Writing with Ulysses.app

 

I’ve been a long-time Scrivener user for over a decade, but for the last year or so, I’ve been migrating my work to Ulysses more and more, and right now I think I am at the point where I’ll be using it exclusively.

Ulysses is a writing app like Scrivener, and it has much of the same functionality, but with a stripped-down and streamlined interface. I can do the same tasks in both apps, but I prefer Ulysses now for two major differences that make my workflow much easier.

The first is file management. Unlike Scrivener, Ulysses has its file management baked into the app. All my writing is always available in the left-hand navigation pane, and I can find everything I’ve ever written without having to leave the app or open a second window. With Scrivener, I still have to find the project’s .scriv file in the Finder and keep my own version control, but Ulysses does all of that for me.

The second is file synchronization. Ulysses syncs all content and changes seamlessly from the MacOS to the iOS apps via iCloud. If I make a change on the laptop, it shows up on the iPad’s and the iPhone’s Ulysses apps just a few seconds later. With Scrivener, I have to save my work to Dropbox and manually sync everything before I open a project on a different device. 

Ulysses is very much like a highly streamlined version of Scrivener with no interface fluff. It’s simple, powerful, has just the amount of features I need, and it gets the job done with a minimum of fuss. The only drawback is that it’s a Mac/iOS-only app, so if you run Windows or Linux, you’re out of luck. (Some would say that the subscription-model pricing for Ulysses is a drawback as well, but I don’t mind paying a yearly subscription to ensure prompt updates and new features. I already do that with Office 365 anyway.)