Mac favorite text pdf#
Mac favorite text software#
Mac favorite text mac#

I didn’t include recent additions to the ecosystem like iA Writer (for iPhone) and Byword, as I need to test them more accurately. I kept the ones with Markdown formatting and Dropbox sync. So I took all of them, tested them, and deleted the ones I didn’t like.

Mac favorite text software#

Because while I’m one for supporting developers and buying apps and paying for the tools I use, there is a line between “trying software” and “using software to work better”, and I had crossed that line with my curiosity for text editors. Almost too many, to the point where I needed to stop fiddling already, and get the writing done. Like TJ Luoma, I have bought many of them. What follows is an overview of the four text editors (for writing, not coding) that I have preferred using in the past three months. And all those text editors on the App Store look so tempting. See, on the Mac, when I need a text editor, I usually fire up Text Edit (rigorously set in plain text mode) and forget about it. If anything, the only negative note is that the iPad has given too much choice when it comes to picking a single writing tool. I use my iPad a lot more, I enjoy it, and, more importantly, the device is helping me work smarter because it lets me focus more on what I do for a living: writing. The experiment has been a success so far.

With a mature ecosystem of apps that sees great new software coming out every week and a Retina display on the horizon, starting to use the iPad as my main computer was an investment. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized the long-term benefits of giving the iPad a fair chance as a full-time writing tool would outnumber the perks of using a device I am accustomed to. The plan was an ambitious one: after three years of writing, researching, and online communication done exclusively using my MacBook (and, perhaps to an extent, my iPhone) switching to the iPad as my main work machine did indeed seem like a daunting task at first. TextSniper is available from the developer’s website at $10, or $5 during the launch promo period.Earlier this year, I promised myself that I would get more work done using the iPad.

Mac favorite text mac#

For me, this makes it a no-brainer for any Mac user who ever needs to transcribe text, even occasionally (so long as you are running macOS Catalina). TextSniper has a one-off cost of $10, currently reduced to $5 as a launch promo. There may be pros and cons with the product itself, and there may be a need to balance price against value. Sometimes my review conclusion needs some thought. It’s been as close to perfect as any OCR system I’ve ever used, and able to cope with a massive range of formats. (Incidentally, if you’re an Andrew Scott fan, as I am, you can stream the play online.)

Here’s a rare example of an error - omitting the colon in the first line:īut it still managed to read white-outline all-caps text on a colored background. It didn’t seem to matter what I threw at it, it always coped: Here are some examples of its performance with trickier graphics. In my initial use, despite going out of my way to find difficult examples for it, it’s been almost perfect. The really impressive thing to me is the combination of speed and accuracy. Here you can see the graphic and the captured text side-by-side. That statement took the form of a graphic.Īpple statement on terminating Epic’s developer account: “We won’t make an exception” /3a3L6meHfI Performanceįor example, when Apple announced that it would be terminating Epic Games’ developer account, Mark Gurman tweeted a statement from Apple. TextSnipe displays a brief thumbs-up icon and the words “Copied to clipboard.” Click into your document and CMD-V in the usual way, and the OCR’d text is pasted.

Hit this combination, select the area of the screen you want to read, and… that’s it. The only visible sign you get is a small menu bar icon, but you now have a new screengrab option: Shift-CMD-2. What TextSniper does is allow you to select any words visible on your screen, no matter what its format, and to turn it into text, you can paste into any document. Company statements on Twitter are a common example, where they get around the character limit by posting an image of the statement…Ĭurrently, I read it aloud, using Siri dictation to automatically type the text, but it’s a clunky solution. One of the more annoying aspects of my work is when I need to quote some text that is provided in graphic form. Using it is as easy as taking a screengrab and then pasting.

Mac favorite text pdf#

It takes text in a graphic or non-selectable PDF and turns it into actual text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). TextSniper is a new Mac app I wish I’d had years ago.