Ulysses

Ulysses is a long-form writing app from Ulysses GmbH & Co. KG, distributed through Apple's stores for Mac, iPad and iPhone, and its organising idea is one library rather than a folder of loose files. Sheets become scenes and chapters that you reorder inside a project, notes and reference images attach to the draft, the editor is plain markup you can drive from the keyboard, and goals keep a daily word or character target in view while you write. Output is where it earns its keep: PDF, Word and ebook export, plus direct publishing to WordPress, Ghost, Medium and Micro.blog, and the trial is offered as fully functional across all your devices, which is the right way to test it.

Know the edges. It is Apple-only, so Windows and Linux people leave, and since the library is the product rather than a directory you can open and search, the thing to verify before a second year of paying is that your text leaves in a usable form — plain text or Markdown out of the app, not only a rendered book. Then the AI question: the current homepage foregrounds a built-in grammar and style check covering more than twenty languages and does not lead with a chat assistant, so if you are buying a rewrite button specifically, check which AI features exist in the version you buy and whether the subscription gates them. For a writer whose novel lives in one library, that restraint is the point. For a workshop of characters, lore and branches, it is the wrong door.