chunks of text. It has a snapshot feature that allows me to access prior versions.

I submit stories to different publication markets who all have different submission requirements. Scrivener's default settings are close to what they want but inevitably require some tweaking. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of Scrivener is the contortions required to specify the header and footer. But once you export to Word format, you can make final adjustments in Word or Google Docs.

I personally feel Scrivener is superior to Word because of past bad experiences I've had with Word and large documents. Scrivener is designed for long form, and I know several writers who have used it for 300k+ word novels.

Scrivener isn't accessible on Windows. This is one of the main reasons I use a Mac.

As for Google Docs, I use it on my Mac to share manuscripts with my critique partners. I have only used basic functionality in Docs on iOS, and it works.

I know you're asking about iOS, but I'll add that I've used both Word and Pages on Mac and I don't recommend either, though I'm sure others might feel differently. It all depends on what you're trying to do with the app and how patient you are when it comes to developing a workflow.

Voiceover is generally bad with long documents altogether and this is why I could never live without a windows machine. I have never had nvda crashing on a 6m characters .txt file opened in notepad while browsing (or scrolling with the keyboard, another issue with VO on the mac, less ios) very quickly.
I have some past experience with writing, nothing big, max length of 80k words. Back then in 2018 or so I was windows through and through. Even then I'd do the innitial draft on notepad to avoid any lag and only then put into word for formatting and or grammar stuff. I don't know much about ios as I do more on mac and windows anyway. Google docs.... is just so much better on windows, I will never get used to it on the mac and @PaulMartz I admire you for using this that often. Iwork has seen an insane level of improvements on sequoia with voiceover though this problem with navigating large document with VO is still there. But I know that VO on ios and mac share a lot of the same codebase, and I find that VO in general struggle with large chunk of text in virtually any app.

So I've been using Google docs for all of my writing, I use notes to keep small ideas when they come to mind, I use google docs on a Ipad and can say that it works a lot better than on a mac based on what I've heard from others. Although I think you should try a sample of some of the apps suggested by others, the main reason I use google docs it's because I had a windows machine at one point, plus I write fiction that I post to websites like Archive of our own and Whatppad, for websites like these, doing my work on docs it's a lot better for me as some of the format they have ends up working better when transfer from google docs.

Yes, there are issues with large documents, like a novel, all in one file and screen readers.
I have used Scrivener to write novel manuscripts with chapters and divisions that would usually be designated with a hash mark in a manuscript. If I remember, the chapters were a sort of folder with a title, and the divisions were the files, unless the chapter had no divisions, like it was all one scene. The whole thing had a template file of sorts that had instructions on how it was supposed to compile, like the font and putting a centered hash mark at the beginning of each division, but not if it was a chapter, and that the title of the folder was the title to compile for the chapter. I had to edit and experiment with this file to get it to spit out the compiled document the way I wanted it. There are instructions, and you can preview the compiled document to check it.
I hope that gives you an idea of working with it. And just to be clear, I do not write to publish, or think my work is up to that standard, just for my own entertainment, and to show to friends.

actually as of early 2024 grammarly is a lot more accessable. Not perfect but they mentioned vo in the changelog so the changes were on purpose

I’m using Ulysses for my daily writing but I also like how iA writer works. It’s more tied to the file system. Ulysses uses a proprietary library, but that enables you to have reorderable sheets. There you don’t have to think about filenames. The most used feature for me is the deep integration of LanguageTool. You don‘t have to pay extra for it and it can be used with keyboard only. In Ulysses I can use any font for my writings, iA forces you to use their own fonts. They are not bad, but I like more condensed fonts to save horizontal space.