Do you prefer Scrivener for iOS or Ulysses?

Hello everyone,
I have both, and am using the free trial of Ulysses to test it out.

The biggest bonus of Ulysses over Scrivener I have found is the sync – I really don’t like the Dropbox syncing in the Srivener app, and it makes me feel like I can never trust it.

Scrivener feels like a coffee stained, post-it note covered binder in a leather armchair, while Ulysses feels like a sleek Apple-esque app, almost as if it is the official Apple Writing App. Both great in different ways.

One thing I’ve found interesting is that Ulysses is better when you have ALL your writing – from notes to journals to articles to books to references to quotes – in one place. Scrivener is project based, but despite that you could, if you wanted, use it in exactly the same way as Ulysses, with everything in one project. Do any of you use it that way?

Yes, and that’s the exact reason I don’t like Ulysses. Plus Ulysses is markdown and I want rich text.
With all the different stuff I’ve written over the years I couldn’t have it all in one place.

This is a tough question to ask, because the question specifies iOS. On iOS, Ulysses is more feature-complete with the desktop version. Were an iPad my only device, I can get a manuscript created and into a publishable format using just Ulysses.

On iOS, a lot of the shortcomings with Scrivener can be a pain. The sync is a challenge at times. I can get around that by copying the file in and out of iCloud to the On My iPad section easy enough. I do wish it uses the compile tools from Scriv 3, even if it was just to Word or PDF. I have never really gotten an output from iOS Scrivener I have been happy with. I wish I could have the collections from the desktop. Scrivener on iOS is more about writing on the go than doing all the work in Scrivener. This is fine.

On a holistic platform-level, I prefer Scrivener for non-web based writing. Markdown doesn’t bother me. I do like that with Scrivener it’s a lot easier for me to name a scene than in Ulysses. I can really tweak the output with Scrivener 3. Scrivener’s variables – like automatic chapter numbering – are an incredible boon.

What technical support question about Scrivener for iOS do you have? If you don’t, there are other places on this forum that are an appropriate place for this discussion.

Maybe a mod has moved this thread since you posted the above, but the description of the Software and Development section of the forum is: ‘Talk about any software you want, whether it’s ours or someone else’s. Recommend useful programs, discuss the competition (politely, though, please) or chat about developing apps.’

I agree on all your points. Drobpox sync isn’t ideal (but needed for Scrivener), Ulysses look is very sleek, and I actually tend to use Scrivener a bit like Ulysses too. Said that, Scrivener is way more feature rich, it’'s rich text (which is an option I like although I kind of use it mostly as if it was a text editor) and in spite of having both, I tend to use Scrivener way more than Ulysses.

I also have no issue moving from MacOS to iOS and back with Scrivener

Looks like they did, as the breadcrumbs when I wrote it were to the Scrivener iOS technical support forum. Enjoy!

:slight_smile: 8)

I’ve posted this before but I can’t find it offhand. Basically I use Ulysses for notes because of its sync and search (1.2 million words are no problem) and Scrivener for writing because Ulysses organizational features aren’t up to multiple rounds of revision.

But i’m really getting sick of dealing with fonts and all the other rtf cruft in Scrivener.

I believe you are thinking about your posts in this thread

Wait a second.

We had this exact same post by a different account back in August. https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/do-you-prefer-scrivener-for-ios-or-ulysses/46868/1

Literally the exact same copy and paste.

I love the smell of astroturf in the morning.

Yup, you’ll note the original poster has already been nuked from the system and exists only in name. :slight_smile: I deleted their “follow up” post wherein porn spam (or whatever HP Printer scam support they were hawking) was injected into the quoted text.

The funny thing is that in many of these cases, these “advertisers” are engendering interesting conversations and usage threads worth keeping around, once their cultural backwash is stripped out, of course.