Among the late glut of minimalist school text editor for OS X , Byword(Mac App Store liaison ) stands out by focus on create document usingMarkdown , a markup lyric that rent you write for the Web using plain text and a simple formatting phrase structure . Byword does let you publish in plenteous text ( RTF)—with all the veritable styles of a word mainframe — but many of its features are design specifically to make it easier to work with Markdown .
Within its no - frills windowpane , Byword offers only two themes : a lightsome one ( black on a light - grizzly background ) and a dark one ( light gray on a black background signal ) . you could choose your preferred fount , but you ca n’t otherwise pull off these themes — for good example , if you prefer a different font color or background . ( WriteRoom , a similar syllabus , lets you make your own themes . ) The default appearance is elegant , though , with Byword ’s window showing nothing but a title ginmill on top with push for Find and full - screen modal value , along with word and fibre counting at the bottom .
Byword ’s Typewriter Mode keeps the line you ’re type at the center of the screen , while Paragraph or Line Focus dims all text other than the current paragraph or line , respectively , letting you concentre on what you ’re drop a line . ( I especially appreciate Paragraph Focus , as iA Writer , a similar app , can focus only on the current time . ) Full - screen mode works as await , show your text against a consistent setting that fills your covert .
Byword ’s Format fare include pick for lists , quote degree , paragraph indent , and more , so you do n’t have to remember the Markdown syntax for these style . And a groovy feature mechanically closes acknowledgment marks , parenthesis , and brackets — typecast one such role , and the plan immediately adds its vis-a-vis , inserting the cursor between the two . I care this feature , but if you do n’t , there ’s alas no room to incapacitate it .
Another feature unequalled to Byword is an iOS - style popover that you’re able to raise while in RTF fashion to add style . strangely , you need to use a keyboard shortcut to expose this palette , so if you sleep with the crosscut for initialize schoolbook as sheer and italic , or to increase and decrease font size , using the pallet does n’t write you time . A mode to invoke the feature with a gesture or mouse push would make it more useful . Byword does offer a number of keyboard shortcuts for Markdown style , letting shortcut user salve a lot of meter .
If you make with Markdown , you ’ll like Byword ’s ability to expose a preview of what your document will wait like when converted to HTML . However , you ca n’t edit in preview mode , and you ca n’t view that preview in a disjoined window , so you end up switch back and forth between editing and preview modes . In addition , if you do n’t practice Markdown , you ’ll wish you could handicap Byword ’s automatic highlighting of Markdown formatting characters — those characters will always seem in medium grey in editing mode .
you could export Byword documents to HTML , PDF , RTF , Word , or LaTeX. However , unlike with iA Writer , Byword does n’t bid a fellow iOS app or iCloud syncing between Macs .
Though not ideal for non - Markdown writing , if you utilise Markdown and want a minimal tool to write with , Byword is a skillful selection , despite its special selection of topic .
