I found the Perfect Writers App suite for 2024?
I compared 15 apps. Here’s the TOP apps every writer needs.
There are the 4 stages to creativity:
Each stage has a different desired outcome and therefore different criteria.
- Preparation — learn everything you can about the problem. Do you know the problem so well, that you can talk about it in frame storm solutions without referring to your notes?
- Incubation — when you aren’t actively working on the problem.
- Illumination — the aha moment. That flash of insight where the answer becomes clear and obvious.
- Verification — evaluate the idea you arrived at during the aha moment.
Apps Reviewed
Preparation Stage
Incubation Stage
Illumination Stage
- Audio recording + transcription
- Capacities
- Google docs
- Evernote
- OneNote
- Apple Notes
- Craft.do
- UpNote
Verification
TL;DR
An interface that works exceptionally well for researching and connecting unique ideas (which is ideal in the Preparation stage) would likely be a terrible for editing and proof-reading (the verification stage).
I’ve tested 15 apps to streamline each stage, so you don’t have to.
Overall winners:
- Preparation — Napkin
- Incubation — balance
- Illumination — Audio recording + transcription
- Verification — Essay
If you want the fewest apps possible:
- Capacities for Preparation, Illumination, and Verification
- A meditation playlist on your music app of choice for Incubation
If you don’t want to spend any money:
- Capacities for Preparation, Illumination, and Verification
- If you can find a free transcription service, swap out “audio recording + transcription” for the illumination stage
- Balance (free for 1 year) for Incubation
If you want simplicity of workflow and cheap above all else:
- Capacities for Preparation, Illumination, and Verification (Capacities is complicated, but if you use the system I outline below, it simplifies it a lot)
- A meditation playlist on your music app of choice for Incubation
For those who want to nuts and bolts and want to come to their own conclusion, the rest of this article is for you.
Let me know your writing workflow in the comments!
If you’re a Writer who’s FULL of ideas but struggles getting shit done, I have a daily Micro-Newsletter designed to help you.
A 500 character, 3-bullet style email with the top hacks, tips, and ideas to help Writers Get Shit Done.
Click the link below to join:
Criteria for each stage
Preparation
- Ease of use — You want to easily add ideas as they arise and quickly switch between topics in the preparation stage.
- Integrations — You want to be able to grab clips from articles, import screenshots or screen recordings, and scan text — so a browser extension or some form of integration is a must.
Incubation
- Direction — You want to be able to let go, so having the option of having direction to keep your mind from wondering is helpful.
- Simplicity — You don’t want to get distracted while in this stage, so simplicity is crucial.
Illumination
- Ease of use — You want to be able to write quickly before the insights leave
- Simple design — you want to be able to focus on writing and not get distracted
Verification
- Streamlined information — this is not the time to get distracted going down rabbit holes. You want a quick and accurate process.
Of note — I will be including an “overall” rating in each stage, which takes into account the criteria listed, as well as the price and the function.
Let’s dive in.
REVIEWS
Preparation Stage
Napkin — $10/mth. $300/lifetime
- Ease of use — 7/10
- Simplicity — 7/10
- Overall — 7/10
When inputting ideas, Napkin shines. After clicking the “+” button, you simply write you idea and click save.
Napkin also has the ability to scan text, and has a chrome extension (unfortunately not a safari extension 😔) so grabbing text while exploring ideas and connections is a breeze.
Napkin has an AI that auto-tags the ideas. What’s interesting about the AI is that it doesn’t just read the text and tag the note with a keyword (which is what I assumed at first). It seems to take the concept and tag the concept.
E.g. I uploaded the 4 stages outlined in this article (preparation, incubation, generation, and validation) and the AI correctly tagged it with “Creativity”.
Napkin also uses “Stacks” where you can create a “stack” (think folder) of multiple notes.
This is helpful because it allows you to essentially “pin” a note to a wall, so you can view it quickly.
When trying to recover your ideas, simply search a word you ay have used, or a tag that is related, and Napkin will automatically pull up all of the notes that meet that requirement.
You can then add them to a stack to review only the relevant ideas.
This is a really interesting app.
If you are a highly creative person constantly coming up with new ideas and looking for a better way to organize and interact with those ideas, then this could be the techie solution.
The app is still very new (e.g. I reached out to support and ended up talking with the co-founder), so I’m intrigued to see where the app ends up over the next year.
Capacities — Free on all devices. $10/mth for AI assistant, early access IOS app, and advanced formatting and linking features.
- Ease of use — 5/10
- Simplicity — 4/10
- Overall — 8/10
I know, that rating seems a bit wonky.
How can something be 5 or less on both review metrics, but 8 overall?
Very fair question. 2 reasons.
- The app is free — and with the features it has, that’s a big win.
- It took me two days of playing with it to figure out how to set it up (hence the low individual rating). But once I understood it and set it up, my workflow immediately sped up and it’s become my new favorite app — especially for idea capturing.
So let me save you 15 hours of research and give you my work flow.
if you’d rather watch me explain this workflow, simply click the loom below.
SPACE — This is the overall-category of ideas you’re working it.
I outlined mine as “Business’s Space”
OBJECT — This is a high-level section within the space that your notes will be under. I like to think of this as a high-level category.
I created an object called “Personal Brand” — in other words, one of my businesses.
COLLECTIONS — this is the lower-level category. It’s the parts that make uyp the object.
Here are my collections
- Affiliate products (making money)
- Books I’m writing (making money & building audience)
- Emails Im writing (building community)
- Articles I’m writing (building audience)
- Trainings % other product offerings (making money)
- Productivity for writers (a single product I’m working on — making money)
TAGS — This is where I live. I like to view tags as a group of things that have the same ideas or are in the same status.
Here is my life of tags:
- Marketing — (copy, ideas)
- Social proof (quotes, reviews)
- Articles (status and category of article)
- Micro newsletter
- Miscellaneous
My biggest issue with capabilities is the simplicity.
Once you understand the concepts, it makes sense, but it takes a while to get there.
It took me 15 hours of watching trainings to get there.
So there is a large learning curve.
But if you get past that learning curve, then this app has all of the things you need.
If you set up the tags in the way I suggested above, then the graph view allows you to see the interconnected ideas, which is really helpful!
You can also see all the writings you have in each status, which is helpful to spark ideas.
Obsidian — Free on one device. $8/mth for syncing devices.
- Ease of use — 6/10
- Simplicity — 7/10
- Overall — 6/10
Obsidian is the classic go to app for this process, and for good reason. You have the mind mapping view, which I believe they have done one of the best jobs in the industry.
You also have the folder system, which is crucial to be able to organize and access information quickly.
The tagging is simple (just add a # and your keyword).
There are a ton of filters, so you can see how any of your ideas are interconnected in more ways than you would think.
My biggest issue with it is adding a note Takes more steps than I believe it should. So jotting down a “quick note” is not that functional with this app.
It’s good for seeing the connections, but not great for inputting those spontaneous ideas that are crucial and are easily scared away.
Reflect — $10/mth. 14 day free trial.
- Ease of use — 4/10
- Simplicity — 4/10
- Overall — 4/10
Reflect seems to be trying to be all things, without being exceptional at any of them.
Reflect has a “tasks” section, which ventures more into the project management world and I don’t believe is necessary.
They has a decent mind map system, but it’s filtering and organization lack compared to Obsidian or Capabilities.
It has a notes system, but the structure lacks compared to Obsidian and Capabilities.
There is a graph view, but other then that it’s a list or tags view, which makes it very difficult to come back and find ideas.
Also, their tags are listed at the top of the page, which is very un-intuitive in my opinion.
In order for this app to be functional, you have to live off of tags, which is cumbersome and I don’t believe necessary.
You are able to Format the notes in a ton of ways, but without the organizational structure being there, you’re just polishing a turd.
What they do have going for them are their browser extensions.
You can easily grab information form the web and put it into the Reflect eco-system. by far the best browser extension I have found to date.
But, that doesn’t mean anything if the rest of the app is lacking.
UpNote — $1/mth or $30/lifetime
- Ease of use — 7/10
- Simplicity — 7/10
- Overall — 7/10
Before I went searching for a new note taking system I was using Evernote (and I JUST switched to UpNote).
So far I’ve been reviewing the top-notch feature-rich apps specifically for the purpose of Preparation.
And the graph view is incredibly helpful for that!
However, it’s not necessary.
What’s necessary is being able to input and access information quickly.
And honestly, using a simple app (like Evernote or UpNotes) does the trick just fine.
You have folders and subfolders.
You have tags.
You can link other notes.
And the learning curve is almost non-existent.
So if you want to go with the feature-rich highly-optimized-for-preparation, then one of the other apps will absolutely work and do wonders!
But if you’re just starting, don’t spend time trying to learn a new app.
The best thing you can do is start, and then optimize later.
So pick whatever simple app you’re already use to, and run with it.
Kortex (eventually)
I’m very excited for this one.
As soon as it’s released to the public, I’ll be adding it here.
If you’re a Writer who’s FULL of ideas but struggles getting shit done, I have a daily Micro-Newsletter designed to help you.
A 500 character, 3-bullet style email with the top hacks, tips, and ideas to help Writers Get Shit Done.
Click the link below to join:
Incubation Stage
The incubation stage is anything that is NOT focusing on the problem at hand.
So this stage can be anything.
Personally, I’ve found 2 things to be the most helpful here.
- physical activity (hitting the gym, going on a bike ride, or going for a walk).
- meditation
I have used mutiple apps for tracking and structuring my physical activity, but the types of physical activity that each person enjoys will vary, which is why I’m focusing on Meditation here.
Here are the 2 principles that are helpful for a meditation app:
- Guided — You want to be able to let go, so having the option of being guided to keep your mind from wondering is helpful.
- Simplicity — You don’t want to get distracted while in this stage, so simplicity is crucial.
side note — these meditations apps are specifically smart-phone apps. When I tried uploading screenshots from the app, because the images are vertical they are HUGE here on medium. If you know how to resize images on medium, please let me know if the comments. Otherwise, this section won’t have images.
Balance — First year free. $12/mth or $70/yr after that
- Guided — 9/10
- Simplicity — 9/10
- Overall — 9/10
Balance is the app I use for meditation.
What makes balance unique is that the apps meditations adapt to you.
You answer a few questions each day, and the app tailors their meditations to you based on your answers.
Each meditation also focuses on a specific skill (such as awareness, body san, or breath focus) and tracks your improvements. So as you meditate more, your skill improves and the meditations adapt.
You can follow a guided plan based on a goal you have (such as relieve stress, find focus, lift your mood, get support, learn the foundations, etc).
Or you can select a single meditation — my favorites include the midday reset, walking, and the morning brew with my coffee.
Calm — 7-day free trial, then $15/mth or $70/yr (typically $180/yr, but they have a deal running).
- Guided — 9/10
- Simplicity — 6/10
- Overall — 7/10 — expensive
I struggled to find simple breath, focus, or body based editatinos.
Most of the meditations seemto be centered around sleep, or learning / motivation from popular people.
I also found it difficult to keep my focus when different people led the meditations.
I believe that is a selling point for some people, but for me I would prefer the same person leading all the meditations os I can associate that voice with meditation and enter into it easier.
MindSpa
- Guided — 7/10
- Simplicity —7/10
- Overall — 6/10 — expensive
Mindspa (formerly Synctuition) is one of my favorite apps, though it’s expensive.
It claims to have “3d sound” — though I still have no idea what that is.
What I like is that it’s 25–30 minutes, has a quick vocally guided intro, and then plays beautiful sounds as you meditate.
I usually listen to this while in the Sauna and it is incredibly relaxing.
I’ve noticed myself enter deeper trances then I’m use to, because of this app.
Overall, if you really like new and organic sound, then this is the app for you.
If not, it’s not worth the money.
Illumination Stage
- Ease of use — You want to be able to write quickly before the insights leave
- Simple design — you want to be able to focus on writing and not get distracted
Audio Recording (free) & Transcription Service — Varies
- Ease of use — 9/10
- Simple design — 9/10
Pick you favorite audio recording app (I use apple voice memos), and your favorite transcription services (I outline my top 3 below), and you’re good to go.
I’ve found that being outside is extremely helpful with the flow of ideas.
Open your audio recording app, and start talking.
Once you’ve fleshed out the idea you want to convoy, you simply upload that to the transcription service and you’re good to go.
Usually there will be a bit of editing to be done later (especially if the audio wasn’t clear), but it helps get my ideas out of my head faster then I can type, which is why it’s my perfered method.
My top Transcription Service options:
- CastMagic — $40/mth for 300 minutes/mth (transcriptions are 95% accurate)
- Overall — 8/10
- Otter.ai — $17/mth for 10 unique files/mth (transcriptions are 90% accurate)
- Overall — 8/10
- Happy Scribe — $17/mth for 120 minutes/mth (transcriptions are 80% accurate)
- Overall — 7/10 because of the lower accuracy
Capacities — Free on all devices. $10/mth for AI assistant, early access IOS app, and advanced formatting and linking features.
- Ease of use — 7/10
- Simple design — 8/10
- Overall — 7/10
(You may notice Capacities now has a very different rating then earlier. That’s because we’re using it for a different purpose here).
Assuming you understand the concept of Capacities and have a good structure (as I outlined in this loom video), then the above rating applies.
As in the Preparation stage, Capacities has some solid pro’s and solid con’s here in the Illumination stage.
Let’s talk through the Pro’s first: The views.
There are 2 primary views when writing.
The first is the pop-out view (see below).
The second is the full-screen view (see below).
Personally, I like the pop-out view more.
I noticed that it narrowed my attention to a specific portion of the screen, which allows me to enter a flow state when writing.
The full screen view led to the potential of too many distractions.
This is one of the few apps that has this focus mode, which makes writing without distraction significantly easier.
Now let’s hit the con: It’s a block-based editor.
To be fair to the team at Capacities, they didn’t build this as a tool for writters.
They built it as a second brain. Having a block-building system is helpful in that recard.
If all I want to do is sit down and write, there’s a little more friction then I think there needs to be.
For example, if you want to quickly make a line of text a heading, most apps would allow you to highlight the text and then a pop-up would occue and you could select the heading option.
But with Capacities, you have to type “/” and write “head” and then you can select which level of heading you would like (1 through 4).
It’s not a lot of extra work, but it’s those little things that add up.
There are keyboard shortcuts, so if you’re techie then you could get a really solid workflow with it, but I know most people want something simple and easy — and that’s where Capacities falls short.
They are great for focus, great for all the extra features, but you sacrifice simplicity for this.
It’s similar to Notion is that regard — completely customizable and filled with tons of useful features, but you have to learn the platform.
For some people, that’s no issue at all.
For others, that’s an immediate disqualification.
So the rating here is really up to you.
If you’re fine with learning a new platform, Capacities is a solid 8/10.
If not, it’s a 6/10.
Craft.do — Free to create 10 documents + 2 extra documents per week. $10/mth for unlimited.
- Ease of use — 7/10
- Simple design — 5/10
- Overall — 6/10
Craft is also a block-editor, though the way they are designed is similar to Pages.
You can insert different block sections.
Followed by styles and formatting.
You can even adjust the background behind the document.
All of these features — and many more that seem to be at the core of Craft.do — are based around making the document look really pretty.
If your goal is to create the prettiest document, then craft is the app for you — I’d recommend playing with their gradient highlighter. It really sparks up the document.
But if you’re looking to write, it’s just a little too distracting.
A little too scattered.
A little too much.
Google Docs — FREE. Forever. For Everyone.
- Ease of use — 9/10
- Simple design — 9/10
- Overall — 6/10
Google Docs. Yes, I’m reviewing Google Docs.
Why? Because it’s FREE, and if you don’t want to spend ANY money, then google docs may be the solution for you.
Everyone reading this is probably familiar with the google docs classic view.
But did you know they have a full-screen view?
Cuts down on the clutter that you don’t need to see so you can focus on writing.
Pretty cool.
The formatting in google docs is simple and easy.
The layout is very inuitive.
The ONLY issue I have with it, is this…
If I’m on the internet (aka, not in a designated app) I WILL get distracted.
I’ll remember an email I need to send, I’ll see a notification, I’ll remember a task for work I should probably do.
Something will distract me.
That’s why I give Google Docs a 6 overall. Google docs is great, but it’s just too easy to get distracted while using it.
Evernote — Free for the first 50 notes. $15/mth for 100k notes.
I officially left Evernote after being a loyal fan for 4 years (click here to read why).
However, because I used Evernote for so long, I decided to include it in this review.
- Ease of use — 8/10
- Simple design — 7/10
- Overall — 6/10
The organization structure with Evernote is classic.
It doesn’t overwhelm, yet gives you everything you need.
Having the formatting options at the top of the page is helpful as it’s quick and easy to makw ajustments to your text without losing your train of thought.
If you’re prone to distraction, the fullscreen view is helpful.
My primary issue with Evernote is the price.
For a note taking app, it works well. But it’s nothing special — not worth $15/mth when apps like UpNote offer very similar functionality for $30 one-time.
For a full information storage platform (which would justify the price), it’s severely lacking.
It lacks a graph view, the tagging system leaves much to be desired, and the lack of a backlinking system makes this a poor information-storage platform.
This is why I give Evernote a 6/10 overall.
Buy UpNote for a one-time fee, or get Capacities for free, or some other platform and get more for your money.
OneNote — Free
- Ease of use — 4/10
- Simple design — 4/10
- Overall — 3/10
Being an avid apple user, I have to admit that I’ve never used OneNote before this review.
But someone tell me I’m not the only one who thinks it looks like it was designed in the 90s?
As I was sitting here waiting for Clippy to jump out (some of you will understand), I noticed something.
When I type “1. ” it doesn’t automatically make it into a list item.
Very minor, but also annoying because literally every other app on the planet will do that…
I also noticed something else.
You can select what you’ve written and move it around, as a group.
So it’s similar to a block-building system — and if you’ve read this far, you know how I feel about block-building systems in a writing editor (VERY much not a fan).
Very unimpressed.
If you’re considering using OneNote… Just don’t.
Use Google Docs.
Apple Notes — Free
- Ease of use — 8/10
- Simple design — 6/10
- Overall — 6/10
Apple notes is incredibly convenient — but there’s 2 main issues with it.
- Similar to google docs, it’s so common to use that it’s way too easy to get distracted on it. This leads to…
- The sheer amount of notes that accumulate (I have over 1,500 so far)…
I view Apple Notes as a quick note taking system — similar to a sticky note.
You just jot something down quick, and then you can review and add to it later.
Because it’s so convenient it’s phenomenal for that.
But trying to use it as an editor? Too easy to get distracted.
UpNote — $.99/mth. $30 One time
- Ease of use — 7/10
- Simple design — 7/10
- Overall — 8/10
UpNote is really simple. No special frills.
But it’s got everything you need.
The formatting options are consistently at the bottom of the page — which is reminisent of Evernote.
It has folder and subfolder structures to keep everything organized.
Tags and backlinks — it’s got the basics.
It’s primary note-view leads to being able to be distracted.
But it has the ability to open just the note you are working on, so you can stay focused.
If you’re currently using Evernote, Export your Evernotes and import them into UpNote (click here to see how — I did it, it’s really easy) and save yourself the monthly payments.
If you’re a Writer who’s FULL of ideas but struggles getting shit done, I have a daily Micro-Newsletter designed to help you.
A 500 character, 3-bullet style email with the top hacks, tips, and ideas to help Writers Get Shit Done.
Click the link below to join:
Verification Stage
Streamlined information — this is not the time to get distracted going down rabbit holes. You want a quick and accurate process.
Essay — $6/mth, $48/yr, or $250 Lifetime (all with a 14 day trial period).
- Ease of use — 7/10
- Simple design — 7/10
- Overall —7/10
Essay breaks the verification process into 4 steps.
Step 1 — Outline.
You built the outline of what you want to say.
In the case, we would simply add a new “outline topic” for each heading we use in the writing.
Step 2 — Produce.
You write a bad first draft of it.
Or in our case, we input our already bad first draft that we got from the illumination stage.
Or, you can use Essay all together for the illumination stage.
Step 3 — Rewrite.
This is where you go throguh each sentence and rewrrite it.
You simply select the sentence on the left, and rewrite it. Then you can select which version you would like to appear in the actual article on the right.
This has been one the of the best features of the app.
You can easily rewrite the article without clogging up your article and without losing any info.
Step 4 — Reorder.
In the final step, you reorder your content to make sure the flow of ideas is there.
You can grab individual sentences and paragraphs and move them around
As you can see in the photo above, I realized the sentence, “This is also a paragraph about how claps are free” didn’t fit under the outline topic “preparation”, but under “50 claps for 20 apps reviewed?”
Conclusion
The apps you chose and the workflow you follow will ultimately depend on your style and where you naturally lean.
Overall winners:
- Preparation — Napkin
- Incubation — Balance
- Illumination — Audio recording + transcription
- Verification — Essay
If you want the fewest apps possible:
- Capacities for Preparation, Illumination, and Verification
- A meditation playlist on your music app of choice for Incubation
If you don’t want to spend any money:
- Capacities for Preparation, Illumination, and Verification
- If you can find a free transcription service, swap out “audio recording + transcription” for the illumination stage
- Balance (free for 1 year) for Incubation
If you want simplicity of workflow and cheap above all else:
- Capacities for Preparation, Illumination, and Verification (Capacities is complicated, but if you use the system I outline below, it simplifies it a lot)
- A meditation playlist on your music app of choice for Incubation
Let me know your writing workflow in the comments!
If you’re a Writer who’s FULL of ideas but struggles getting shit done, I have a daily Micro-Newsletter designed to help you.
A 500 character, 3-bullet style email with the top hacks, tips, and ideas to help Writers Get Shit Done.
Click the link below to join:
