iA writer is an excellent example of a markdown-centric, text production powerhouse that allows you to focus on your writing and forget about formatting. Like BBEdit, Byword, Drafts, and many other applications, iA Writer excels at giving you a place to start writing without much fiddling.

By default, iA Writer saves to an iCloud folder that you can sync between your devices. This is early iOS/iCloud behavior, where applications share a folder of documents specific to that application. This made a lot of sense for casual computer users who related documents created within, say, Excel, to the application itself, rather than an application stored somewhere in the file system. For some people, opening Excel was how you got to your spreadsheet; you didn’t dig around on the (cluttered) desktop or your documents folder, because you didn’t really pay attention to where you put it after hitting save.

This iOS convention makes perfect sense for the purpose of presenting a simplified user experience, but users familiar with the notional spatial location metaphor present in file systems chafe at its limitation. Pages documents shouldn’t have to live alongside Pages documents exclusively; sometimes, the right place for a file is in a folder full of related files, creator type be damned.

The Files app on iOS opened the door to storing files in the location of your choosing; iCloud and Files now present users with the option of browsing, opening, editing–and, yes, creating–files in locations long-time Mac users know and love, including macOS’s Desktop and Documents folders, as well as other cloud-based storage (Dropbox, Google Drive).

iA Writer supports adding locations from the Files app right in the main application window. This isn’t just open and edit in place; you can navigate to any location you like in Files, and create a new file for editing right there in iA Writer. You can open it later on another device using another app, or in another app on the same device.

Writer’s Locations

Take an example: I can create a draft for Uncorrected in iA Writer in the Byword folder in iCloud. Then, when it’s time to publish, I can switch over to Byword for publishing (I like Byword’s handling of WordPress publishing better than iA Writer’s). Similarly, I can create a TaskPaper file on my Mac on the desktop, and later fetch it for review or editing using iA Writer.

https://uncorrected.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/720p.mov

Adding Locations in iA Writer

The old way of doing things in iOS–iCloud silos–remain and can present a simpler experience by eliminating file management. For those of us with the know-how or need to manage files, though, Files gives us a little more legroom. And iA Writer takes it a step further by allowing users to specify locations right in the application. It’s a great reason to keep Writer in your Dock.

DevonTHINK is where I store all kinds information: lots of PDFs, emails, documents, etc. I find it specifically helpful as a kind of digital junk drawer, but I do sometimes use it for storing project support. For example, each year, I consult with high school administrators on building the school schedule. I receive a lot of input from people in the form of emails regarding schedule requests, so I can drag those into a folder for this project. I create some lists and other text-intensive materials as well, which I can either drop into DevonTHINK, or create in the applications text-creation suite.

I just don’t really like creating content inside of DevonTHINK. It supports Markdown, for example, but it’s utterly bare bones.

I do, however, like popping open TaskPaper or BBEdit (or another text editor) and whipping up a list. Until today, I figured that any list I created outside of DevonTHINK would have to be edited on creation and then preserved in virtual amber once I imported it into DevonTHINK

But it turns out that by command-option dragging a file into DevonTHINK, you can create an alias of the file in DevonTHINK’s database, but leave the file where it is. So if you like working in iA Writer, you can always go back there when you edit information that you’re linking to inside of DevonTHINK. It’s another example of this application’s crazy flexibility.