Byword 2 vs Ulysses III

Byword de-emphasizes the syntax itself while emphasizing its effects. It appropriately adds style, like italic and bold, to text that's designated by markdown and dims the syntax so it does not get in the way of comprehension. Additionally, there are commonly used hotkeys (⌘b, ⌘i, etc) that can be used to apply style without having to know the syntax or having to type it out each time.

Byword is available on a Mac, an iPhone and iPad.

Byword is as simple as Markdown editors can get. Even though Markdown itself is not hard, Byword offers assistance to make it even easier with very little configuration required.

The UI is minimalistic and un-intrusive, the syntax auto-completion is excellent, and there are multiple small but helpful features that make writing Markdown with Byword a breeze.

Documents can be synced using iCloud or Dropbox from within the editor for use across all devices.

Byword allows users to publish their markdown files directly to web platforms such as Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger and even Evernote.

Has a built-in word counter.

You can export to HTML, PDF, RTF.

For people who enjoy working during the night, there's a dark theme available that reduces strain on the eyes.

For example, while authoring a bulleted list hitting return automatically prepares a new bulleted line.

Byword has a "Preview Markdown" option where it does exactly what it promises. It immediately compiles and displays the rendered Markdown file, making it easy for the user to understand how they are actually formatting their document.

Byword supports all the table types in Multimarkdown including table captions. MathJax support is added via metadata at the beginning of file was well as support for various diagrams. Table of Contents is also supported.

One of the few (well, Ok, only for far) that has been updated for Yosemite features. Jan 2015.

Byword gets frequent updates which add new features or fix existing bugs.

A few themes are baked in and a big selection of user-contributed styles to choose from are available on the Ulysses Style Exchange.

Ulysses has a clean, unobtrusive, easy to overview interface that allows focusing on writing. By default it's split up in 3 panes with sidebar, sheet pane and content pane from left to right. Unnecessary panes can be hidden.

Markdown formatting can be applied from the right-click menu, with keyboard shortcuts or from an optional markup bar. Necessary elemants to links, images, and footnotes are added by filling in a popover.

Pasted rich text and imported Word documents keep their formatting when converted to Markdown.

Attachments such as images, text notes, keywords and writing goals can be added to content. And to organize them keywords can be added.

Ulysses saves everything in the app so there's no file management outside of the editor involved. It organizes content in groups (folders) and sheets (files), has a powerful, easy to use search and allows adding keywords to attachments to help them be organized and found quickly.

Groups can have an unlimited amount of subgroups and the title of subgroup shows up in the pane view. Sheets can be split up, merged, glued together and easily moved around in the sheet pane by dragging and dropping. Great for splitting up larger documents into manageable chunks while still keeping an overview of the whole project and having the ability to move sections around quickly.

Contents of a group can be filtered by text, keywords or change date within headings, code blocks, images or any other marked up text. Filters can contain a combination of conditions and be saved to make a new group. Saved filters can be moved around to different groups and will return filtered results for that group. Selecting multiple groups will show the combined sheets of those groups.

You can operate Ulysses via keyboard only. No need for mouse.

The editor can export to Plain Text, RTF, Word, HTML, ePub and PDF with customizable styles for each option. It can also preview HTML directly in the browser.

There's no live-preview pane or an external previewer necessary. Ulysses displays styling inline.

Ulysses has options for highlighting current line, showing line numbers and enabling typewriter mode. Typewriter mode defines a place on the screen where the cursor should be so eyes are kept focusing in one place on the screen.

Content can be synchronised across devices via Apple's iCloud.

Ulysses comes with an excellently written documentation that covers everything there is to know about the software, including an extensive list of keyboard shortcuts as well as short and sweet introduction to Markdown and its benefits.

Ulysses is available for both macOS and iOS. This, combined with the cloud syncing allows users to work on their projects using any Apple device they have at the time.

The editor tracks statistics that shows how many characters, words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages a document contains and estimated reading time for slow, average, and fast readers. The statistics display in a popover that can be torn-off so it's constantly visible.

Goals such as how many characters, words, sentences, paragraphs, lines or pages should be written can be set to help get motivated.

Groups, tagging, and notes for each document.

Staff is helpful in answering questions on how to use the app.

A time (10hrs) and usage limited demo for Ulysses III is available.