# Ellipsus — user reviews > 59 indexed App Store user reviews of Ellipsus by Ellipsus, rated 4.80/5 from 173 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/ellipsus/id6800009917/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/ellipsus/id6800009917.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 151 · 4★ 16 · 3★ 4 · 2★ 1 · 1★ 1 ## Is Ellipsus safe? Ellipsus appears safe based on user ratings. The AppsHunter Safety Score for Ellipsus is 93 out of 100. This assessment is based on 173 user ratings, with an App Store average of 4.8 out of 5. Of 173 App Store ratings, 96.5% point to a safe experience, 2.3% suggest some concerns, and 1.2% point to a risky experience. ## Is Ellipsus legit? Ellipsus appears legitimate, with a few gaps. The AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Ellipsus is 63 out of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data. ## Newest reviews (14 of 59) ### 4/5 — Overall good but needs a few things! *2026-11-10* I was super excited when I saw the email that the iOS app was out as I do almost all of my writing on Ellipsus now and have grown quite comfortable with it on browser! The app itself is nice, but there’s also definitely a few things to be ironed out, which is entirely understandable with such a new app. I don’t find many issues with lag while writing, but trying to exit out of a work or open works larger than 30k does take a few seconds to load vs near instantly on a browser. For a much larger work (96k) it did lag annoyingly long and as many of my next projects will be just as long if not longer, I may just continue to use the browser for them until it gets less laggy. Additionally for lag, anytime you click onto a new screen/popup (side bar, timer button, etc) there’s a small moment of lag. Also please please please add an option to hide your keyboard when you’re done typing!! When I’m editing, especially on my phone, I love to edit a few things as I read through and it gets super annoying to not be able to close the keyboard when I’m done. No regrets on downloading at all and super excited for the app to get a bit smoother! ### 4/5 — Font keeps changing when starting a new paragraph *2026-11-10* Edit: One thing I’ve noticed is that the font when starting a new paragraph keeps changing back to Literata. I keep having to change it back to lunasima I’m gonna come clean, ao3 shutting down temporarily has pushed me to start writing my own fics. But I don’t like to use google docs or Microsoft word with the ai use and the need for a subscription. I’ve really enjoyed Ellipsus, it’s simple to use and understand, I like that we can change colour themes, I like how organised it is without being too complicated. An example being that I’ve tried notion but found it a little less user friendly and a bit hard to learn, whereas Ellipsus had easy to understand folders and even templates that I liked and gave me inspiration. I like that we can change languages easily for spell checking purposes. I can’t wait for chapters to be released. I’m a little disappointed that we can’t insert images greater than 512kb for free users, but I understand the team needs their money to keep the app going. I’m just not as enthusiastic about monthly subscriptions and over $100 AUD is just a bit too expensive for me currently. But hopefully the more popular the app becomes the more subscribers the team can get to support all your work! I’m excited for new features and updates :) ### 4/5 — still in dev *2026-11-08* so obv far from perfect but its great. only nitpick is move the delete account button so its not somewhere so obvious lol ### 4/5 — It’s free, try it for yourself! *2026-11-06* Docked a star off for no Duo optimisation, a few bugs here and there, and syncing issues (usually quickly remedied). But overall quite smooth, and the font options are, compared to most writing apps/software, each very unique and there’s no like 15 fonts that look exactly the same crowding the selection list. There is an inactive Reddit community but a very active discord. Very transparent in what things they’re currently working on and they take user requests seriously, and, most importantly, update pretty frequently. And they have a very firm stance against AI, and NO GENERATIVE AI anywhere in the website and iOS app, which so so nice compared to many other apps out there (I’m looking at you, Google Docs). Please optimize for the Duo! Thank you! ### 4/5 — I love the web version but the app lags a lot *2026-11-06* I really hope this can be fixed! I really like the web version and was thrilled to hear about the app but even now after updating it it still lags A LOT. Even on 700 word document… so on 20k word doc it just freezes 😭😭 ### 4/5 — Pretty Good *2026-11-04* The web version is better but it’s a nice alternative to docs or word. The ui is very pretty and it’s overall nice to use. I do find it can be a bit laggy at times. I more so use on the web but it’s nice to have something connected to the cloud so I can access on mobile devices as well. Still early in its life so hopping some lags and bugs will be ironed out ### 5/5 — Best writing app, hands down *2026-11-03* Nobody does it like the ellipsus team. The app and website are both intuitive and easy to use. Their subscription model is mostly cosmetic/nice to haves that dont make you feel as though you’re missing out if you’re a free user, and you pay the subscription on a to-own basis, where eventually you pay it off and acquire a lifetime subscription. Its the most ethical writing app i’ve seen so far, with their stance being heavily ANTI-AI and Pro-Human, a lot of their ellipsus plus features back up their ideology as well. My one gripe: PLEASE change the look of italicized letters to lean more. Right now they just look fancier but they dont lean, makes it hard to identify italicized words quickly while editing. ### 5/5 — Exactly what I’ve always wished for *2026-11-03* It seemed like every collaborative writing app out there has a drawback I couldn’t deal with, whether it was a steep learning curve, data collection, AI use or just bad UI design. But I’ve been using the Ellipsus website almost since the beginning, and so far, the app is just as well designed!! The interface is lovely and very customizable, and even the paid option is very reasonable. Also, nothing vital is locked behind the paywall - the paid features are bonus options! I cannot recommend this enough!!! ### 5/5 — Best AI free writing service out there *2026-11-03* I’ve been using Ellipsus since the beginning of its days as a site. Having it as an app is amazing! Hands down one of the best writing services I’ve ever used, and perfectly functional without premium. ### 5/5 — My favourite app for writing *2026-11-03* Been using the web version for months now, I first heard about it on tumblr because I was looking into apps/softs that had a strictly anti ai stance, so I created an account, subbed to the newsletter and tried it for myself. What can I say… I’ve been raving about it to friends who write, I encountered a few synch issues at first but haven’t for a while now (I always keep a local copy of my files, just in case). Really it’s one of the best writing apps I’ve tried so far, so much so that as soon as the app became available I installed it on both iphone and ipad. And it’s been working just fine. So really, thank you Ellipsus for all the good work, and for creating such a great app and putting it out there for free. It’s nothing short of heroic these days<3 ### 5/5 — ellipsus my beloved !! *2026-11-03* cutie background themes, love the text colours, veryyy anti ai, great for writers love the draft mode, good organization, easy to share and export! super excited to have the app out :D ### 5/5 — Love love love this app! *2026-11-03* I originally found this through a TikTok during the time it came out that Google Docs was stealing authors works, and ended up using the website bookmarked on to my phone. I’m so glad I can finally have the app itself! It was worth the wait! I love how customizable it is and how organized everything looks. I was taken by surprise at the character sheets and after using one, I felt my character was a lot more fleshed out than normal! Thank you for making this app! Please please please don’t let AI ever touch this app 😭✌🏾 ### 5/5 — Best writing app ever *2026-11-03* I’ve been using Ellipsus for years and it’s the best browser (and now app) writing tool available, completely free to use and totally against AI usage, a refreshing change from the all the other apps that insist in forcing it down our throats. Ellipsus is the best option for any writer, artist and anyone who wants to keep their documents safe and organized. Give it a try, you won’t regret it! ### 4/5 — Almost a 5/5 *2026-11-03* After using Ellipsus for a while (and I mean it, before computer app, before premium, I remember when Dean took over the tiktok page) I have loved it, however there are some features that I feel like need to be added to really expand Ellipsus into an actual solution to docs and word. While I know it is geared more towards fanfiction writers I have also been using it for note taking and doing papers for school. I found that it performs amazingly for most of my school work but the lack of tables and hanging indents makes it impossible to do all of my school work on it. Overall it is wonderful and I would recommend everyone to using it if you are looking to do academic papers you will have to use docs or word. Honestly if it gets those features then this would be a 5/5 stars ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — So buggy it’s kind of unusable unfortunately :( *2026-11-10* Heard great things about this app and decided to give it a try. I use Scrivener on my laptop and will sometimes use Google Docs for writing on my phone or iPad but trying to get away. I’m really trying to give the benefit of the doubt but it just can’t really handle much of the basic tasks on an iPhone. Now partially this is the iPhone itself and how their software works but doesn’t make it any less hard to use. I was excited to use this for my long manuscript but it’s seeming less likely :( - The entire app is super clunky, panels are jumpy and not smooth. The text formatting tab is the one I use most often and is really bad - Hitting the top of the screen does not scroll to the top which one might expect - If you select a bunch of text and you’re unlucky and the iPhone Paste/Select/Select All menu appears you can’t access any of the top panel menus. - I keep hitting the little snippet button instead of the text formatting which is my fault but the icon is very similar. ### 1/5 — It doesn’t work *2026-11-10* Nothing works in the program ### 1/5 — Laggy Mess no matter what I do *2026-11-02* Ellipsus lagging for me is a problem I've had ever since I tried using the ellipsus website for the first time. I always hoped that this issue would be solved with the ios app. So I downloaded this app as soon as I heard and exported my over 40.000 word fic onto it. It still lags. I tried pasting in a text with 10.000 then 3.000 then 2.000 then 1000 words. They all lag. I tried every solution I could find. Here are some of them; I cleared my app cache, I turned off auto correct in the app and on my phone, I dublicated the doc, tried writing offline after synching the doc, restared my phone and a few more things. Nothing worked. It still lags at just 1.000 words. I'm at home with perfectly fine Wi-Fi, I have an iphone 16e, I am currently on iOs version 26.6 and have a total of 147,95 GB of storage left. I just don't know why it lags so much for me. Litearlly everything else on my phone runs smoothly. I really wanted to switch over from google docs. But at this point Ellipsus is straight is unusable for me. ### 2/5 — So much potential *2026-11-03* I am unfortunately a victim of the Ao3 outage, so I decided to download this to help me write new chapters while I wait for it to come back. This app seemed really friendly and user prioritizing which I really loved. I like how simple it advertises itself to be, I absolutely love the customizable themes, and the new organization features (and templates) that I didn’t have over on Google Docs. The app knows it’s appealing to the Ao3 audience too which is great. So why is this a two star? I hate to give a writing tool with so much potential such a low rating, but the app just doesn’t seem to be in working condition right now. It’s very slow, and I can’t paste any of my works from docs over because it freezes any time I try to do so. I would love more than anything to give Ellipsus a high rating, but it’s generally unusable for me. With how active the devs have been I’m sure they’ll fix the lag eventually, and I’ll be waiting until then to give it the better review I want to give it. For now, it’s unusable. ### 3/5 — Help *2026-11-09* I love Ellipsus but please the app needs more fine tuning as it lags!! ### 3/5 — can’t access… 🥶 *2026-11-08* Look, I LOVE this platform. after all of the Google Docs allegations, I switched to this one. at first I had zero hope, but the themes, being able to save into fanfic mode?? it is THE writing platform, omg. so when I heard they were making a app I was super excited!! since I’m Apple it took longer, but I was still excited! I’m aware ellipsus gets laggy after 20k words or so in pages, so I knew it wouldn’t be perfect. but, I download the app and at 100k words, my phone is unable to enter my draft 😔. seems I will have the bookmark still until this is fixed. this is still very new so I understand, but it’s still disappointing! still gets a good rating since it’s ellipsus, but I hope it’s fixed in the future, as I can only access this through website right now. 😔 ### 3/5 — Gonna wait for bugs to be fixed *2026-11-05* I absolutely love the look and layout of the app. Being an iPad user, i have only just discovered this app and have heard many good things however i will not be able to use it until the bugs are fixed, especially when writing in a long document. I will keep it downloaded and wait for the updates, but will be sticking with my old app for now. ### 3/5 — Currently very buggy but things will hopefully improve *2026-11-03* I’ve been wanting to transition off Google Docs forever, and since people have been raving about Ellipsus and they just released an app, I thought I’d give it a shot. It’s… okay. The UI is pretty, but it’s slow and often lags when you click on anything or try to type. Everything is slow to sync or load, and sometimes I have to wait a full minute when opening a doc before I can see or click on anything. There’s no collapsible button for the keyboard, so you need to click into the side menu in order to drop the keyboard down so you can read or edit. And good luck trying to switch docs at all, because the button to click into your documents menu almost never works. You’re better off closing the app entirely and reopening it if you want to work on something else. Honestly, trying to write anything on mobile is extremely difficult as processing is very slow and lags behind, which is annoying for anyone who writes at even just an average pace. Most of the time the insertion point cursor never matches up with where you’re typing. Editing anything on mobile is a complete nightmare, so laggy and unusable. It’s clear they only made this app as an afterthought as the way they set up their entire interface doesn’t flow, work, or make sense off desktop. As someone who writes a lot on the go, this was incredibly frustrating. The desktop website version is slightly better, but it’s still on the slower side. It’s prettier than Google Docs, but functionally worse than Google Docs in most ways. Currently, I wouldn’t recommend paying for Ellipsus as a writing application when Google Docs works significantly better on all counts and is 100% free, but hopefully as Ellipsus irons out the bugs and kinks, things will change. The concept is great but the execution just isn’t there yet. I really do hope they get things worked out because it does have a lot of potential. I’m giving it three stars instead of two because of that. Just save your money and don’t move all your files over from Google Docs yet as it has a long way to go before I’d recommend it as even a minor replacement. ### 3/5 — login blocked *2026-11-02* i’m a huge user of the web app, but immediately encountered the hurdle of not being able to log in, due to the email input box not activiting to allow me to put text in it. using the browser login also did not work. ### 4/5 — Fantastic app, needs QOL! *2026-11-11* I’ve been waiting for Ellipsus to come to iOS for forever! In short, I’m very happy with its features, but it needs a bit of a quality of life update before I’m truly satisfied. 1) It is a bit laggy. Even on files with nothing written in them, Ellipsus often stutters when I open any menus. It also struggles to connect to its servers and update the page sometimes. 2) There’s no minimize keyboard button. Once the keyboard is up, you have no way to put it back down (to read your thing) unless you tap into the main menu. This is very irritating. I like to read my own writing while I’m writing it. Please let me be vain. 3) It keeps forcing me back into its default font, which is serif (a crime). I wish that either it would stay in the font I’ve written the rest of the document in, or there was a way to change the default font. Those are the only major issues I’ve discovered so far. I think this will be a great alternative to Google docs with a little bit of polish. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — No AI! Done with Google Docs *2026-11-11* Love Ellipsus so much! I appreciate that they are staunchly anti-AI. I am moving everything from Google docs and Microsoft word over to Ellipsus now. I only discovered the desktop version recently, so I was very excited to see the app release! ### 5/5 — Better than google docs and Microsoft word. I highly recommend. *2026-11-10* I never write app reviews, this is actually my first one in about 7 years. So…keep that in mind, lol. I’m not afraid to admit I found out about this app on tumblr. The announcement post was reposted by someone I follow and at first I was skeptical (as I am of any new app.) After doing some research about the company and learning about their anti ai stance & goals in general, I decided to just bite the bullet and download it. I am genuinely blown away. I like the formatting and how easy it is to use. I enjoy the themes and the features. I just wish it would stop making my freaking font smaller!! Eh that’s my fault though. Is the app a bit buggy here and there? Yeah. But it’s a new app, people. it’s going to have flaws & it doesn’t frustrate me that much. Enough yapping from ur Tío…go write that story. ### 5/5 — Great app for writing, needs some QOL *2026-11-08* Fantastic app for writing and really great customization/focus options. My only complaint is that there are some quality of life features I would like to see implemented. I would love to have a button that takes me directly to the home menu while in a document in a folder. Currently, if you’re in a document you have click a menu, click the parent folder, click back, and then you’re at the home page. Lots of clicking! I also don’t understand why each item takes up so much screen space? I can only see two documents/folders on my screen at the same time! I would maybe understand it if that room was allocated to displaying a description or something, but from what I can tell it’s just dead space. So, overall, great app, just some minor QOL complaints. ### 5/5 — Exactly what I need! *2026-11-07* Awesome to see Ellipsus bring out an app! Everything I’ve used so far seems to work the same as desktop and syncs up properly. Fellow human authors this is the place to be if you’re looking to replace google docs for writing! Update!: Requested in a previous review that the devs smooth out the iOS ‘double space to add a period/full stop’ and I just noticed that they have! A great service with a responsive team that’s evidently listening <3 ### 5/5 — Best writing app ever! *2026-11-05* I don’t think I’ve ever downloaded an app so fast in my life. After I found out that google has been scraping data from their users, I knew I had to switch to something else, and Ellipsus is perfect for that. It is incredibly easy to transfer documents into the app, and the app itself is wonderful in every way. You can choose what colour theme you want, and the ui is wonderful in my opinion (always visible word count my beloved). Apparently you can import pictures too, I haven’t tried that yet but that is so cool. ### 5/5 — So far so good *2026-11-05* I think that everything works pretty fine and it’s probably so much better than both Google Docs and Apple Pages IMO. But there’s kinda this bug that I have been experiencing on my iPhone 13: whenever I highlight text, italicize it, and press space for a new paragraph, it always turns into bold format, even though I have never pressed Bold itself. I don't know if it’s just my phone acting up, but can you please go and take a look at that? Thanks. ### 5/5 — Great *2026-11-04* Very happy Ellipsus now has a dedicated app. A must download for writers who do not want generative AI forced upon them ### 5/5 — Works great for my tablet! *2026-11-04* I’ve been an Ellipsus user for a few months now, and I’ve always appreciated the effort they put into making their product easy to use and navigate. But now having the app on hand makes me love it even more! I typically write using my tablet, so when I was just using the website, there’d be shifting issues where pulling up the keyboard would push the screen up a bit, blocking a couple of buttons that I’d have to manually scroll to find again (not their fault, the website version works great for my laptop and is probably intended that way, lol!). But now that I have the app, everything is exactly where I need it to be, no issues to speak of! I’ve only been using the free version so far (which still gives you a TON of features to work with), but this is the first product that has made me seriously consider paying for the premium/plus version. And I am a very cheap person when it comes to apps, so that’s saying a LOT! I’d recommend getting an Ellipsus account for any aspiring or veteran writer, and I can’t wait to see what they do next! ### 5/5 — The absolute BEST writing app! *2026-11-04* I’ve been using the site for the past couple of years and was so happy to find a writing software that not only didn’t use AI scraping but didn’t even put a storage limit AND was completely free. And now I can access all of my writing offline? Thank you so much, Ellipsus, this has gotten me out of my writing slump. ### 5/5 — love love LOVE ellipsus!!!! *2026-11-04* seriously i adore this app. i’ve been using ellipsus on my web browser for about a year and in that time have recommended it to every writer i know who will listen, and i am SO grateful there’s an app now. it’s made specifically for creative writers (so there are all kinds of helpful templates if you need them!!) and for collaboration, and probably the best part of all is that there’s NO AI!! (no scraping, no “help me write” tools, NOTHING) also all of the necessary features are available for free (there’s a paid tier for some bonus features, but you own it after either one up-front payment or a subscription for a few months). the only thing i’ve noticed that i DON’T like is that the app can be kind of slow sometimes, but that could very well just be me lol. overall, love this app, love ellipsus, highly recommend --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-11-13.*