When comparing iA Writer vs TagSpaces, the Slant community recommends TagSpaces for most people. In the question“What is the best cross-platform note-taking app?” TagSpaces is ranked 46th while iA Writer is ranked 50th. The most important reason people chose TagSpaces is:
TagSpaces is free and open source making it easily extendable with the help of extensions.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Noise Free Writing Experience removes even the program bar
The Noise Free Writing Experience is one of the first approaches to create a first class distraction-free environment. The feature hides the Mac program bar when you start writing.
Pro A mode that brings focus to the sentence you're working on
Enabling Focus Mode will dim the whole text except the sentence you are currently writing on.
Pro Can tell how long it would take to read through what you've written
Pro Markdown support
Pro Syncs using iCloud and Dropbox
iA Writer can sync documents using iCloud or Dropbox from within the editor for use across multiple devices.
Pro Create whole document by including separate images/markdown docs
This is new and very awesome feature in iA Writer 4.0.
Pro Can export a Word document
Pro Available for all Apple devices
iA Writer is available for Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Pro Open source
TagSpaces is free and open source making it easily extendable with the help of extensions.
Pro Your can choose your cloud file storage
Using only files and no databases let's you make the decision with which cloud file sync service to use, making sure your notes are made available on other devices and platforms. It works great with Owncloud, Nextcloud, Dropbox or Google Drive.
Pro No web service or database lock in
The backend is simply the directory and file structure on your harddrive.
Pro No cloud
TagSpaces is running completely offline, sending no data to any cloud based service, unlike many Evernote alternatives.
Cons
Con No Linux support
Con It renames your files in order to tag them
The positive side of this drawback is that this way the tags are easily transferred to other platforms by simply syncing them.
Con Setup could be more user-friendly
