Ulysses 15 brings Split View, dark export and way better keywords

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Ulysses 15 adds a bunch of welcome new features. V
Ulysses 15 adds a bunch of welcome new features.
Photo: Ulysses

Ulysses just got a big update for both Mac and iOS, but mostly for the Mac. The best text editor and writing app for both platforms remains the best — only now it does a little bit more. Let’s take a look.

Ulysses gets a few iOS improvements

Ulysses dark reading mode on iPad.
Ulysses dark reading mode on iPad.
Photo: Ulysses

I’ll cover the new iPad and iPhone features first, as they’re a little less exciting than the Mac upgrades but welcome nonetheless. The iPad now has a dark mode for previews. Previously you could work away with the app in dark mode, but whenever you previewed your documents — as a web page, an EPUB, a text document or a preview of a published blog post — it would show up in stark, bright, light mode. This has been fixed.

Also new on iOS is image handling. First, you can specify the size that an image will be when exported. For instance, for Cult of Mac, we like our images to be at least 2,000 pixels wide. In Ulysses, I can now tell Ulysses to resize any images to 2,000 pixels upon export.

Ulysses image sizing on the iPhone.
Image sizing on the iPhone.
Photo: Ulysses

Ulysses can now display thumbnails for linked images. You’ve long been able to drop an image into the text and see it as a thumbnail. But if you added an image using a link, perhaps an image you’ve already uploaded to web storage — you just got a placeholder rectangle. Now you’ll see an image thumbnail for these remote images.

New on Ulysses for Mac

Ulysses adds editable keywords!
Keywords!
Photo: Ulysses

The Mac gets all those updates and more. The first is Split View. You now can view two documents side by side in one window. Seeing as how you’ve always been able to open two Ulysses windows on the Mac, this would be more useful on the iPad, but iOS users will have to wait for that.

Mac users can now also edit their keywords. Keywords are how you tag documents in Ulysses, and now you can read, merge or delete them in a newly designed editing window. You can also change the color of a keyword, which brings us to the new keyword search interface.

Ulysses adds remote image thumbnails on the Mac.
Remote image thumbnails on the Mac.
Photo: Ulysses

It’s redesigned as well to give you more control. You can, for instance, search for keywords of a certain color, letting you effectively create keyword groups.

All told, this is a solid update. If you are already a Ulysses subscriber, you can grab it now, for no extra cost.

Ulysses 15 for iOS

Price: Free with optional subscription

Download: Ulysses from the iOS App Store (iOS)

Ulysses 15 for Mac

Price: Free with optional subscription

Download: Ulysses from the MacApp Store (iOS)

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