Writing is always a very opinionated approach. No two writers are the same. And these differences are certainly reflected in the many different tools that are available to write texts these days. Even though I sometimes, and very purposely, use analog tools like nice pens and lovely, sturdy notebooks to jot down my thoughts, when it comes to writing I usually turn to my Mac. It’s already a few years old but still very much does the job, as writing is not exactly a demanding task for computer hardware.
Over the years I have used many different digital tools and software programs to get my writing done, but I want to mention here the ones I come back to and use most frequently.
I’ve more or less developed a habit of using one app only for one specific task, even though all of the apps mentioned here are easily capable of fulfilling all my writing needs within a single app. But for clarity of thought, for my own sanity, and for my simple, hard wired human brain, it makes much more sense to me to switch apps whenever a new task needs to be done. Here are my all-time favorite apps, apps I love and deeply admire for what they do and how they do it.
In this list I start with short form ideas and continue further down to long form writing.
First, there’s the Drafts app by Agile Tortoise. It’s an app that has existed for a long time and is now almost as old as the iPhone itself. The app started on the iPhone as a place to jot down your most immediate thoughts, your spontaneous ideas, and tasks. It was a simple and always available digital scratchpad that only later, over time, developed into the powerhouse of word processing on iPhone, iPad, and Mac that it is today. What Drafts is most famous for are its highly configurable actions, which you can use, or even program yourself, to tweak and export your texts in almost any way you can think of. The app also has extensive Shortcuts and AppleScript support, making it a very capable automation tool.
I use Drafts in the way it was originally intended: as a place "where text starts", as the website slogan says. I put all my ideas, lists, tasks, short texts, and literally everything that comes to mind when I’m on the go in there. It’s my digital notebook that’s always with me. And it’s a very messy, creative, and always crowded place. Nothing in there is finished or processed, it’s like a raw database full of initial thoughts that either need refinement or get trashed at some point later. This is not a place for neat and tidy writing or full clarity of thought. It’s just what it is: an empty text box that wants to be filled. Everyone needs such a place to capture, store, and organize all the stuff that life produces.
Drafts comes as a subscription that covers access to all platforms on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It costs about USD 2 per month or USD 20 per year.
Next on the list is an app that exists only on the Mac. This app, too, is very renowned and trusted and has been around on the Mac for a long time. There are stories of people who bought their first Mac computers just to have access to this app. BBEdit by Bare Bones Software is basically "just" a text editor that includes all the bells and whistles for coding, including all sorts of syntax highlighting, but it’s also beautifully suited for writing plain Markdown documents. This app is indeed a very powerful beast, full of features that are hard to find in other apps, yet still very clear and transparent. It gets as easy or as complicated as you want it to be.
It’s a code editor, and I wouldn’t say it’s immediately pretty. It almost feels like a legacy app from the past, but it’s always very much up to date and includes new features from the most recent operating systems.
I use BBEdit for texts where tiny details matter. I use it to process my final drafts before they get posted on my website. Here I tweak the front matter, the Markdown links for various images, here my texts become finished code that my website can read and understand.
Maybe once a year I’ll do design work for my website as well. Here, too, BBEdit is an indispensable tool for tweaking various settings, text files, HTML, and CSS parts of my site. For me, BBEdit is a technical tool to finalize my writing process, to proofread, and to publish.
Before including Ulysses (see below) in my creative workflow, BBEdit was also the tool I mostly used for all the creative writing of my blog posts. So once again, it’s a very versatile app that can do almost anything for you. It’s Mac only and costs USD 60 for a single perpetual license. Upgrade pricing is available.
iA Writer, my old and trusted friend. There’s not much left to say about this app because everyone interested in writing probably already knows it. iA Writer is a very minimal Markdown text editor by Information Architects for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It’s a calm and pleasing app that’s beautiful to interact with, yet still comes with a lot of powerful features. It feels native on every platform you use.
It’s the app I use most frequently to produce text. Over the years I’ve settled into a workflow where I use this app exclusively for my journal entries, which I write religiously each and every single day. Every day I produce texts of roughly 1,500 words. Every day I set aside about an hour to sit down and write these entries. They are like logbooks of my day and include everything I did and when I did it.
What I especially like about iA Writer is its flexibility. On the one hand, it uses a library with database functionality to sort and index all my files; on the other hand, all the files themselves exist as independent Markdown text files on my iCloud Drive. They are easy to copy and manage over the years, even without using a specific tool like iA Writer. In that sense, iA Writer fits nicely into a "file first" rather than an "app first" approach, as cultivated by apps like Obsidian.
iA Writer is available for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and even Windows. You can subscribe to iA Writer or buy individual perpetual licenses. iA Writer for Mac costs USD 50; the iOS version costs USD 20.
Speaking of Obsidian: I started using Obsidian when it began to become cool and mainstream a couple of years ago. What’s most important to me about this app is that my files remain files and don’t become part of a huge and unmanageable database in a proprietary format that might not be accessible a few years from now.
For that functionality alone, I even swallow the pill that Obsidian is not a native app on Mac, iPhone, or iPad. It’s an Electron based app, so one version fits all, more or less. Because Electron based apps on iOS are often a bit rough to use, I more or less exclusively use Obsidian on my Mac, even though the iPhone and iPad versions have become slightly better over recent months.
Obsidian is my personal database. Every book I read, every podcast I listen to, every YouTube video I watch, every piece of media I consume that’s worth thinking and writing about, becomes part of my Obsidian database. Even though the makers of Obsidian have introduced Bases, a dedicated database feature, I don’t use it much. Instead, I stick with very simple, rough Markdown text files with minimal formatting. Obsidian covers my knowledge base, and I want to be able to refer to it for a long time, even after the Obsidian app no longer exists. Hence, I keep things simple and manageable and avoid installing many of the fancy plugins that the vibrant community has built over the years. Obsidian is cool and a bit DIY, with an incredible community spirit. Again, I probably use only about 10 percent of its capabilities.
Obsidian is free to use, though it’s not open source. The company behind it makes money by selling completely optional add ons like a syncing service and a publishing feature. I don’t use either of those; instead, my "vault" lives in my iCloud Drive, and so far I’ve had no issues whatsoever.
And finally, there’s Ulysses. Since Ulysses switched to subscription pricing many years ago, I’ve had an on-off relationship with the app. The amount of money I have to pour into it every year adds up, and looking at all the other apps I use on a regular, almost daily, basis, yet another app in the mix, especially the most expensive one on this list, is not always easy to justify.
But here I am. I use Ulysses again, and what can I say? I love it. It’s the most beautiful and thoughtful app I’ve ever experienced, and it continues to be so. The recent update aligning the app with Apple’s Liquid Glass design made it even more gorgeous and usable.
Ulysses is meant for long-form writing projects like books, ebooks, or documentation. It has extensive capabilities for managing reference materials as well. There are several export functions to get your writing out of the app again: PDF, HTML, ePub, Word DOCX, plain text, Markdown files, as well as direct publishing to certain blogging platforms.
The app is such a treat to me that I swallow pills like the fact that it’s database driven. Honestly, I hate lock in features like proprietary databases, but I see why Ulysses uses one. For complex, long form writing, relying on database features just makes sense.
Right now, Ulysses is the place where actual text production happens for me. This is where the thinking happens, where different thoughts connect into a hopefully cohesive whole. Ulysses covers all the creative parts of my writing process. The app doesn’t get in my way, it lets me do what I need to do to produce the texts I want, the way I want them. And for me, the clean and minimal design helps immensely to keep my thoughts clear and focused. This is where the blog posts you read become reality. Ulysses is my personal AI, the black box I use to access my mind and extract bits and pieces that make sense.
As mentioned, Ulysses is not cheap. It’s available only as a subscription: USD 6 per month or USD 40 per year. Student pricing is available.
And that’s it, that’s my list of writing apps I use regularly in 2026. Of course, it’s absolutely not necessary to use more than one app to get your writing done. These days, almost all computer hardware already ships with some form of word processing. I’ve even met people who work exclusively in TextEdit, the most basic text editor you can think of, which ships with every Mac.
I don’t know whether my texts become better by using so many tools or whether that makes me a better writer. But it is a fact that I write because of these apps. Writing is a joyful experience to me, and part of that joy is derived from apps like Drafts, BBEdit, iA Writer, Obsidian, and Ulysses.