Ulysses Mobile Reviews

It needs improvements to be a real must-have

DadaStar2

There is something good and something bad on Ulysses from a pro standpoint. The good: advanced organizational tools for your writings; extensive personalization options; good drafting tools. The bad: an awkward icon; clunky formatting results for Word exports; no Pages export; a defective Goals widget; a (too) expensive subscription model.

Lukewarm after 2 years of almost daily use.

Austinscorpio23

I like minimalist writing environments. I’ve used IA Writer, Bear, and several others. Most have markdown support, some are subscription based, and others are free after the initial purchase. All of these apps have their pros and cons. With Ulysses, you are able to keep all of your sheets in a single place and even organize them into folders for different projects, etc. That’s a big selling point and I appreciate the fact that you don’t have to click around your file system in order to find that document you saved six months ago. IA Writer, Byword, Scrivner, and Bear all have some of this functionality, but Ulysses seems to have placed an emphasis on keeping everything in one place. I think what I don’t like about Ulysses, and what keeps me going back to programs like Word, or Pages, is that formatting is done only via markdown and printing directly from the app yields a product that doesn’t always meet specific academic criteria. For example, using one of the styles on their website called “Papers” produces the closest printable version of the double-spaced essay format, but there is no way to edit specific textual elements. So, if I decide I want my finished product to have different spacing for the first four lines and then double-spacing throughout the remainder of the document, then I have to export the file into word or Gdocs and then made editorial changes. Styles give flexibility, and you can customize the style to your preference, but you need a working knowledge of CSS to do so. I’m not a web developer, I’m a writer. I don’t want to be forced to learn a programming language just to edit a few line breaks out of a document. That’s the problem here. Minimalist writing apps should be minimal, but they should also possess the ability to format text for the proper application. Instead, you must rely on user-generated styles, build your own, or export your work into another program. This is arduous. If Ulysses has all of that functionality and also moved the functions out of the way when writing, like they do with word count, and markdown information, then then app would be ubiquitous within the writing community. I’m not asking for bloat here. I don’t need a citation tool or a way to build complex multimodal documents. I just want to change text positions and maybe adjust line spacing without having to use another program.

Loved this app for NaNoWriMo.

Nutthatch

I was looking for an extremely clean, distraction-free writing app that would help me keep track of my words for National Novel Writing Month. Ulysses proved to be exactly what I was looking for. Super easy to use and has just enough features to be extraordinary, but not too many so as to be distracting or hard to use.

This App is a Virus

Samurai1x

So I have the Ulysses Classic App on my Mac and iPhone for a very long time now but not because I like it or have any use for it but because I can not delete it from my devices. It’s basically a like a virus attaching to a host and has no plans to leave either. Apple assured me that it was a “benign” virus but I have my doubts as sometimes it bloats up in terms of the space it takes and the size of its contents on its own and then return to the original size without being used or opened. Ever since I noticed this app on my phone I’ve had a few other apps appear on my iCloud storage that I did not download myself. I don’t know if it started because of this app but it certainly happened when I first noticed this strange app on my phone that just refuses to be deleted off of my devices iCloud storage.

Love it, but ...

Jumping!

I love this app and it’s helped me put my thoughts together and document moments of my life. But there is one thing, would it be possible to be able to add GIF as an attachment or better to the main text? Right now any GIF becomes a photo and I happen to need to organize a lot GIFs.. Anyway, thanks for this great beautiful app!

Shortcuts not working now

Bravebellows

I have a daily shortcut on my mobiles to generate a daily journal template. It was working until this morning. I can’t tell if there’s been a change in the app or my 1000+ notes I imported from Evernote that caused this issue. I’d love a resolution to my problem.

This is one of the best writing tools I've ever used

caspersgrin

Just to put everything in context, I'm mostly a blogger and essayist. For large scale research projects and other tomes, a much more heavy duty tool like Scrivener is the tool of choice. For me, Ulysses allows me to freely write without a lot technological interference, yet it is feature rich and I can still do word processory things if I still want to. I can export my work as an ePub, Docx or a PDF, but what I most appreciate is that I can directly to my WordPress blog without ever leaving Ulysses. Ulysses is also very Apple centric. Thus I have versions installed on my Mac, my iPad and my iPhone. And as Ulysses stores my projects on iCloud sharing between platforms is totally transparent. Since I normally work remotely, I typically start a new blog entry or an essay using an iPad, but if some rare moment of inspiration hits me and I'm out and about somewhere, I can grab my phone, open up Ulysses and not have to loose them fleeting moment. A very valuable plus for me.

Image goes in sideways

loureedtunes

1. Too much for monthly subscription. There are just as good apps out there for less. 2. Image imports into document sideways and no way to turn it. Sorry, deal breaker. 3. Bye

Won’t let me do anything

Mrs.Dean Winchester

I’ve never had this app before. Can’t even use it cause it says I’m stuck in read only mode because my subscription has ended. Never had this app before and now it’s forcing me to get a subscription:/

NOPE! NOPE! NOPE!

MOKANA_STUDIOS

I was considering moving over from an app I have used for years. You go to the site and it claims a 14 trial. Then you go to the App Store and it claims a free trial. But you have to sign up for a subscription just to try a trial and it is only 3 days not 14. If you want people to try this, drop the scamming, open the door, let people use it, then an IAP if they want to continue. I downloaded this then got stuck in a subscription loop. Then deleted the app from my devices. Why offend people with the subscription scam is beyond me. $60 bucks a year if monthly. $40 yearly. Much more than what I pay now.

Ulysses Mobile Reviews – Page 4