For the last two weeks I’ve now been writing all my blogposts exclusively with Ulysses while handling notes (i.e. comments, likes, links) using Drafts. Ulysses has finally allowed me to write posts including images without having to do any additional steps before publishing them. Sure, part of that is thanks to some custom coding around converting TextPack files into proper pull-requests for my site, but I wouldn’t have spent all this time and effort if the writing experience wasn’t great!
A big part of that is the seamless hand-off between iOS and macOS apps. It’s not as instantaneous as with Drafts but it’s still fast enough and usually doesn’t get in my way.
I also really like the way the sidebar is implemented and gives you a quick overview of what’s in a folder/group/project including nested groups. For instance, I have one project called “My Blog” which contains all the drafts I’m working on at a time. Once a draft has reached the point where I can publish it but still want to wait for the next day (for various reasons) I just move it into a subfolder called “Ready”. Content of such subfolders is still listed in the navigation but grouped.
Something that I only found out about a couple of days ago is the CMD+o shortcut, which allows you quick navigation between the most recently worked on documents. That shortcut is not only available on macOS but also on iOS if you have a keyboard connected!
So, while Ulysses is not cheap at €40 per year, I consider it well worth it! I think nothing has ever streamlined my writing process that much before! Writing is fun again!
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Alternatively, this website also supports Webmentions. If you write a post on a blog that supports this technique, I should get notified about your link 🙂