Byword App Reviews

This is my favourtie markdown app, but the OS X shortcuts need to be added, a « time reading » feature can be pretty cool too. Thanks.

It’s my all-purpose markdown editor, and I use it for all sorts of documents. Forget all the “minimalist” stuff. This app has keybaord shortcuts for the most important operations, is fast, has helpful syntax highlighting, can preview and export to HTML. I can’t write about the iCloud sync or Premium features because I don’t use them.

The keyboard shortcuts for text alignment doesnt works in the actual version

Nice, clean UI, makes writing a pleasure (though it does not boost your creativity, as someone already mentioned. ;-)). Just two small things: What I would like to see is a warning that all formatting will be lost when switching from formatted text to plain text (I know I can undo that, but still …). And when formatting text (making a word bold, and with a few more paragraphs so that theres scrolling) the scrolling position changes unexpectedly. Guess that this is some kind of bug.

Finally. A minimalist distraction-free writing environment. For all those of you who tried WriteRoom and never managed to get the settings quite right, or those who never wanted something as complex in the first place. All the important features are there, the price is low and there seems to be active development. I recommend it.

Function to create new markdown document doesnt seem to work (option appears nowhere), and markdown rendering seems very limited. Currently the app "Marked" by Brett Terpstra is probably the example to look to, for how Markdown should be rendered and with what kind of options. Too bad there was no demo because I bought this as an alternative to iawriter, precisely because it was supposed to completely support Markdown which iawriter only does partly.

other than that great app

I really love this neatly designed app, especially the dark theme for writing at night and the paragraph focus, which lets you concentrate on just the part of the text you are writing at the moment. The only thing i dont like, is the missing indentation for markdown tags like the hash. Everything aligned leftside and the tags indented over the left border would make your written text so much easier to read and the overall appearance of it so much nicer. Please Metaclassy & TinyTree, add this feature to make a nearly perfect app perfect ;-)

Byword delivers what iA Writer promises. Markdown markup makes only sense with a preview and HTML export. Its there. Even a very minimalistic text editor should have some configuration options like display font and font size. Its there. iCloud is great, if you can directly delete or rename a file. Its there. iPad app and Mac application should behave similarly. Its there. Dark background and various text block widths are there. Want to hide counters? You can. The only thing I miss, is iA Writers focus mode that recognizes and highlights whole sentences. In Byword you can only focus on single lines of texts or whole paragraphs. Otherwise I would have rated 6 stars. ;-)

Byword is the first app that I actually bought for money. Im picky when it comes to my text editor. I need something that really just does text and isnt annoying. What I like about Byword is the non-existent window bar thingy on top and the grey slider and both fade out when you start to write. Its nice. But then there was the Beach Ball of DOOM. It happened when I wanted to change a ~120 page document from justified to right-aligned. The same happened when I tried to up the font size on the same document. Byword stopped in its tracks, stared at me in disbelief and didnt move again until I forced a program restart. This happened on top of the annoying fact that Byword cant remember where I put the cursor when I close a document. If that were the only problem Id still use it, but freezing? Nope. So Im using an older app that doesnt have as nice a window style but is fast and remembers the cursor. I miss the window style so I hope that some day soon Byword will be able to handle big files - and to remember where I put that cursor.

Simple & plain. Makes writing fun.

The current version of the app is quite raw and buggy. One example: if you want to write multiple paragraphs in list items (done with a space indent and, optionally, inserting a new line before the new paragraph), Byword does not handles it properly. In Markdown preview, it doesnt put it under the list item and also, a link to the following list items (numbering) is lost. Furthermore, If you fix that in another text editor and want to export, say, to a PDF – the numbering of list items is also false. I cannot recommend anyone spending their money on this editor at the moment. Please, wait till these issues are fixed or go for another editor.

This app is clean and lean... perfect for the times when you dont need all those crazy Word features.

The screen shot above says it all: minimal & calm, focused, beautiful typography. In this oasis I write better, which means Byword paid for itself in about 30 seconds. After 25 years of Palatino, Im retiring it for Cochin, an exquisitely readable font that makes me want to commitment letters to the screen -- the goal in my occupation. I have zero criticisms. This is the sweet spot between simplicity and function. If I knew the developer, Id send flowers.

I never thought I could say this but I think I found an app better and more simplistic than OmmWriter. It doesnt handle full screen and switching spaces too well though.

Let me paint you a picture. Youve got iA Writer on your iPad for quick, easy writing. Save your document to dropbox and then pick it up with Byword for the same experience on your iMac or MBP. Absolute integration without thinking, wires or syncing. Just pure, unhindered writing. If you want an app that just works for simple, productive writing, look no further. Well worth the money. I would have paid double what I did, its just that good.

Byword is elegant. It has more options than other apps in its category without losing the soul that powers it: simplicity.

Could some body develope an iPad version that syncs through wi fi?

Theres a lot of fullscreen writing apps out there for the Mac, and each of them offer a different writing experience, for the different kinds of writers that are out there. OmmWriter is one for the writer that wants to free his or her mind, and shut out distractions not just on their computer, but on a mental level. WriteRoom is one for writers that harken back to a simpler computing era, when a program settles on a black screen with bright green text. Byword settles smartly between these two extremes. Its for those that find OmmWriters approach a little overly soothing, and WriteRooms approach a little too spartan. Its writing environment is easy on the eyes, and its default typography options are good for readability. It doesnt block Growl notifications or make any sounds, so if you want your computers other activities at arms length, Byword will allow that. I also like that it has bold and italics as well as underlining; most minimal writing apps just have underlining. I also like that it looks the same in windowed mode as well as fullscreen mode. It also has some interesting new ideas that have great potential for intensive writing tasks. Its "focus" feature, which fades out certain text so that whats most clearly visible is the text the writer needs to focus on the most, its "Transformations" feature that can capitalize, make upper case, or make lower case any block of text, saving you time. Its ability to type in both rich text and plain text (and switch between them) is cool, and its contextual popover makes it easy to tweak your writings appearance. Its important for some text to look different from other text; it makes it easier for a writer to visually scan different sections of the text. Its find and replace feature is also extremely clever. The wordcount and character count feature is included as an unobstructive message at the bottom of the program, and it even says whether this document is rich text or plain text: terribly clever. Knowing whether a bit of text is Rich or Plain is important: plain text is more compatible, but rich text is easier to work with. A lot of fullscreen writing apps will only work with one or the other, OmmWriter will only work with plain text, for instance. That Byword can work with both, and switch between them, is great. Some of the more surprising features include light and dark "themes", where you can switch it to white text against a black background. Its often much easier to see white against black on a computer screen, so if you need that sort of thing, Byword can deliver. The "dark" mode is a lot like WriteRoom, but its still very easy on the eyes, not just with its typography options, but that it looks much more natural and "soft", with its antialiased text, slightly textured background to look more like paper, and the background isnt totally black, like how the "light" themes background isnt totally white. If theres one thing that exhausts the eyes, its extremes. Paper doesnt look totally white, and it wouldnt look totally black if it was. Inertia scrolling is a welcome addition as well, and I think the need to switch fonts on the fly is now entirely unnecessary. A truly elegant minimalism has been achieved here, and the addition of a huge drop-down menu to change the font on a certain block of text could easily mar it. If you really do need different fonts for different bits of text, you should be using a full-featured word processor, like Pages. One odd thing Ive noticed, though, is that Byword will automatically change the font in the actual document, instead of simply displaying it in its own fonts without changing anything, like OmmWriter can. This is a little bit annoying, because if I open the document later in WriteRoom, the font has changed from its default font to Cochin, which doesnt look quite right. Considering Byword changes the font without asking you, and I have to switch it back afterwards in another program, there must be a way to display the document in its font without changing it in the document. Still, even with that minor issue, Byword is a truly superlative writing program. Elegant, clever, understated, pleasing to the eye and full-featured, it really is a writing program thats just right.

Wasnt that impressed with Byword. If youre looking for a way to get distractions out of the way when you are writing you can accomplish the same thing by selecting "Full Screen View" in Word. The "focus" feature is useful but it doesnt work well. It only works if you dont move your mouse and navigate through your text using the arrow keys which I find impractical.