Drafts, the best text notes/writing/wrangling app on iOS, is coming soon to the Mac. Drafts, for those who haven’t tried it, is a kind of universal inbox for text. Whenever you want to write something — a note, an email, a blog post or an essay — you launch Drafts and start typing.
It’s always ready with a blank page. Then, when you’re done, you can use Drafts’ many, many actions to send that text elsewhere — beautifully formatted for the Notes app, as a list to the Reminders app, as a post to Twitter, a task in Things, etc. The list is almost endless thanks to a shared directory of new actions that can be installed with one click.
Until now, Drafts has been iOS-only. But soon, probably later this year, it’s coming to the Mac.
Drafts for Mac
Drafts is so very, very good that it has created one big problem for many people: There’s no equivalent on the Mac. You get so accustomed to tapping the Drafts icon in your iPhone’s Dock, or using the share sheet to clip text on your iPad, that when you have to deal with text on the Mac, you feel lost.
Drafts for Mac, announced semi-formally in a forum post last week by developer Greg Pierce, will bring Drafts to the desktop.
The initial version will focused on capturing text, and on syncing with the iOS versions. It won’t have Drafts actions. That seems like a big omission, because actions are a huge part of what makes Drafts great. But even without them, the app will be welcome. Here’s Pierce, in his forum post:
What will Drafts for Mac do?
The initial version of Drafts for Mac will support most of the same draft capture, editing and organization features of Drafts 5 on iOS and all drafts, tags, workspaces, versions, etc. will sync between versions.
The editor will support themes and all the same editing features, syntax highlighting and more.
True to its core, there will be quick-capture tools to easily popup up a window and start typing to start on all your text snippets and notes in Drafts as easily on Mac as you do on iOS.
This is going to be huge. The most recent big update to Drafts — version 5.0 — turned the app from a great text inbox and processing app, to a full on text and notes suite. You could use it to write a novel or a tweet, and it can handle both. You can process snippets out to other apps, or keep them in Drafts, using it as a powerful replacement for your existing notes app. You’ll get all of the iOS version’s great editing shortcuts, and you’ll finally be able to sync everything back to the desktop.
In short, if you want to do it with text, Drafts is your app. I know I’m coming across like a zealot, but in this case I am. Drafts is a tool you can always reach for, sure that it can do whatever fresh task you’ve thought up for it. In that regard, it’s like Photoshop for text. Only without the cruft and bloat.
As soon as there’s a public release of Drafts for Mac, you’ll hear about it here. Until then, you can follow along on the Agile Tortoise Drafts forums, or the Agile Tortoise blog, or follow Greg on Twitter. And if you haven’t tried Drafts for iOS, now’s the time.
