Productivity-minded Mac users can try OmmWriter, a free, easy-to-use dedicated writing app. I prefer OmmWriter for distraction-free writing in Mac OS X; not only does it help me focus and work. WriteRoom 1.0 – The free version for a distraction free writing space on Mac Feb 27, 2007 - 6 Comments WriteRoom is founded on a great idea that is hard to find nowadays in the computing world, a distraction free workspace that emphasizes nothing but the task at hand.

1. Distraction Free Writing Mac Version
2. Best Distraction Free Writing App Mac

In the digital age, basically everyone is a writer of some description – whether it’s social media content, company blogs, business proposals or something a little more traditional like news stories or screenplays.

Businesses and individuals of all kinds are writing more content than ever.

The biggest challenge for today’s writers is getting everything done in the most productive way. Demands are high and deadlines are short in the modern age, which means there’s no space for unwanted distractions getting in the way of your workflow.

In this article, we’re looking at the 10 best distraction-free writing apps that will help you produce a higher volume without compromising on quality.

The 10 best distraction-free writing apps

First, we’re going to introduce the best distraction-free writing apps with a quick overview of what they have to offer. Then, we’re going to focus the rest of this article on helping you choose the right app(s) for you, based on their strengths and weaknesses.

One thing I’ll make clear now is that there are two general types of writing apps here. First, you have WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) word processors, which are similar to Microsoft Word and Google Docs, where you can highlight text and change formatting by selecting buttons or using keyboard shortcuts – all of which is visible within the document.

Then you have markdown editors, where you pretty much do everything from the keyboard – placing hashtags in front of headings and asterisks in front of bullet point items.

These markdown editors tend to be the more distraction-free writing experiences but that’s an oversimplification – and you’ll see what I mean once you’ve looked at the following apps.

Here are the 10 distraction-free writing apps you need to know about.

#1: Ulysses (Mac, iOS)

£4.49/monthor £35.99/year

Ulysses is a powerful writing app for Mac and iOS that allows you to write content without ever taking your fingers away from the keyboard. Its markdown-based text editor means you’re no longer clicking settings with the mouse; instead, you’ll style things like headings by placing hashtags in-front of your text.

In terms of removing distractions, Ulysses packs a number of features to help you focus on the task at hand.

Key features:

• Distraction-free interface: Feels like you’re writing on a clean sheet of paper without any of the usual distractions found with word processors.
• Markdown-based writing: Ulysses’ text-only editor means you can write and style your content without lifting your fingers away from the keyboard.
• Keyboard navigation: Navigate the Ulysses dashboard from the keyboard.
• Typewriter mode: Only shows the line you’re currently working on to remove all possible distractions.
• Publishing: Publish to WordPress and Medium from within the Ulysses app or schedule them at the push of a button.

Despite all the emphasis on simplicity, Ulysses allows you to create rich documents with images, links, footnotes, blockquotes and everything else you would expect from a word processor. While there’s also a live preview feature to show you what your output is going to look like and built-in export styles for you choose from.

#2: Storyist (Mac, iOS)

£48.50 one-time fee

As the name suggests, Storyist is designed for writers who need to tell a story. Aside from providing a distraction-free writing experience, the app makes it easy to pen out your plot, characters, settings and everything else you need to convey in your story.

While the app is designed for screenwriters, novelists and creative storytellers, Storyist’s features are just as important for today’s content marketers and journalists who need to craft stories around their publishing objectives.

Distraction Free Writing Mac Version

Key features:

• Minimal interface: Not as distraction-free as Ulysses but a minimal interface that keeps your focus on what you’re writing.
• WYSIWYG: With Storyist, you’ll be setting fonts, highlighting text and clicking buttons to style it – more like Microsoft Word than Ulysses.
• Outliner: A tool for outlining your plot, objectives, quotes and other core elements to keep your writing on track at all times.
• Story development tools: Put images to character names or places to give you a visual cue for descriptive writing.
• Word count tracking: Tracks daily and project word count goals to help you stay on track – especially useful for longer pirces/projects.

This app is clearly designed with screenwriters in mind and storytelling writers are going to get the best out of it. If you’re strictly inot bloggin or article writing, then there are probably better choices for you in this article but don’t forget the importance of storytelling in marketing content such as videos and webinars.

#3: iA Writer (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android)

£28.89 one-off fee

iA Writer is another markdown text editor, which allows it ditch all of those buttons and setting for a truly distraction-free interface. Much like Ulysses, you can create documents without your fingers leaving the keyboard.

Key features:

• Distraction-free interface: iA Writer’s interface is one of the most distraction-free editors you’ll come across.
  Markdown-based writing: Create documents entirely from keyboard commands.
• Typewriter mode: Fades everything except the sentence or paragraph yuo’re currently typing to boost your focus.
• Cross-platform: Use iA Writer across Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices.

This cross-platform functionality is great if you want to use a distraction-free writing app across different devices types and operating systems, especially if you’re jumping between Windows and iOS or Mac and Android. That said, if you’re an Apple loyalist, Ulysses still offers the slightly better set of features – namely its publishing and file management system.

#4: Hemingway (Windows, Mac, web)

$19.99 for desktop, free online app

Hemingway is different from the other writing apps we’re looking at in this article. Aside from providing a distraction-free writing experience, Hemingway aims to make you a better writer by highlighting sentences and paragraphs that are too long, as well as any use of adverbs and the passive voice – three of the most common and serious writing mistakes used by untrained writers.

You can download the Hemingway app for Mac and Windows or use the online app for free.

Key Features:

• Distraction-free writing: Despite the intelligent technology powering Hemingway, it still serves as a great distraction-free writing tool.
• WIZYWIG: Hemingway is still a WIZYWIG editor but this is implemented in a far more simplistic way than apps like Microsoft Word.
• Improve your writing: Hemingway scores the readability of your writing and highlights areas that can be improved to help you become a better writer.
• Free online app: Use Hemingway on any device with an internet connecting by simply typing its URL into your brwoser.

Hemingway is designed to make you a better writer and it also happens to be one of the best distraction-free tools out there. Not to mention the fact you can use the online app for free with the only downside being you can’t save your work (although you can copy and paste into another app or download the full Hemingway app for Windows or Mac).

#5: Byword (Mac, iOS)

£10.99 for Mac, £5.99 for iOS

Byword is an incredibly simple markdown text editor for Mac and iOS. If you’re after the minimalist approach, this is about as distraction-free as it gets and everything you create is fully synced between your Mac and iOS devices.

You can also publish directly to Medium, WordPress, Blogger, Tumbler and Evernote from within the app.

Key Features:

• Distraction-free interface: Super-minimal interface and with a truly distraction-free experience.
• Markdown writing: Format and style your text as you type.
• Sync: All your documents are synced with iCloud and Dropbox so you can access and edit them from all of your Mac and iOS devices.
• Publishing: Publish directly to Medium, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr and Evernote.

If you’re strictly an Apple user and you’re looking for the truly distraction-free writing experience, Byword is one of the best options available.

#6: Grammarly (Windows, Mac, web)

Free, $11.66/monthor $15/mo

Grammarly isn’t actually a distraction-free writing app; it’s an intelligent spelling and grammar checker that does a pretty good job of spotting basic writing errors – far better than you’ll be used to with spell checkers in apps like Microsoft Word.

What many Grammarly users don’t know is that you can also use it for writing with its ultra-simple document app. You can’t style or format text with the editor – all you can do is type out your title and then just write.

That certainly counts as distraction-free writing in my book.

Key features:

• Grammar & spelling checker: Genuinely useful grammar and spelling checker that works in real-time or after you’ve finished writing if you prefer.
• Distraction-free writing: Grammarly’s document app basically has no features at all but it’s definitely a minimal, distraction-free experience.
• Chrome extension: You can use Grammarly to check your writing as you type online with the Chrome extension.

Grammarly isn’t a word processor or text editor in anyway at all – so don’t expect those kind of features. It’s document app is more like an online notepad without any settings or features to get distracted with.

#7: Evernote (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, web)

Free, $5.83/monthor $12.50/mo

Evernote’s document app is far more sophisticated than Grammarly – almost to the point where it can replace a fully-featured word processor like Microsoft Word with something far more minimal.

You also get all of the other Evernote features as part of the package: cloud storage, file sharing, web clipper, notes and a whole bunch of things to help you create content.

Key features:

• Minimal writing app: Maybe not quite distraction-free writing but far more minimal than typical word processors with all of the same features and more.
• WYSIWYG: Style your document and see your changes as you make them.
• Cross-platform: Apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and a web app mean you can use Evernote everywhere you need to.

Evernote’s document writer isn’t exactly topping the list of its features but if you’re looking for a balance between distraction-free writing and all the functionality of a word processor (and then some), this is a strong option.

#8: Medium (web)

Free, $5/monthor $50/year

Medium is one of the most popular publishing and content discovery platforms around these days. Its online story interface is as minimal as any distraction-free writing and you only have basic formatting options for titles, links, quotes and basic styles (bold and italic).

That’s it

Of course, the main attraction of Medium is its user base, who are constantly looking for great content to engage with, making this a powerful social/content marketing tool in its own right.

Key features:

• Distraction-free writing: Very minimal writing experience with basic formatting options.
• WYSIWYG: Medium’s story interface doesn’t give you a lot of formatting options but they are WYSIWYG so you can easily see what you’re going.
• Cross-platform: The web app nature of Medium means you can pretty much access it from any device with an internet connection.
• Publishing: The added bonus of using Medium as a content publishing and discovery tool.

Medium’s interface provides a great distraction-free writing experience and this is precisely why it has made onto our list. This, plus the fact it’s essentially a cross-platform option thanks to its web app. The only real downside is you’re limited to publishing to Medium or copy and pasting into another app if you want to publish elsewhere.

Dealbreaker? Well, that’s entirely up to you and it costs nothing to try it out.

#9: Typora (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Free

Typora is another free option that’s technically a markdown editor but it’s worked the whole WYSIWYG experience into things. So you type your hashtags for headings, asterisks for bullet points, etc. and Typora shows you what it’s all going to look like in its interface – all in real-time.

It’s a fully-featured markdown editor, too, which means you can import images by typing file paths, create tables and diagrams, do mathematics and pull off all sorts of magic – all from your keyboard and see the visual results, thanks to that WYSIWYG implementation.

Key features:

• Distraction-free interface: Typora is nothing more than a text editor (like Notepad++) until you start typing – it doesn’t get more distraction-free than this.
• Markdown writing: Format your text, import images and do everything from the keyboard.
• WYSIWYG: Typora is very much a markdown editor but it implements that WYSIWYG experience to give you a better visual idea of what your documents look like in rendered HTML.

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#10: Google Docs (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, web)

Free

Okay, so I’m really pushing it here by trying to call Google Docs a distraction-free writing app but it’s certainly a more minimal experience than Microsoft Word or similar word processors.

That’s not why I’m recommending it, though. The reason Google Docs makes it onto this list is because it’s one of the best writing apps for teams that want to collaborate and it still offers a fairly minimal writing experience, despite all of the features packed into the platform.

Aside from its collaborative prowess, Google Docs is a truly cross-platform application with apps for just about every OS out there. While the writing app itself isn’t as distraction-free as the other options in this article, you can create, save, edit and share your documents from anywhere and collaborate remotely.

In this sense, the file creation, management and editing processes are where Google Docs kills distractions most effectively.

Key features:

• WYSIWYG: Think a stripped down version of Microsoft Word with all of the same functionality and more.
• Cross-platform: Google Docs kills it in this regard.
• Collaboration: Teams can collaborate on the same documents in the same location or remotely anywhere – all in real-time.

If you’re looking for a truly distraction-free writing experience, Google Docs isn’t going to top your list. In terms of a collaborative tools that accessible from anywhere, on any device, though – this is the one.

Which is the distraction-free writing app for you?

It all comes down to what need from a writing app, which platforms you need to use and how important the distraction-free experience is over other features.

To help you make this choice, we’re going to focus the rest of this article on narrowing your options by looking at the following criteria and recommending the best apps for each of them:

1. Platform availability: First, you need an app that’s supported on all the devices you need to use it on, whether you’re a Windows, Mac, iPhone or Android user.
2. Cross-platformability: How good is the app for using across all of your devices and platforms so you can start work on one machine, finish on another and collaborate with others as you go?
3. Writing features: All of these apps offer a different range of writing features – so which are the ones you really need?
4. Cost & Value: There’s always a budget to work with and you want to know you’re getting the best value for your money.
5. Usability: There’s nothing more distracting than an app that’s difficult to use and this defeats the whole point of what we’re trying to do here. So let’s take at the most usable of the apps mentioned in this list.

Once we’re done with this lot, you should be ready to choose the writing app for you with confidence.

Best apps for your devices and platforms

It doesn’t matter how good a writing app is if it’s not available on the platforms you need it on. So, let’s start by comparing the platforms each of these tools are available on.

While Grammarly and Medium both have mobile apps available, they don’t contribute to the distraction-free experience we’re focusing on in this article, which is why we’ve marked those cells with asterisks.

Best apps for using cross-platform

Now that we’ve compared the platforms each of these tools are available on, it’s not difficult to recommend the best options for cross-platformability. If you need to be moving between devices, operating systems and browsers, these are the first apps you want to consider:

1. Google Docs
2. Evernote
3. iA Writer

The funny thing is, the top two in this category aren’t even distraction-free writing apps in themselves but they nail it when it comes to cross-platformability.

If this is important to you, then these are the top three choices for you.

Best for writing features

The downside with distraction-free writing apps is you tend to sacrifice a lot of writing features for the sake of simplicity. If you only want to type plain text then a regular text editor will do the trick for you – but this isn’t why you’r reading this article.

You want to find a certain balance between distraction-free writing and the features you need to get the job done. Feature-wise, here are your best options:

1. Google Docs
2. Evernote
3. Typora

None of these apps offer the most distraction-free writing experience (although Typora comes close), but you can simply do more with them.

What’s amazing is all of these are available for free, despite packing more features into their tools than the other options.

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Best for cost & value

In order to determine how much you’re getting for your money with these apps, we’ve graded them in three categories:

1. Freedom: How distraction-free the writing experience is.
2. Features: What you get in terms of writing, publishing and document management features.
3. Cost: The relative price of each app.

We’ve compared the pricing of each tool and converted these into scores out of ten (e.g.: free = 10/10) and then calculated an overall score based on the mean average.

Obviously, price factors heavily in this category and the apps that are available for free have a big advantage in this section.

Best for usability

As I said earlier, there’s nothing more distracting than a app that’s difficult to use and all of the tools in this article score well when it comes to usability.

This already makes it difficult to select winners in this category and usability is a fairly subjective thing, too. If you’re coming from Microsoft Word, for example, Google Docs is always going to be easier to get used to than a markdown editor which switches the writing process on its head.

With this in mind, I’m recommending these three options as the most usable for different types of users:

1. Evernote: For users who want the distraction-free writing experience with all the features and WYSIWYG you expect from a traditional word processor.
2. Ulysses: For a truly distraction-free writing experience that makes it easy to make the transition from WYSIWYG to markdown writing.
3. Byword: For the most usable, distraction-free writing experience for people comfortable with markdown editors.

Whichever of these writing apps you choose to work with, usability won’t be a major issue, though. They’re all great in this regard and the ultimate choice will come down to personal preference and the features you need.

Best of all, many of these are free so you can try them out to get a better idea of what you want from a distraction-free writing app.

Don’t let distractions kill your content efforts

Your readers will never fully know the time and effort that goes into producing all of your content and all that matters to them is the end product. In terms of ROI, this is all that matters to your content marketing strategy, too, and every distraction that holds you back reduces the return you get from your content investment.

Finding the tools that to help you hit targets faster are invaluable and among these 10 distraction-free writing apps, I’m sure you’ll find the tool that makes all the difference.

All that’s left now is for you to choose the right app for your needs.

We write on computers. Computers have the Internet. Internet is an infinite pool of information and entertainment.

Once we sit down to write, hundreds of distractions including Facebook and social media notifications, news, weather alerts, and videos constantly scream for our attention, even if for one second. If we get tempted to look, that second turns into a minute, and then into an hour as we switch tabs, watch cat videos that never stop scrolling our feed, and get lost in the world of social media. When we try to brave these interruptions to get back to our writing, a tiny box pops up in a corner of our computer to inform us that XYZ bought a ticket to the Disney and is feeling happy.

Why don’t we switch off the Internet to write without getting interfered?

Writers, bloggers, and content creators need the web while writing to research the topic or to delve into language. But even if they disconnect from the Internet, various tabs and toolbars of traditional writing software distract them.

Quick navigation

Best Distraction Free Writing App Mac

Traditional writing software aren’t enough.

The most popular writing software — Pages (for iOS) and Microsoft Word — are losing their hold on creators for the market offers smarter writing applications now.

With these new distraction-free writing software, a writer can

• switch to focused or typewriter mode
• format her writing with markdown editors
• design the outline of her novel and big projects
• preview the writing in pdf form

— while never leaving the keyboard.

Pages and Microsoft Word lack all these above-mentioned capabilities thus forcing writers to find their best writing applications elsewhere.

Writing distraction-free is hard.

To help you write with no interruptions, we analyzed countless writing tools to come up with a list of the best writing applications.

Our favorite editor so far is Ulysses. Ulysses’s sophisticated features, slick interface, and an in-depth user manual for a really affordable price make it stand way ahead than other writing tools. iA Writer comes close to Ulysses in terms of a simple writing interface and has a rich markdown editor, but iA Writer isn’t as capable as Ulysses in terms of advanced features.

We have also provided a list of the deserving competitors of Ulysses and iA Writer. You can compare the most distinguishing features of these apps along their pricing to see which writing application fits you the best.

Let us go through these winner distraction-free writing apps one by one.

Our favorite app to write ‘Distraction-Free’: Ulysses

($4.99 USD per month subscription. Support Macs, iPads and iPhones.)

Ulysses is a simple markdown editor for focused writing. Along with basic edit features that standard writing software come with, Ulysses is a bundle of advanced features for all kinds of writers — while never making them compromise on their creative focus.

Let us go into the setup and features of Ulysses in detail.

Setting up and using Ulysses

Once you install Ulysses on your Mac, the application gives a simple to follow introduction guide on how to make the best of the app. The Library pane on the left side provides a rich user manual with easy to follow instructions while you are writing.

The interface

Ulysses’s interface is user-friendly and is meant for the most non-technical writers.

On the left sidebar, you can find the Library, Introduction to Ulysses, and Inbox — where you can see all your files.

Once you have read through the First Steps of the introduction guide, you can create content right away by clicking on the editor (the pen symbol).

All the documents or in Ulysses’s language — the sheets — that you create go under your Inbox which is uploaded on iCloud, without you having to change any settings. Download Ulysses on your iPhone and iPad and enable iCloud so that you can access all your documents while you are on the go. Ulysses will keep your work synchronized across your devices.

On the top right of the interface, you have the export and publish options, Statistics such as word count on your writing, markup options, and attachments. Click on any one of the choices to edit or add to your writing.

Getting distracted by the various options and just want to write? You can just switch to the typewriter mode in full screen. You can also choose between a dark or light theme to set your environment as per your convenience.

How much simpler can a writing interface get?

Now as we know how to set up and get started with Ulysses, let’s explore the advanced features of Ulysses in detail.

Focus and productivity

Ulysses offers a typewriter mode for focused writing. In this mode, Ulysses only shows you the editor window and hides all the other tabs. While writing in focused mode, you can highlight the current line, a sentence, or an entire paragraph. This way you only need to focus on what you are typing at the moment.

If you wish to edit two documents at the same time, Ulysses provides a double editor. You can use the double editor even in the highlight mode so that you don’t get distracted.

There is a minor flaw here. If you had chosen to display Library from the view menu, even when you go in the typewriter mode, the Library panel displays on the left. To make it go away, you will have to manually deselect Library from the View options.

Ulysses also has an inbuilt Markup Editor. Using Ulysses’s native markup language ‘Markdown XL,’ you can format your writing without ever leaving the keyboard. By using dashes, numbers, and command shortcuts, you can add lists, make a sentence bold, add images and quotes, and mark text for deletion — all with keyboard shortcuts.

During our testing, we used the Markdown XL to write richly formatted texts with just the keyboard shortcuts. What would be a better way to minimize distractions than never touching the mouse?

To maximize productivity, you can even create goals with Ulysses. While tracking goals within Ulysses, you can track your writing progress and stay on schedule — without using any other application.

After thorough testing of Ulysses’s interface, we conclude that Ulysses’s typewriter mode is one of the best digital typewriters in the market.

Organization and management

The job of a writer not only involves writing, but writers also need to organize their work well. Ulysses provides filters and groups to classify similar sets of writing together.

If you have draft blog posts, you can put them under a group. If you are writing characters of a novel? You can can right-click on the group , select ‘New Filter’, and then add the characters under a new filter ‘character.’

Even within a document, you can insert bookmarks to return to the same paragraph later and edit.

Ulysses is meant for a multi-genre writer without having the writer remember what goes where.

Synchronization across devices

Ulysses keep your documents synchronized amongst iPad, iPhone, and Mac. With Ulysses’s perfect synchronization, you don’t have to wait to access the device you last edited your document on.

Ulysses acknowledges that writing ideas occur sporadically and provides a well-integrated environment across devices to write tension-free.

Ulysses even takes a failsafe automatic backup of your entire library on the local hard drive. Even if iCloud gets full or a system update deletes folders, you never lose work.

Export & sharing

Unlike the standard software like Microsoft Word and Pages, you can live preview your document in Ulysses. Whether you need your work as a pdf report or a html file, you can select the preview option from the top-right corner of the screen to see how the document looks.

If everything looks perfect, you can export the document to five formats: Text, html, EPub, PDF, and docs. Or you can even publish the file to Ghost, Medium, and WordPress with Ulysses’s Publishing feature.

Like traditional editors, Ulysses provides word, character, space, and paragraph count. But the impressive feature of Ulysses is that you can even see the time taken to read the document with slow, fast, average, speeds or while speaking it aloud.

This feature is gaining popularity for many publications only accept writing under a specified reading time.

With preview and statistics, you can finalize any writing piece within Ulysses. Then export or publish from within Ulysses to continue writing without getting distracted by the world of the internet.

Apart from these advanced features that can make any writer’s life easy, Ulysses offers Intelligent search, various themes and the option to create your own writing environment, a support of more than ten languages, and much more.

A minor disadvantage of Ulysses is that you might take a bit of a time to get used to the advanced interface of the app, like other writing applications. But once you understand how the shortcuts and full-screen mode works, Ulysses keeps you safe from all distractions.

While testing Ulysses, we have become a life-time fan of Ulysses for the app offers everything that a focused writer wishes for.

But how much do we have to pay for this brilliant writing app?

Availability and pricing

Ulysses has a free trial which you can use to test the software before shifting to a fully-paid environment. Ulysses’s subscription costs $4.99 for a month or $39.99 yearly (3.33 per month) — in the US. You may also get Ulysses from Setapp.

With extensive features and a simple writing interface — while not forgetting the price you pay — Ulysses is by far the best writing application present on Mac and iOS. For the sophisticated features, Ulysses isn’t costly and also offers a special discount to students.

Also great: iA Writer

($29.99 USD one-time purchase. Support Macs, iOS, Android and Windows)

iA Writer is an advanced, markdown text editor for all writers. With a no-nonsense editing interface, iA Writer lets you do what you do the best — write.

iA Writer has a typewriter and focused mode to write distraction-free. You can highlight the current sentence or paragraph in iA Writer similar to Ulysses.

iA Writer’s full-screen mode even hides the open tabs to create the best writing environment for you.

The simple markdown editor of iA Writer provides enough keyboard shortcuts so that you never have to touch the mouse. If you forget the shortcuts, just hover to the bottom of the screen to find the right keyboard shortcut on the markdown toolbar.

With iA Writer, aspiring writers can improve their writing style for this editing tool highlights adverbs, adjectives, verbs, nouns, and even conjunctions. You can track the usage of modifiers, indirect verbs, and weak words to keep them at a minimum.

While in Pages you cannot go into a focus mode, and Microsoft Word first asks you to choose a layout before writing, iA Writer let you type right away on a minimal screen.

But iA Writer lacks Ulysses’ primary features such as live preview without exporting, synchronization amongst various devices, double editor, reading speed, and automatic backups.

When it comes to pricing, iA Writer has a variant pricing for all the platforms. iA Writer’s license costs $29.99 for Mac, $9.99 for iPhone and iPad, and $19.99 for Windows. You may download free trials of iA Writer for Mac, Windows and Android, no free trials on iTunes.

Overall, though iA Writer doesn’t stand against Ulysses in terms of advanced features, if you are looking for an app to simply write and not worry about anything else, and if you prefer one-time purchase over subscription — iA Writer is your best bet.

Other distraction-free writing apps

Ulysses and iA Writer are our best picks. But here are some competitors that are worth mentioning if you have specific requirements for your writing software.

Let us go through these fine writing apps one by one.

Focused

($19.99 one-time license, support for Mac)

Focused is a one of its kind markdown editor that offers soothing inbuilt soundtracks to listen while writing.

Focused has inbuilt Zen soundtracks for better productivity. You can listen to any of the eight tracks while writing to get maximum focus. As the music comes along with Focused, the writer never has to leave the editor or switch applications to change the song or pause the music. Focused is the best tool for people who write with music.

Focused also comes with a markdown editor and a typewriter mode with sentence and paragraph highlighting to write with full concentration.

With a typewriter mode and inbuilt music, Focused might look like the best option to write distraction-free.

But unlike Ulysses or iA Writer, Focused doesn’t have an option to preview writing in pdf format or highlight adverbs and adjectives and misses many other advanced features of our two favorite writing software.

A one-time license of Focused for Mac costs $19.99 — which is better than iA Writer and Ulysses. For the price you pay and depending on the features you need, Focused could be the right fit.

WriteRoom

($9.99 one-time license, support for Mac)

WriteRoom adheres to the literal meaning of the application’s name as the app is just a black screen with green text – An environment that takes you away from the regular world and into a writing room. WriteRoom is for the minimalist writers who don’t want to exit the writing room until they have written their heart out.

Minimalistic writing interface is WriteRoom’s stand-out feature.

WriteRoom’s Mac OS license costs $9.99 — which seems fair for the simple features provided.

On days you find it hard to write, you can switch on WriteRoom and forget about the world. But if you need more features or editing options, you would have to move out of WriteRoom.

Scrivener

($56 one-time license, support for Mac, iOS and Windows)

Scrivener combines the features of a smart digital editor with a real writing process.

Scrivener offers inbuilt templates for novels, dramas, essays, poems, recipes, and even stage plays. While starting a new document, you can not only choose the required project format, but you can also select if you want to create a character or a chapter and then provides the right template.

You can write distraction-free with the full-screen or composition mode of Scrivener with typewriter scrolling.

During the writing project, Index cards can be used to write nascent thoughts. Scrivener’s digital corkboard can be used to arrange these ideas and find a connection between them.

Scrivener also offers an Outliner view for viewing the structure of your writing project. Scrivener Outliner view allows dragging and dropping sections, adding or moving headings, marking to-dos, keeping targets, and tracking progress.

Scrivener is a really smart editor equipped with many advanced editing and project management features. With Scrivener’s Insert tool, you can even add tables, images, Bibliography, and math equations to your writing.

Hundreds of testimonials by recognized authors on Scrivener’s website would agree that Scrivener is an excellent writing and managing tool for a novel or a large project.

But if you want to write a short story or simple blog articles, Scrivener might not be the best option for the interface is not straightforward. During our testing, we found the editor interface complex and full of hard-to-understand options.

Scrivener’s license is priced at $56 for a Mac and $49 for Windows. The iOS version costs $19.99. You can also buy a bundle of the app for Mac OS and Windows that would cost you $94.

For the pricing and the complex features, Scrivener doesn’t look like the best option but it is still a great writing tool for writers who want to manage and plot their entire novels on a writing platform.

ProWritingAid

($70 USD per year subscription, support for Mac, iPad, iPhone, Windows, Web Editor, Chrome Extension)

ProWritingAid is an editor, grammar checker, and style editor. Apart from using the Desktop versions of this application, you can add ProWritingAid to Google docs or install its Chrome extension to edit everything that you write.

As you write, ProWritingAid provides word suggestions or a contextual Thesaurus. It also highlights overused and repeated words to improve writing. By suggesting to delete redundant words, ProWriting Aid fastens the editing process.

The tool emphasizes complex paragraphs and sentences to make the text more readable. While also assessing readability along with other relevant statistics, ProWriting Aid allows you to create your best piece of work.

When its time to publish or send your work to publications, you can check for plagiarism from within ProWritingAid to make sure you didn’t write a duplicate statement.

Even though ProWritingAid is one of the best style editors, unlike Ulysses or iA Writer, ProWritingAid doesn’t have a TypeWriter mode, options to preview writing before exporting it, and markdown keyboard shortcuts.

A one-year subscription to ProWritingAid costs $70, two-year costs $100, and a life-time subscription costs $240.

For this pricing, ProWritingAid seems to be a great grammar and style editor — but it is not one of the best distraction-free apps as even in the full-screen mode you see the application’s toolbar.

Bear

($1.49 USD per month subscription, support for Mac, iPad, iPhone)

Bear is a simple writing and note-taking app.

Bear allows you to write in focused mode with the application’s markdown editor to achieve maximum productivity. With Bear, you can make cross-notes, create checklists within the document, sketch in between text, insert links, and organize your writing with tags.

In addition to the markdown language, Bear comes with twenty programming languages. You can write and code, both, with the same application.

While syncing your writing on various devices and Apple watches, Bear lets you write on the go. Bear also offers export in different formats and direct publishing to Medium, WordPress, and Evernote.

If your focus is on taking notes, writing down inspiration, and project management, Bear is a smart application to achieve the same.

Bear subscription plans are monthly and yearly — $1.49 monthly with a one-week free trial and $14.99 annually with a one-month free trial.

As per the smart pricing and features, Bear is a good choice for content creators who put together inspiration from various sources to create the final draft. But Bear still doesn’t beat Ulysses or iA Writer in terms of a distraction-free interface or advanced features.

Byword

($10.99 one-time license, support for Mac and iOS)

Byword is a straightforward markdown editor for Apple users.

Byword also has the Focused Typewriter Mode to help you write without getting disturbed. With the simple markdown editor of Byword, you can type within the document and use keyboard shortcuts to format your writing.

Byword provides the options to choose between dark and light themes as per the time of the day and user preference. Byword syncs documents across all Mac, iPhone, and iPad devices.

The app comes with standard pdf and html export. You can also publish to Medium, WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, and Evernote from within Byword.

As Byword says, Byword is a Markdown app for writing in plain text efficiently.

Byword is a simple and elegant writer for fiction writers, bloggers, and content creators alike. You can purchase Byword’s license for $10.99, which is a great price for a writing app with the included features. But Byword doesn’t have a free trial to try the app before purchasing.

Storyist

($59 one-time license, support for Mac and iOS)

Another writing tool for Apple users, Storyist, as the name says, is for storytellers, novelists, and screenwriters. With inbuilt templates for screenplays, plays, and novels, Storyist has a rich text editor which supports comments and images as well.

Similar to Scrivener, Storyist has inbuilt templates for stories, novels, screenplays, and plays. While starting a new document, you can opt between the various default templates for scenes, characters, settings, plot points, and outline to get a head-start on writing.

Storyist provides index cards to note your thoughts, then rearrange or expand to build on the idea.

When finished writing, writers can export their writing in pdf, html, rich-text, and many other useful formats. Storyist comes with unique export features as you can export a book directly in the Kindle format from the app.

Storyist is a competitive editing tool for storytellers.

If you are looking for a distraction-free app, Storyist might not be the best choice as there is no focus or typewriter mode. Also, while creating a new file you have to choose from a plethora of templates before you can start writing.

But for a $59 one-time license, Storyist is a powerful application to develop plot outlines, characters, and scenes.

Other apps to support your writing

Writing is more about collecting your inspiration and editing than putting words to paper. Here is our curated list of applications that will aid your writing process by helping you edit, providing grammar and style suggestions, offering the right tools to help you write faster, managing your references, and providing aid with technical writing.

Grammarly

Essentially a grammar checker, Grammarly is an intelligent tool which highlights grammatical errors and suggests style improvements. You can add Grammarly to your Chrome as an extension and edit everything you write on the web — your emails, messages, WordPress articles, and social media posts. Or download the Desktop version to check your writing before sending it or publishing it on another platform.

If you are a beginner writer, consider using Grammarly. For Grammarly has many features that can help a new writer improve her writing — such as providing contextual synonyms, highlighting grammatical errors or complex wording, pointing out redundant and overused words, checking the text for plagiarism, and assessing readability as per the audience.

Grammarly can give you a head start on your writing process.

TextExpander

As literally as the name goes, TextExpander is a nice text expansion app that allows you to insert ‘snippets’— paragraphs, standard replies, email addresses, code pieces, images — in your writing with the abbreviations you have created. As you write, TextExpander then transforms these snippets into the longer text.

If your work involves sending a lot of emails, adding various signatures, or including standard code chunks, try TextExpander to save time and get your work done faster.

Typora

Typora is another distraction-free markdown editor that allows you to insert mathematical blocks and code in your writing with the help of keyboard shortcuts.

Typora’s markdown editor supports math blocks, code, tables, and lists. The Focus and Typewriter modes that come inbuilt in Typora allow interruption-free writing.

With the live preview feature of Typora, writers can preview even the most mathematically rich documents and then export not only to doc, html, and pdf but to Latex, restructured text, and Textile.

Typora is a great interruption-free tool to write scientific and research-based mathematical documents.

Bookends

Bookends is a reference management system that helps you manage your references collected from various sources.

With Bookends you can add, delete, or search through attachments. You can add and edit your notes or search through them using Notecards. The Tag Clouds feature of Bookends helps in visualizing the stored information. You can then drill down to the reference that the word is sourced from.

Writers and creators need an effective reference system else all their ideas will get mixed up, and they could never sort through them. Bookends is a great tool to organize references and access them easily.

Focus at Will

Focus at Will provides you the right music to increase your productivity and help you focus while writing. Using human neuroscience, Focus at will has developed music that reduces distractions, maintains productivity, and enhances focus for a longer time.

After asking your priorities and other personality questions, Focus at Will provides you with a channel that you can listen to while working and an additional fifty channels to choose from.

Why don’t you tune in and see for yourself?

The bottom line

This is our best selection of writing tools and supporting writing applications that will help you write and focus better.

Ulysses is an excellent distraction-free writing app. iA Writer is also a smooth and interference-free application to write. Choose an application as per your devices and platforms, requirements, and writing features while keeping your budget in mind.

Now pick a tool and let your creative juices flow.