Ulysses
Ulysses is a text editor for creative writers. Used by bloggers, poets, students and published novelists all over the world, it offers an integrated environment to brainstorm, draft, revise and even submit text on a professional level.
Cost / License
- Subscription
- Proprietary
Application types
EUPlatforms
- Mac
- iPhone
- iPad
Features
- Support for MarkDown
- Distraction-free Writing
- Export to EPUB
- Export to PDF
- Support for styluses
- Tabbed interface
- Sync with iCloud
- Brainstorming
Ulysses News & Activities
Recent News
- POX published news article about Ulysses
Writing app Ulysses 38 is out with library customization, new group icons, and bug fixesThe latest Ulysses 38 release for Mac, iPad, and iPhone focuses on expanded library customization f...
- POX published news article about Ulysses
Ulysses 37 released with enhanced dashboard, critical issue fixed, and other improvementsUlysses has released version 37 of its writing application, available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Th...
- Maoholguin published news article about Ulysses
Writing and Sketching combined: Ulysses' latest update adds Apple Pencil integrationUlysses has been updated to version 30 with exciting new features. The update includes the ability ...
Recent activities
SceneWright_Studio added Ulysses as alternative to SceneWright Studio
freedailypro added Ulysses as alternative to FreeDailyPro
whyubel1eve added Ulysses as alternative to Folding Mirror
Pievid added Ulysses as alternative to Pievid Writer
catalpasatelier added Ulysses as alternative to Catalpas Atelier Scroll
BookCraftr added Ulysses as alternative to BookCraftr
CreatedbyBhavesh added Ulysses as alternative to Tolstoy Compose
mi0772 added Ulysses as alternative to Inkiostro Markdown Editor
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What is Ulysses?
Ulysses is a text editor for creative writers. Used by bloggers, poets, students and published novelists all over the world, it offers an integrated environment to brainstorm, draft, revise and even submit text on a professional level.
Based around the concept of non-linear, semantic text editing, Ulysses provides a truly distraction-free and fully focused experience, without sacrificing any advanced features.
It’s got everything you expect from a modern text editor – and then some:
- Tabbed, single-window interface
- Semantic text editing
- True separation of presentation and content
- Console mode (aka “distraction-free writing environment”)
- Extensible export (PDF, DOC, RTF, TXT, HTML, ePub)
- Project-wide, term-centric search & replace
- Multiple document and project notes
- Excerpts
- Counters for characters, words & pages
- Configurable metadata (Status, Label, Dates)
- Integrated backup
- Filters, groups and document collections
- Coherent document previews
- Text trash
- Typewriter scrolling
- Bookmarks and style-jumpers
- Project templates
- English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian and Czech localizations
Ulysses information
Developed by
Ulysses GmbH & Co. KG Licensing
Proprietary and Commercial product.Pricing
Subscription ranging between $4 and $6 per month.Alternatives
169 alternatives listedNews
3 news article related to UlyssesSupported Languages
- English
- Dutch
- French
- German
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Chinese
- Spanish
AlternativeTo Categories
News & Books, Office & ProductivityApple AppStore
- Updated
- 4.52 avg rating
Comments and Reviews
What a bright future I saw in Ulysses! It was one of the best Markdown writers and I really thought this is a keeper.
However for one they introduced some odd (and not really needed) extensions to Markdown that would make the files created accordingly less app agnostic, but it gets worse… their iCloud implementation wouldn't keep the plain Markdown files as such on iCloud drive, easy to open with any other Markdown app, no, it was entirely hidden from the user and only accessible through Ulysses, nowhere to be seen on iCloud drive. Which defies the purpose of using Markdown in the first place. Byword for example neatly put its files in plain sight of the user.
Now they've switched to a subscription model, so you'll have to pay a whopping $40/year (if I recall that's probably 10 bucks more than the price I paid for the app previously) in order to use the app. Considering that synching is done via iCloud anyway (so they have little part in or can hardly take credit for that) and that Ulysses basically just obscured your Markdown files, I think you should stay away from that piece of software…
I recommend to organise your Markdown files in files and folders, put them on iCloud drive if you need that synching and open them with any non-subscription Markdown app of your choosing. There are plenty alternatives.
There is simply nothing on the market that compares to Ulysses at this moment. It has an incredibly rich feature set belied by the beautiful, minimalist interface that lets you focus on writing. No other app makes it so easy to organize projects and documents. The easy export function is industry leading; you can create gorgeous PDFs and epubs in, like, two or three clicks. The cross-platform sync and backup system is reliable enough that you won't ever lose any work, and the mobile apps are so good that you could write exclusively on them if you wanted to. I have tried all the major alternatives out there, like Scrivener, but Ulysses always pulls me back.
The only thing I don't like is that it's subscription-only. I know that's an instant deal breaker for a lot of people, but if you can afford it, it is so worth it. Maybe this will change when Scrivener finally releases its Ulysses competitor in the coming year, but for now, I can't recommend Ulysses enough as a daily user.
integrates publishing with wordpress in markdown format
True. So does Byword (also allows publishing through Medium, tumblr., Blogger and to Evernote), without subscription, for less money, and putting your files into iCloud folders, where you can open them with any other text editor.