WriteRoom (for Mac) - Review 2022

When it comes to writing apps, less can be more. The fewer options there are on screen, the more you can concentrate on your writing. At to the lowest degree, that's the theory embraced by WriteRoom. WriteRoom isn't the just distraction-free writing app, simply it is one of the simplest. It doesn't cost much, either. Some may find, however, that it's and then light that it doesn't include the necessary tools for building a substantial project from your writing, such as a book or a screenplay. You lot won't detect a library or file folder view, nor is in that location space to proceed notes on scenes or characters. WriteRoom is, therefore, best for one-off pieces of writing. Information technology's a good Mac writing app, but Scrivener and Ulysses are both better choices.

Cost and Platform

At only $nine.99, WriteRoom is among the lowest priced apps for writers. It'south for Mac only—in that location'due south no Windows app, no web app, and no mobile apps either. At that place used to be an iPhone app, but it's been discontinued. You can only employ WriteRoom on the Mac on which it is installed. In that location isn't a whole lot to the app, as mentioned. At that place are no libraries, templates, story maps, character sheets, or other tools for organizing your writing. At that place are formatting options for files you save to rich text, but they are tucked neatly up in the card bar. You won't come across them floating effectually the screen, enticing yous to click on them.

1 of the virtually closely comparable apps is iA Writer, which costs the same. Similar WriteRoom, it's a distraction-costless, Mac-only writing app. But iA Writer does have a $3.99 iOS app, as well as a free Android app, which means you can easily work on your files when you lot're away from your Mac. iA Writer also has a few cracking features that assist yous bring pieces of your piece of work together to build something greater, which WriteRoom doesn't take. Additionally, iA Writer supports Markdown, which in a nutshell means getting bare bones formatting through unproblematic inline code, like putting asterisks (*) effectually a word to make it bold. WriteRoom does not support Markdown, and it would be a amend app if information technology did.

The meridian three writing apps, Terminal Draft, Scrivener, and Ulysses, toll more than, but they offer a lot more than in terms of functionality.

Final Typhoon (for Windows and macOS) runs $249.99. You can install it on 2 machines for that price. Unlike many other writing apps, Last Typhoon is designed specifically for professional person screenwriters. I of its principal features is that it helps writers format their scripts to industry standards, using all caps and centered text to identify different parts of the script, for example. Final Draft is highly specialized and non something you'd purchase on a whim. Its companion iOS app sells for $ix.99.

Scrivener costs $45 for the desktop app (for Windows or macOS) and $19.99 for the iOS app. You tin can install the desktop app on equally many machines in your household as you lot like, as long as they are all of the aforementioned platform. Scrivener, which uses WYSIWYG (what yous see is what y'all get) formatting, works well for many different genres of writing. Information technology includes a range of tools for organizing, rearranging, and exporting pieces of writing to a larger piece of work. WriteRoom doesn't have these tools.

Finally, Ulysses costs $44.99 (for the Mac-just app), with a companion iOS app selling for $24.99. Like WriteRoom and iA Writer, Ulysses takes the less-is-more approach. You tin tell from looking at information technology that it has been designed to remove many distractions. And it uses Markdown rather than stylized formatting. Fifty-fifty though it minimizes distractions, Ulysses yet includes a library, places to house reference material, and other features that WriteRoom doesn't take only that many kinds of writers demand.

Getting Started

Launch WriteRoom for the first time, and a Welcome folio appears. It's a simple certificate with just 120 words. It provides the briefest introduction to the app, and you lot're on your own from there. You won't see whatever tutorials, sample content, or templates. If you're jonesing to write undisturbed, you'll get there quickly in WriteRoom.

By default, when you create a new file, you go a blank white editing window. Blazon, and black monospace font (typewriter-mode) appears. The file names itself Untitled. A word count appears side by side to the name. You won't see any save options or additional windows for applying style, much less a Ribbon interface like the kind yous get in Microsoft Office apps.

WriteRoom does have a little more than to it, but all the options are kept hidden in the menu until you lot select them. The window is small, taking upwardly only a portion of the screen. By selecting full screen view from the Window carte du jour, you lot can swing into a view that puts the type in white and the entire balance of your screen in gray. When you stop typing, a word count appears in the bottom right corner. Simply it'due south invisible while you're composing. Admittedly nothing else shows upwards in this view. Yous can't even escape it past pressing the Esc central. You have to move your cursor to the top of the screen until the hidden carte reappears and so select out of it (or utilise a keyboard shortcut).

You can customize the word count feature so that information technology displays any combination of line count, word count, graphic symbol count, and the corporeality of time you've spent working on a certificate. Or you lot can hibernate them all. Other options let you turn on live spell-checking, grammar-correction, and autocorrection.

If you lot need to keep track of the fourth dimension yous spend on any writing job, there's a smashing feature that automatically creates a spreadsheet and logs the corporeality of time you lot've put into each file during each session. The app also does a cracking job of storing by versions of the file, in instance you need to restore a previous copy.

You can alter the whole appearance of the screen past switching Themes. A few are included, and you can download others from Grunter Bay Software'south site. One looks like an one-time green screen computer concluding. You can modify a theme past choosing a unlike screen font or past opening a customization menu. If you're willing to discover or create the needed audio files, you tin can even assign sounds that will play when you blazon a letter of the alphabet, delete something, or press Enter. For an app that'southward supposed to be lark-free, and largely is, it sure does offering a lot of window dressing here.

Obviously Text, Rich Text

By default, WriteRoom creates plain text files. Evidently text means no formatting—no italics, no bold type, no headlines. It'due south only words, saved in the standard .txt format that any text-based awarding can open. If y'all desire text formatting, yous have to convert to rich text format (.rtf), a file format that'southward readable by all give-and-take processors. With an .rtf in WriteRoom, you have all the ability to stylize your text using formatting options found in the carte du jour. You lot can as well easily create tables, bulleted lists, numbered lists, so forth.

1 minor annoyance is that if yous want to catechumen an existing document from plain text to rich text, WriteRoom creates a completely new, untitled .rtf document containing the text of your original .txt file, and y'all have to save the new file with a new name. I would take preferred this feature to work like Apple's TextEdit, which simply replaces the start file with the second, ensuring that you don't finish upward with 2 different documents, every bit you do with WriteRoom (and, to be fair, with near other discussion-processing apps).

WriteRoom relies on the built-in powers of macOS to handle document formats. Y'all can use WriteRoom to open up Microsoft Word and other standard document files. An imported Give-and-take file will preserve basic formatting, and WriteRoom tin can edit it in rich text mode. Features like tables and lists are preserved, but non multiple columns. The indicate is that you tin can utilise WriteRoom to open a Word document if you want to concentrate on it without the distractions of Word, and you lot can all the same return to information technology in the Microsoft app subsequently.

What's Missing?

The big matter missing from WriteRoom is a library. With WriteRoom, yous relieve your files locally on your calculator. When you want to open them, y'all apply a typical file chooser window to locate them. It may not audio like you're missing out on much with WriteRoom until you consider the alternative choice. Scrivener and Ulysses employ the alternative method. They both have a left pane (you tin hide it while writing) where yous store and can see all the files y'all've created. It's a typical folder view, and considering it'due south integrated into the writing app itself, y'all tin motion files around hands while getting a sense of how a larger work is coming along. For example, if y'all have folders defended to different chapters or scenes, it's easy to motility files among them while seeing where all the other files land, too.

Writers use folders for other reasons, too, such equally storing reference material. In Scrivener, Ulysses, and Last Draft, getting a quick glimpse at your reference material doesn't require sifting through many dialog boxes to search for and open files. Writers too sometimes use folders to indicate unlike states of their works, such as drafted, edited, and completed. Again, having those folders in the context of the writing app provides big benefits and efficiency because the author tin can elevate and drib the files without exiting the app or getting distracted.

Another piece missing from WriteRoom is back up for collaboration. Google Docs remains one of the best apps for collaboration, in role considering it allows real-time co-authoring. A few other office-grade word processors offer it, besides. WriteRoom has zippo of the sort. Final Draft is the only writing app I've seen that isn't a total word processor to offer support for collaboration, only fifty-fifty in that location, editing is express to ane author at a time.

Another small feature that would be helpful merely isn't in WriteRoom is a preview before exporting to PDF. With Markdown language, and especially with longer documents, it helps tremendously to check that the formatting volition announced how you lot intend information technology to before spitting out files.

Simple and Cheap

WriteRoom is a simple and inexpensive distraction-complimentary writing app. Information technology's but available for the Mac, however, and it offers no companion apps at this fourth dimension, which means you can't continue editing files on the go. iA Writer brings a trivial more power in the grade of Markdown linguistic communication and mobile apps, while providing a similar, minimal experience. If you're serious about getting a writing app for long-term use and for projects that comprise multiple files, endeavour Ulysses for Mac or Scrivener instead. And if yous're a screenwriter, invest in Last Draft.