Big Fan
简洁好用
Best Ever
Scam
Pay To Use
Nice software, but…
Response from developer
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback! We're glad to hear that you enjoyed using Ulysses and appreciate you sharing what would make the app more useful for your workflow. We have forwarded your request for a more comprehensive planning or story outlining mode to our development team. Regarding your concern about access to your texts: your writing is never locked away if you cancel your subscription. Even without an active subscription, you can still open your library in read-only mode and export your texts in any available format. Additionally, if you prefer working with plain text files, you can embed an external folder in Ulysses and store your content as Markdown (.md) files. Thank you again for taking the time to share your experience. If you have any further ideas that would make Ulysses a better fit for your specific writing journey, don't hesitate to get in touch with our team at help@ulysses.app. Your feedback helps us improve. — Andrea
Price…
Subscription Apocalypse
A era do modelo de negócios de Assinaturas, onde querem que gastemos 10 mil reais por ano em 50, 100 assinaturas para cada pequeno app que faz parte do nosso cotidiano, está destruindo qualquer relação positiva que eu possa ter com software.
Response from developer
Thank you for sharing your perspective. We understand that when you use many different apps and services, costs can quickly add up, and managing multiple subscriptions can be challenging. However, Ulysses is more than a simple text editor—it's a professional writing environment with advanced organization, flexible export, writing goals, blog publishing, grammar and style checking, and many other features. Given its functionality and ongoing development, we believe the subscription is fair. You can find a full feature overview at ulysses.app/features. As a small, independent European team, subscriptions help us continuously improve Ulysses, provide customer support, and keep the app up to date. If you're looking to get more value from your subscriptions, Ulysses is also included in the Setapp bundle at no additional cost. We also offer discounts for students and academic staff. If you have any questions, we're always happy to help at help@ulysses.app. — Andrea
Needs mandatory subscription
It’s not a word processor, and in the end, that’s a problem
What do I mean by this? In Ulysses, every element of formatting requires a tag and tags are always visible. So if, for example, you italicise something, the italic format tag takes up a space in the text. There is no way to switch this off. You can hide the tags with a theme, but then you end up with lots of weird double spaces that - at least for me - are like a loose thread to a kitten. Those tags have to remain according to the developer, so I cannot ignore them and they bug me. Also, I sometimes fail to spot where format tags begin or end, which creates proofing issues later on when the text is exported. It’s not a problem for a 500 word essay but it becomes a royal pain when your word count is in the region of 200,000. My basic gripe is that having tags disrupt the text without being able to render them invisible, and retain normal spaces between words, is annoying. It’s like having Word’s hidden characters turned on, all the time.
Seamless syncing across devices, and grouping your thoughts and ideas into sheets and folders is wonderful but less valuable now as I tend to write on the same laptop. Direct publishing to online services is probably great too, but I don’t use that feature. But first and foremost, this is a writing tool meant to free up and liberate the authorial mind and my experience is that Ulysses does not do this. Lately, I have taken to writing in OmmWriter and then pasting my new material back into Ulysses, but this is less convenient when, for example, I want to cross reference other material. It makes version tracking of sections of text more difficult.
Before adopting Ulysses, I used Simplenote and I switched because I found that service did not sync reliably. I may revisit this choice after a long absence because I prefer using a lightweight editor to get the ideas down and I don’t want to get heavily vested in a complex piece of software like Scrivener.
My Favourite Editor by Far
Performance is a bit shaky on Intel Macs nowadays, unfortunately.
End game for novelists
I'll admit, I do wish there was a way to hide the markdown since I really don't like seeing it (or seeing the unsightly spaces when you use a theme that semi-hides it) but that's a very small gripe in the grand scheme of things. The pricing is also a bit steep, but again, there's just nothing else on the market like this, and the developers have done a very good job keeping it lightweight and polished for long-term use. The only thing that would make me seriously reconsider using it is if there was a subscription price increase.
If you're reading this, Ulysses devs, thank you so much for the app. It's become a daily driver for me, and I would cry if it was discontinued at some point.
Response from developer
First of all, thank you so much for this kind review. We're really glad to hear that Ulysses fits your writing so well and that it beats the competition for you. It especially means a lot that you called out the minimalist UI and the features — that's exactly what our small team pours its energy into every day. On hiding the markup in the editor: I've forwarded your request to the team. In the meantime, are you currently using a theme that shows the markup fairly prominently? If you'd like something closer to a clean, WYSIWYG feel, the theme "Barely There" minimizes the markup nicely. It's free at styles.ulysses.app. On pricing: totally fair to bring up, and I'd love to understand it a bit better. Ulysses works out to about 10 cents a day, so I'm curious whether it's the amount itself that feels like a lot, or more that subscriptions in general add up once you're juggling several. If it's the latter, it might be worth checking out Setapp, Ulysses is part of that bundle, so it could be a good way to get more value across the subscriptions you're already paying for. We also offer a discount for students and academic staff, so if you're eligible, it's worth applying. Behind the app is a small European team who build every feature you enjoy and are paid fairly for their work, and we set the price hoping people who use Ulysses daily, like you, would find it a fair trade. That said, if there's anything specific that would make it feel more worth it, I'd genuinely like to hear it, feel free to reach out anytime at help@ulysses.app.
“Free” with in app purchases is misleading
The name of this app includes “writing app” so you’d think that writing would be a basic feature and extra stuff is the paid stuff? nope. It’s “Read only” unless you pay. So instead of clicking on either the “Read only mode” button or the “back” button, I just hit Cmd+Q and then “Cmd+backspace” and confirmed that it was being moved to the trash with a double tap on my watch.
if you’re fine with such a ridiculous limitation, then check it out, but don’t bother expecting any sort of chance to actually try the app out.
Useless
Love it
The most useful app I’ve owned in decades
When I started writing novels I went on a hunt for a better tool. Using apps like Word or Pages were fine for a single chapter, but unwieldy as the manuscript grew. Then I switched to Scrivener. Much better and overall I was pretty happy with it except for one crucial thing: it’s poor sync across devices (I’m a 100% Apple person).
The transition to Ulysses was a bit awkward, primarily because the developers take a different approach to writing management. It took a couple of weeks to get into the workflow approach that the program encourages. Over time, things smoothed out. What is extraordinary — and a total winner is the perfect sync across both my MacBooks, my iPad pro, and even my iPhone. Brilliant!
The series of novel I worked on span a period of over a decade. With all five books inside Ulysses it was a breeze to move back and forth across all the manuscripts.
I have always sought out the best tech for any kind of projects (and built several successful companies around that principle). When I hear other novelists talk about writing in Word I simply roll my eyes and know that I’m twice as efficient.
Worth It!
App So Good I Want to Work For Them
SiD
Great for research, writing, organising and will quickly become the first app you fire up every day.
