Just the Best
I have seen and used a great many writing apps. Ulysses is just the best there is, and there is no comparison. It's simple, direct, and uncluttered user intervace makes it a joy to use when writing - writing anything. I use it for papers, poetry, essays, journals and everything else because the filing system is intuitive and easy. Perhaps the best feature is the inter-device operability, which simply means I can dictate an essay while walking the dog and then return to edit.
As an English teacher for many years, I would recommend this app to all my students. In fact, I would suggest that secondary schools and colleges adopt the program as a writing foundation. The apps ability to post finished work to social media accounts makes writing real.
As an English teacher for many years, I would recommend this app to all my students. In fact, I would suggest that secondary schools and colleges adopt the program as a writing foundation. The apps ability to post finished work to social media accounts makes writing real.
Show less
Saved My Lost Book!
I'm a fiction author, and I've had Ulysses since 2015. In 2017, my MacBook crashed in a single day, and I was devestated, and totally sick with worry, wondering if my book files were safe. I knew I had the iCloud feature of Ulysses turned on, but I had never put it to the test. Sure enough, after laptop repairs and a new hard drive, I loaded up Ulysses, and all of my files filtered back in, one by one. I was SO relieved.
Ulysses is amazing. I love so many of the features, I love having access to everything from my phone or iPad when I'm on the go, and I love the password protect, in case one of my devices gets stolen. All in all, an amazing app, and I'm so greatful for everything you guys do! Keep up the good work!
Ulysses is amazing. I love so many of the features, I love having access to everything from my phone or iPad when I'm on the go, and I love the password protect, in case one of my devices gets stolen. All in all, an amazing app, and I'm so greatful for everything you guys do! Keep up the good work!
Show less
Generally excellent, a few niggles
Dont get me wrong, this is the best app of its type I have tried. There are a few niggles worth raising though. First, Mac syncing isnt always seamless or quick, have needed to shut down and restart my Mac several x to get it to sync (but it does so each time). Second my genre is poetry and export for poetry is really very poor. Poetry requires careful formatting, and the formats provided do not work, and diving into recoding the parameters is a nightmare for a writer/non-coder. I am always reformatting by hand in word, and cannot rely on the export function to work well. Finally, I would say that (again for poetry specifically), the editing functions are not quite precise enough, there are a lot that are irrelevant, and others which I would really welcome. Overall, a version for my genre would be fantastic, but I recognize its not a huge % of their customer base. Last word though, their customer support is excellent. Strongly recommend.
Show less
Incredibly Useful and Worth Every Penny
Ulysses is software made with love and care for the people who use this wonderful writing tool. The clean and thoughtful interface, the seamless integration between my devices, discovering new useful features—these are some of the things that make this product great. It's an essential tool and one that I recommend wholeheartedly. A must-have for anyone who writes, especially professionally. And no, it is not perfect but to be honest, any shortcomings are mere nit-picks and too time-consuming to even find and catalogue in this review. This app makes my job easier and is worth every penny. If you're thinking about getting it, just do it, you will not regret it.
Show less
sounds great
Sounds great, would really like to try the things the turtorial asks you to do, but the version you get is read only, unless you are willing to give them a credit card for a free 7 day trial.
Why, when I am trying to even figure out how to even use such a thing, would I want to give oout my credit card to do othe things the turtorial is asking me to do to otry and see if I can even understand how to use, or will be able to omake use of such a thing?
When I am ready and comfortable that I would like to try the program free for seven days to see if it actually does what you say it does, efficiently, without slowing my computer, freezing up, closing unexpectedly, then, I will give you my credit card number.
Why on earth would you provide a tutorial that tells you to try things out, then not allow the program to allow the user to try that out? Surely, if you can create such a program, you can allow the tutorial to allow more than read only under special circumstances.
Don't want anyone to be able to create a single thing? Fine, I don't care, do not want t scam the system, just do not want too give ouot payment info until I am sure it is a program I even want to try.
Fix this.
Why, when I am trying to even figure out how to even use such a thing, would I want to give oout my credit card to do othe things the turtorial is asking me to do to otry and see if I can even understand how to use, or will be able to omake use of such a thing?
When I am ready and comfortable that I would like to try the program free for seven days to see if it actually does what you say it does, efficiently, without slowing my computer, freezing up, closing unexpectedly, then, I will give you my credit card number.
Why on earth would you provide a tutorial that tells you to try things out, then not allow the program to allow the user to try that out? Surely, if you can create such a program, you can allow the tutorial to allow more than read only under special circumstances.
Don't want anyone to be able to create a single thing? Fine, I don't care, do not want t scam the system, just do not want too give ouot payment info until I am sure it is a program I even want to try.
Fix this.
Show less
Fantastic writing app - game changer
This is a fantastic writing app. I've only been using it for a couple of weeks but it's transformed my writing habbits and turbo charged my output.
It's a game changer. I used to use Scrivener but often got bogged down in trivial formatting issues. Ulysses wipes all that away and virtually eliminates distractions.
It's become a core part of my creativity and productivity suite.
It's a game changer. I used to use Scrivener but often got bogged down in trivial formatting issues. Ulysses wipes all that away and virtually eliminates distractions.
It's become a core part of my creativity and productivity suite.
Show less
Response from developer
Thank you for your kind review. We're glad to hear Ulysses has become the writing tool of your choice. Thanks for supporting us with your subscription! —Alex
Perfect
I have been looking for this software for twenty five years. I didn't know what it is called. I had started to wonder if it even existed. It does. It's perfect. If what you want is to write, with everything that you need to enable you, and nothing to obstruct you, Ulysses is it
Response from developer
Thank you for your kind review. We're glad to hear Ulysses has become the writing tool of your choice. Thanks for supporting us with your subscription! —Alex
If a writing app were a flow state...
I have been using Ulysses for a couple of years now. I never normally write reviews, but in this case the app is so outstanding that I will make an exception.
Before I downloaded Ulysses, I had never really understood the point of anything other than a standard word processor. You are using the same brain and fingers to get your thoughts out of your mind and onto the screen, right? So what difference will using a dedicated app make?
Wrong. How or why Ulysses works, I am unable to explain. All I can describe is the experience of using it. I have to do a lot of time-sensitive writing for my work, and this app enables me to get c. 3,000 words down in a little over 2 hours. Exporting into Word and fine-tuning the formatting then functions as a de facto proofreading stage. Completing a task feels more like exiting a kind of flow state than meeting a tight deadline.
Not only that, but the quality of my written work has increased noticeably as well. Copying and pasting from other sources (including PDFs) is a breeze. Spelling and grammatical errors have become a rarity.
Then there is the functionality. It syncs seamlessly over my devices. I have not once had to worry about losing my work since transferring to Ulysses. It crashes perhaps once per year, and even then, only when I try to run too many apps for my 2018 computer.
In short, I cannot recommend this app enough.
Before I downloaded Ulysses, I had never really understood the point of anything other than a standard word processor. You are using the same brain and fingers to get your thoughts out of your mind and onto the screen, right? So what difference will using a dedicated app make?
Wrong. How or why Ulysses works, I am unable to explain. All I can describe is the experience of using it. I have to do a lot of time-sensitive writing for my work, and this app enables me to get c. 3,000 words down in a little over 2 hours. Exporting into Word and fine-tuning the formatting then functions as a de facto proofreading stage. Completing a task feels more like exiting a kind of flow state than meeting a tight deadline.
Not only that, but the quality of my written work has increased noticeably as well. Copying and pasting from other sources (including PDFs) is a breeze. Spelling and grammatical errors have become a rarity.
Then there is the functionality. It syncs seamlessly over my devices. I have not once had to worry about losing my work since transferring to Ulysses. It crashes perhaps once per year, and even then, only when I try to run too many apps for my 2018 computer.
In short, I cannot recommend this app enough.
Show less
Response from developer
Thank you for your kind review. We're glad to hear Ulysses has become the writing tool of your choice. Thanks for sharing this! —Alex
Still the best
I think I'm up to 10 years of using Ulysses as my writing tool of choice. I've tinkered with the alternatives, of course, but every time I return to Ulysses with relief. It has all the tools I need, none that I don't need. Its writing environment is the next-best-thing to paper - minimal friction between the mess in my head and (mostly) coherent words. Looking forward to using Ulysses for the next decade and more.
Show less
Response from developer
Thank you for your kind review. We're glad to hear Ulysses has become the writing tool of your choice. Thanks for sharing this! —Alex
Solid Performance, Still Room For Improvement
Ulysses is best for user who don't need formating or full word processing, and will use a secondary piece of software to configure their writing. I am a student, a researcher and a designer.
Ulysses is the most beautiful interface offered and will keep you excited about writing digitally with many of the themes you can create. They do not have a way to import your own icons or create your own themes, you can only modify the icons or themes with they have on offer with the parameters they provide.
The team has done a tremendous job of creating streamlined tools that group functionality ubiquitously compared to competing applications like Scrivener. I find the outlining portion to be one of the most functional tools because it allows you to use Markdown to index your writing. It's very useful in research and note-taking in particular.
One issue is that the application doesn't know what its purpose is regarding pipeline. The plain text editor provides great control over export functions and more function over inputs--most notably markdown. It doesn't offer many basic formatting functions, so students who require formatting will struggle (unless they can program) to use this application if they are looking for an all-in-one solution.
Ulysses is the most beautiful interface offered and will keep you excited about writing digitally with many of the themes you can create. They do not have a way to import your own icons or create your own themes, you can only modify the icons or themes with they have on offer with the parameters they provide.
The team has done a tremendous job of creating streamlined tools that group functionality ubiquitously compared to competing applications like Scrivener. I find the outlining portion to be one of the most functional tools because it allows you to use Markdown to index your writing. It's very useful in research and note-taking in particular.
One issue is that the application doesn't know what its purpose is regarding pipeline. The plain text editor provides great control over export functions and more function over inputs--most notably markdown. It doesn't offer many basic formatting functions, so students who require formatting will struggle (unless they can program) to use this application if they are looking for an all-in-one solution.
Show less
