Finally! The New iA Writer Is Now Available For Your iPhone
March 9, 2012
The iA Writer app is one of my favorites of all time. On my iPad, it has a permanent spot in the Dock, and I even use it daily on my MacBook Pro to write articles on AppAdvice for you guys. And now? Well, now it’s finally available on your iPhone!
I’ve been eagerly awaiting this one for a long time now, and I’m really glad to see it here.
For those who unaware of iA Writer, it’s a bare-bones text editor. There are no settings to adjust, because the developers want you to focus on actually writing, nothing else. This is one of the best features that a text editor can do, in my personal opinion, and I really appreciate it.
I absolutely adore the typography in iA Writer too, which was one of the main reasons why I wanted it on my iPhone for a long time. Previously, I used Second Gear’s Elements and even Writing Kit from Quang Anh Do, but I was definitely missing the iA Writer typeface. It’s just one of those things that you end up really appreciating after a while, and wish it was in other apps. Now that it is on the iPhone, I have to admit that it looks fantastic on the Retina display.
As I have been playing with the iPhone version tonight, I like it, for the most part. It is pretty much just like the iPad version, except fit for the smaller screen of the iPhone. There is an additional row on the keyboard that gives you quick access to common punctuation symbols, which means less times you have to switch to the number and symbol keyboard. There are even arrow keys that allow you to navigate between characters, which is pretty handy.
The keyboard can be slid down so you can go over what you wrote, which also exits out of the full screen writing mode. The app supports local iPhone documents, or you can use the fantastic iCloud implementation with the iPad and Mac versions. Dropbox sync is also supported.
You can even email your documents as an attachment or text, copy the text, and even print files via AirPrint. The app has also kept intact the powerful spelling and thesaurus functionalities of the iPhone, which can only help further improve your writing.
However, if you have used iA Writer on the Mac, you’ll be disappointed to learn that Markdown preview has not made it over to the iPhone version. Hopefully it will find its way in soon, because it’s a glaring omission.
Speaking of missing features, Focus Mode (you see sentence at a time, available on both the iPad and Mac versions) is also not present, as well as other shortcut buttons (like parentheses) on the keyboard and character/word count. This is still the first version for the iPhone, so I hope that the developers add them in updates.
It’s still a very solid writing app for your iPhone and iPad, and I highly recommend checking it out (and the Mac version too) for all your basic writing needs!
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