Ulysses Gets Redesigned Dashboard With Style and Grammar Checker

Tuesday July 14, 2020 1:03 am PDT by Tim Hardwick

Popular writing app Ulysses received its twentieth major update today, and gained new grammar and style checking tools as well as a redesigned dashboard.

GrammarStyleCheck Mac ulysses 20
The grammar and style check is an integration of the LanguageTool Plus service, and can analyze texts and provide informed suggestions in categories such as capitalization, punctuation, semantics, redundancy, typography, and style.

"The challenge was to integrate the text check in a way that feels both natural and easy to use," said Ulysses creative head, Marcus Fehn. "It was also critical for us that the users perceive all results as suggestions rather than corrections. Because what is a mistake? When it comes to writing style, that's up to the author."

Users can review the checker's grammar and style suggestions at once or per category, and apply or ignore them. The grammar and style check is available in over 20 languages, and for now it's available for Ulysses for Mac. The developers plan to add the feature to the app's iPad and iPhone version in another release this fall.

Also new in this update is a redesigned dashboard, which offers convenient access to the new grammar and style check while consolidating many existing functions into a more organized overview.

The new dashboard contains an outline navigator where all headlines are displayed in a hierarchical order, allowing users to get an overview of their text's structure, and jump quickly between its various parts. Elsewhere, additional navigator sections list embedded images, videos, links, footnotes, annotations, and marked text passages.

Various views gather available information with a certain focus, such as all statistics, all comments and notes, all media items, and so on. The dashboard is also configurable, so writers can display only the information they need. A more compact version of the new dashboard is also available on iPhone and ‌iPad‌ that allows users to check their text's statistics, add keywords, and attach notes or images.

Ulysses can be downloaded for free on the App Store and the Mac App Store, with version 20 rolling out to existing users today. After a 14-day trial period, a subscription is required to unlock the app on all devices. A monthly subscription costs $5.99, while a yearly subscription is $49.99.

Students can use Ulysses at a discounted price of $11.99 per six months. The discount is granted from within the app. Ulysses is also included in Setapp, the subscription-based service for Mac applications created by MacPaw.

Tag: Ulysses

Top Rated Comments

bwintx

74 months ago

Whenever there's something on MacRumors about Ulysses, all the subscription haters flock in. (Sigh.) It's very simple, folks. If you're offended by paying for Ulysses on a subscription basis (even if the price has gone up, after staying the same for nearly three years), you: (a.) don't write for a living; (b.) aren't the target customer; and/or (c.) are free to choose something else. There are plenty of free writing apps, as well as non-subscription paid writing apps, out there; I use some myself, in fact. All the reflexive negativity in the world will neither change this app's sub model nor deter those of us who love and use Ulysses on a regular basis. And, as @jchap noted earlier: if it's just the price and not the subscription model, you can get Ulysses and a lot of other stuff via Setapp.

Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

anakin44011

74 months ago

Every time there's a blurb about Ulysses, people feel the need to explain why they think the price is outrageous. I just don't get it. After trying a dozen writing apps over the years, it is currently my 'go to' app for getting the myriad thoughts out of my head and entering the often-brutal phase of organizing and editing.

If you don't see the value in the software, don't buy it. But calling it a "pos" (really?) or comparing it to software suites that serve a completely different market and purpose appears to be almost intentionally obtuse or strangely short-sighted about the actual market for this software.

Why post anything at all? Oh, never mind. It is 2020 and everyone's opinion matters.

Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

MuppetGate

74 months ago

Jetbrains suite of products that I subscribe to also offer the same model. Plus, with every passing year until the third year, they reduce the price of the subscription. Much better than the sub model of other companies

Yep. After a rocky start, Jetbrains showed how subscriptions should work. I signed up on day one and have been renewing ever since. They are constantly updating their suite with genuinely useful functions and UI changes that are more than just moving stuff about. And they've used the income stability to invest in new products (such as the Kotlin language, which I'm sure provided some of the inspiration for Swift) and services. Huge rewrites are under way so that plugins don't require a restart, and global indexing of common packages to speed up the start up times. Jetbrains and Agenda are what a subscription service should look like.

With Ulysses, I initially liked the product a lot. And then I realized that these guys are really slow at rolling out features. It is as if, they are not accountable to anybody.

Subscriptions happen for one of two reasons:
[LIST=1]
* The company genuinely wants to have a guaranteed income stream to build out their product line (Jetbrains, Agenda)
* The company genuinely wants to have a guaranteed income from a product that is finished and in maintenance mode (Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite)

(I'm probably being unfair on Office since they do thrown in a lot of free cloudy stuff)

It can be hard to tell which is which until you're about two years into your subscription payments, but a good way to tell is see what happens when the subscription is announced. In hindsight, I've realised that closing down support forums and going to an email/twitter service is a bad sign.

Since Ulysses went sub, the changes have been cosmetic, or have been enhancements where the bulk of the work has been carried by improvements made by Apple to its frameworks. I can't think of anything that has been done to improves support for markdown, or enhance the export.

For e.g., a percentage of users have been asking for table support since 2014 (2013?) and their answer since then has been that we are working on it...we want to release the most perfect version ever..blah blah. Other products like Typora meanwhile are launching with these features. Meanwhile Ulysses seems to be working on their own schedule, on features they are interested in - at least this is the impression I have of Ulysses after being with them since 2015

Ah, the tables. Vital if you want to use it for academic work I would have thought. I think the schedule has been taken over by marketing: new website, new people to deal with the social media side of things, lots of interviews with authors …

I wish I had invested 5 years into Emacs rather than into Ulysses.

I think the lesson I've learned from this is that I shouldn't buy based on a promise. Hope the lesson sticks this time :rolleyes:

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Bustycat

74 months ago

If you want to have something cheap, then there’s plenty of writing apps for you. But why come here and whine just because this isn’t the product for me? I don’t go to Tesla forums and whine how expensive the cars are.

But here is Mac Rumors not Ulysses forums.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

sw1tcher

74 months ago

Ulysses can be downloaded for free on the App Store ('https://apps.apple.com/app/ulysses/id1225571038?ign-mpt=uo%3D4') and the Mac App Store ('https://apps.apple.com/app/ulysses/id1225570693?ign-mpt=uo%3D4&mt=12'), with version 20 rolling out to existing users today. After a 14-day trial period, a subscription is required to unlock the app on all devices. A monthly subscription costs $5.99, while a yearly subscription is $49.99.

$49.99/yr to subscribe?

Sorry, but I will never subscribe for a writing app. I prefer the old model where I buy software and can use it whenever, however, and as long as I want without it needing to phone home. And if there's an update I like, I'll buy the upgrade or new version.

I hate the subscription model with a passion.

/rant

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

InGen

74 months ago

I stopped using this app the day they went to the subscription model. I don’t know why they don’t offer customers an option to pay a higher once off fee and own the app permanently with updates instead of these subscription models. Oh wait I know why, $$$$$$

the same applies with adobe but at least with adobe you get different products included with a single subscription, Ulysses is a stand alone type writer, let us buy it outright!

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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