Scrivener

There are certainly things that I would change, but over the years, it has proven to be and stay the best writing app for me on both macOS and Windows.

One of the few one-time payment apps left out there. They must-have if you write novels or big projects.

However, do keep in mind that Scrivener has some pretty frustrating syncing issues that can lose all of your work if you're not careful. You're basically limited to Dropbox, and you have to use the app exactly the way the devs tell you, or you'll bork your files. Also, the app is pretty heavy and has a lot of features I don't ever use, so it tends to drain my battery more than other writing apps.

I'm looking forward to the Scrivener Lite Markdown app that's coming in the near future.

Things started out well, but over time as MacOS got more inaccessible, so too did Scrivener. Do not get me wrong, as a tool to write actual novels and make things that are meant to be read for pleasure, it is a great tool.

The trouble starts when you try to put together a draft that you can send to an editor, an agent, or Odin forbid, a publisher. For starters, the text in such boxes as the indicators for fonts and sizes is far too small. Scrivener keeps telling us that they can only use what Apple lets them, but if browsers like Brave can make successful efforts to boost font sizes, it behoves everyone to try.

And Scrivener's text editor can zoom in to increase the size of the text you are working on just fine.

Which brings us to the compile feature. Because you cannot see the indicator for the font face clearly, and because the interface of the compile feature is like a 1999 era Windows networking box, it is like pulling teeth to even get the document to have page breaks in the right places. Then, partly because you can never tell what font the editor thinks you want in the document, the compile has inconsistent formatting.

Reading back the document whilst prepping it for an agent, you find the compile and Scrivener have decided to make some parts a different colour, randomly, without any clue as to why.

Scrivener has always had problems, including an interface that makes finding functions very difficult. But version three makes life far more difficult for authors than it already is. Literature And Latte are also incredibly unresponsive to cries for help, and as already hinted, deflective of complaints about serious issues with the program. They need to go back to the drawing board and rebuild version four from the ground up.

Expensive as hell for what it is, a glorified text editor that once you pay for it, locks you in by making it extremely tedious to migrate.

I'd recommend either Manuskript or Obsidian with a few plugins.

If you are writer it's a good piece of software, it has some sortfalls but - who doesn't.

It certainly focuses on Mac vs Windows.