The second writing app I put through the paces in my ongoing experiment to find the best writing app for my iPad was Clean Writer. And while I’m not necessarily disappointed by it, I’m also not thrilled with it, either.
And that’s not because it doesn’t deliver the goods.
Unlike ia Writer, you can adjust font size and style (including inverting the screen colour so that the text appears white…or “hacker” green). You can disable auto-correct as well, much like ia Writer does when you put it in “Focus Mode”, all from the Settings gear located at the top right corner of the app’s screen.
Some of the latest features developed for Clean Writer includes Dropbox sync, which works well enough (although I couldn’t get some text files to open) and you can now adjust margin sizes to best suit what you’re writing. All in all, it delivers a minimal amount of distraction to let you get up and write.
The problem is that I prefer ia Writer in terms of execution of the same idea. ia Writer seems (ironically) cleaner than Clean Writer in how it presents its writing environment.1
Clean Writer is less costly than ia Writer, so it is a solid choice for those not willing to pony up the dough for my current app of choice. Clean Writer is also available for the Mac platform through the Mac App Store.2 All in all, it’s a solid program that delivers on what it promises.
But it just doesn’t do it as well as the first app that I looked at.
1 As a result, I’d take my review with a grain of salt. But make sure it is a distraction-free grain of salt.
2 I have yet to try the Mac version. I probably won’t, either, because I’m stripping down my Mac software selections as well. More on that in the coming months.
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