Drafts, the most useful app on iOS, is finally available for the Mac — in beta form at least. The beta can be downloaded right now, but you can only use it if you are already a Drafts Pro subscription. The Mac version of this text-wrangling masterpiece is already super-useful, and will sync perfectly with your existing iPhone and iPad versions.
Drafts for Mac
Photo: Cult of Mac
Drafts is a notes app that opens to a blank note, making it easy to quickly write whatever it was you wanted to write — just like opening a blank page in a paper notebook. And if that’s all you want, then that’s cool. You can just keep your notes in Drafts, tagging them to make sorting and finding them easy, across all your devices.
But Drafts also does way more. Thanks to a huge library of “actions,” Drafts can process that text into anything. This can be as simple as turning it into an email, or a Tweet, or posting to your WordPress blog. And it can be as complex as running a javascript program to process a whole bunch of drafts.
Drafts for Mac doesn’t (yet) have actions, but for most users that’s no problem. Because Drafts on iOS is so good, and so essential, the Mac feels lacking without it. Now, you can access all your Drafts from the Mac, and use all of Drafts fantastic editing tools.
What can Drafts for Mac do already?
Drafts for Mac has the full editing and note-organizing experience from iOS. It handles Markdown, along with Javascript, TaskPaper format, and more. You can tag drafts, you can create and use Workspaces (these are liked saved views that let you only focus on certain drafts), and you can search.
Even without the actions, which are an essential part of Drafts, this version is already very capable. Previously, whenever I wanted to jot something down on my Mac, or to save a snippet of text for a while, I had to think where to do it. TextEdit and Stickies are OK, but don’t sync to iOS. NvALT is also fine, but doesn’t sync to Drafts. Now, I never have to think about capture.
Speaking of capture, you can easily pop open a quick-entry box from anywhere on the Mac, using. keyboard shortcut. And there’s already a System Service to capture text, so you can use it with your favorite launcher utility, like Launchbar or Alfred.
How to get Drafts for Mac beta
To get the beta, you just have to head over to the Drafts for Mac beta page and download the latest version. As I said above, you’ll need an active Drafts Pro subscription to use it. When the app finally launches, it will be included in the price of that subscription, so you won’t have to pay any extra.
