One of the surprisingly killer apps I’ve started using on my iPad is PlainText, the ad-supported Dropbox text editor from Hog Bay Software. PlainText is supposed to the minimal little brother of Writeroom, and although I find the app too slow and crashy on my iPhone 3GS, I absolutely love it on the iPad. I have over 800 text notes of varying lengths in Dropbox, but the iPad version of the app handles them like a champ.
There are plenty of apps that simply claim to be minimal by removing lines, colours, and features, but PlainText is the real deal. In attempting to mimic paper, Hog Bay Software has created a wonderful interface that melts away at will. The documents list on the left side can be hidden with a tap of the full-screen toggle, and the word count functionality has been cleverly hidden alongside the cut, copy, and paste pop-ups. Especially amazing, however, is the recent addition of a manipulable scrollbar, meaning that you can scroll through long text files just as you would on a desktop app (by tapping and panning along where the scrollbar slides).
I’ve found the app wonderfully conducive to writing on the iPad, since the full-screen mode centres the text elegantly between two very generous margins (which simply isn’t possible on the iPhone). The resulting expanses of white space could easily have felt sterile, but something about the font, or perhaps the particular shade of white that was chosen for the background, feels freeing.
I’m probably guilty of romanticising the experience that PlainText offers, but all I really mean to say that is that Hog Bay Software has created a great digital atmosphere to simply lose yourself in, and out of the four or five iPad note apps I’ve tried thus far, this one is my favourite by a long shot.
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
TAGS:
