Word processing is alive and well on the Mac. Here’s a list of 10 of the best, some free. If you write for a living, NisusWriter’s twin offerings are a good example of elegance and feature set. #1 – Mellel Billed as the word processor for Mac, Mellel is for writers what Excel is to accountants. I also do some light word processing and was interested in software also. I looked into Pages. Great program. A limited version of it Is available on the Mac App Store that will be included on your MBA for low cost.
WPS Office Writer free word processor compatibles with all text file format out there including current versions of Microsoft Word dating back to Office 97. It has launched a free PDF to Word converter as well, which is a great companion for its word processor. Kingsoft Free Writer for Windows Kingsoft Writer is an easy to use free word processor with clean design, and uncluttered menu. This free word processor highly compatible with Microsoft Word doc and docx, with built-in free PDF converter, word count, spell check. OpenOffice Writer OpenOffice Writer includes necessary features what list of good word processors have. It is simple enough for a quick memo, yet powerful enough to create complete books with contents, diagrams, indexes, etc. OpenOffice Writer is a lightweight app that lets you view and edit Microsoft Word documents. Word Graph WordGraph has some unique tools that help you to produce, create a table of contents and index, and access files stored on online storage services like OneDrive and Dropbox.
AbleWord AbleWord opens documents quickly, has a really simple design, and supports editing and saving to popular file types. AbiWord AbiWord is a free word processor with automatic spell check, plugin support, and common formatting options. RoughDraft Free word processor RoughDraft works with RTF and TXT files, provides automatic spell check, and allows shortcut keys from nearly every command. WriteMonkey WriteMonkey is a portable word processor that’s centred around providing an interface with the least number of distractions as possible so you can focus on writing and nothing else. Jarte Jarte is a free word processor that has a tabbed interface to keep all open documents easily accessible on one screen.
FocusWriter FocusWriter has basic formatting like bold, strikethrough, and aligning text. You can also edit the foreground and background text, page margins, color, and line spacing to produce custom themes. Judoom Judoom has a similar look and feel to Microsoft Word, and you can even use some of the same file types, like DOC and DOCX. AEdit AEdit lets you password protect documents and provides a spell check function, though it doesn’t check for errors automatically. It works with files in Microsoft’s popular DOC format, but not their updated DOCX format.
Custom Search AppleWorks 6.2.9 The latest version of AppleWorks - (formerly) the most popular program on the Mac - is really several applications in one. It gives you six core capabilities (and a number of combinations thereof): word processing, spreadsheet, database, presentation, drawing and painting.
License: Free Updates. Developer/Publisher: Apple. Modification Date: January 14, 2004. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.0 to Mac OS X 10.6.8, PPC Only File Size: 15.8 MB - 6.2.9 updater File Size: 4411 Kb - 6.0.4 updater - May 30, 2000 File Size: 1311 Kb - 5.0.4 updater - October 26, 1999 Aquamacs Emacs 3.4 An Editor for Text, HTML, LaTeX, C, Java, Python, R, Perl, Ruby, PHP, and more.
Aquamacs is a user-friendly build of the powerful Emacs text editor. Aquamacs integrates with the Mac and offers the same comforts that any application on the Mac provides. Yet, it comes with all the ergonomy and extensibility you've come to expect from GNU Emacs.
License: Freeware. Developer/Publisher: David Reitter et al. Modification Date: July 27, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.9 or higher File Size: 67.3 MB aText 2.30.3 aText accelerates your typing by replacing abbreviations with frequently used phrases you define. License: Shareware, $5. Developer/Publisher: Tran Ky Nam.
Modification Date: November 15, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.7 or higher - 64-bit File Size: 2.8 MB Atom 1.33.1 A hackable text editor for the 21st Century. Everything you would expect. Cross-platform editing. Atom works across operating systems. Use it on OS X, Windows, or Linux.
Built-in package manager. Search for and install new packages or create your own right from Atom. Smart autocompletion. Atom helps you write code faster with a smart and flexible autocomplete. File system browser.
Easily browse and open a single file, a whole project, or multiple projects in one window. Multiple panes. Split your Atom interface into multiple panes to compare and edit code across files.
Find and replace. Find, preview, and replace text as you type in a file or across all your projects. License: Freeware. Developer/Publisher: GitHub, Inc. Modification Date: December 19, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.9 or higher - 64-bit File Size: 146.4 MB BBEdit 12.5.2 BBEdit is the leading professional HTML and text editor for the Macintosh.
Specifically crafted in response to the needs of Web authors and software developers, this award-winning product provides an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text. An intelligent interface provides easy access to BBEdit’s best-of-class features, including grep pattern matching, search and replace across multiple files, project definition tools, function navigation and syntax coloring for numerous source code languages, code folding, FTP and SFTP open and save, AppleScript, Mac OS X Unix scripting support, text and code completion, and of course a complete set of robust HTML markup tools. License: Demo, $50. Developer/Publisher: Bare Bones Software. Modification Date: December 12, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.11.6 or higher - 64-bit File Size: 14.1 MB Bean 3.2.12 Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor that is designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable.
Bean is lean, fast and uncluttered. It starts up quickly, has a live word count, and is easy on the eyes. Also, Bean is available free of charge. MS Word, OpenOffice, etc. Try to be all things to all people, but sometimes you just want the right tool for the job. That is Bean's niche.
License: Freeware. Developer/Publisher: James Hoover. Modification Date: October 28, 2018. Requirements: macOS 10.13 or higher File Size: 3.2 MB BibDesk 1.6.19 BibDesk is a graphical BibTeX-bibliography manager for Mac OS X. BibDesk is designed to help organize and use bibliographic databases in BibTeX.bib format. In addition to manual typing, BibDesk lets you drag & drop or cut & paste.bib files into the bibliographic database and automatically opens files downloaded from PubMed. BibDesk also keeps track of electronic copies of literature on your computer and allows for searching your database through several keys.
BibDesk integrates well with TeX for creating citations and bibliographies. This integration includes a Citation search completion service, and drag & drop (cut & paste) support for adding citations to TeX files. License: Freeware.
Developer/Publisher: Michael O. McCracken. Modification Date: December 7, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 6 or higher File Size: 16.3 MB Bookends 13.1.5 Bookends is a full-featured and cost-effective bibliography, reference, and information management system for students and professionals. With Bookends you can directly search for and import references from many online sources, including the Library of Congress, PubMed, Amazon, and hundreds of libraries from around the world. Search PubMed automatically in the background and have Bookends discover and notify you of publications of interest as soon as they appear.
Import references from EndNote, Reference Manager, and ProCite databases. License: Demo, $60.
Developer/Publisher: Sonny Software. Modification Date: November 29, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.9 or higher File Size: 51.5 MB Cisdem PDF Converter OCR 6.2.0 Convert PDF to Word, PPT, Text, Rtfd, ePub, Html, Keynote, Pages, Image, and create/merge files to PDF accurately with advanced Mac PDF converter. Keep original layout without data loss.
Cisdem PDF Converter OCR with OCR to convert scanned PDFs and images into editable files. License: Demo, $50, With OCR $60. Developer/Publisher: Cisdem Inc. Modification Date: November 1, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.10 or higher File Size: 386.3 - Cisdem PDF Converter OCR 6.2.0 - November 1, 2018 File Size: 10.9 MB - Cisdem PDF Converter 6.0 - October 31, 2018 CotEditor 3.6.9 Light-weight, neat, yet powerful text editor.
Features: Syntax Highlighting; Powerful Find & Replace; Setting via Click; Auto Backup; Outline Menu; Split Editor; Character Inspector; Scriptable; Incompatible Characters; CJK Language Friendly. License: Freeware. Developer/Publisher: Mineko Imanishi. Modification Date: December 12, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.11 or higher File Size: 27.6 MB DEVONthink 2.11.1 Make the dream of the paperless office come true with DEVONthink and keep all your text and RTF files, scanned documents, notes, e-mails, images, chat logs, bookmarks and multimedia files together in one simple to use database. Integrate both local documents and live content from the Internet to keep all project-related information together.
Pro office has scanner support and OCR. License: Demo, Personal $50, Pro $80, Pro Office $150. Developer/Publisher: DEVONtechnologies. Modification Date: December 17, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.11 or higher File Size: 22.8 MB - Personal Edition File Size: 36.6 MB - Pro Edition - Archives email, RSS feeds File Size: 43.2 MB - Pro Office Edition - Has OCR File Size: 150.9 MB EndNote X9 19.0 Leave behind the tedious work of formatting bibliographies, finding full text, and searching for references. More than just a reference manager. EndNote moves you through the research process as you search, organize, write, publish and share.
License: Demo, $250. Developer/Publisher: Clarivate Analytics. Modification Date: June 19, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.10 or higher File Size: 89.2 Final Draft 10.0.7 Use your creative energy to focus on the content; let Final Draft take care of the style. Final Draft is the number-one selling word processor specifically designed for writing movie scripts, television episodics and stage plays. It combines powerful word processing with professional script formatting in one self-contained, easy-to-use package.
There is no need to learn about script formatting rules - Final Draft automatically paginates and formats your script to industry standards as you write. License: Demo, $250. Developer/Publisher: Cast & Crew Entertainment. Modification Date: July 5, 2018.
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.9 or higher File Size: 37.8 MB FineReader Pro 12.1.11 Delivers the reliability you'd expect from a world-leader in OCR software. Easily transform paper documents, PDFs and digital photos of text into editable and searchable files. No more manual retyping or reformatting. Instead you can search, share, archive, and copy information from documents for reuse and quotation - saving you time, effort and hassles. License: Demo, $120. Developer/Publisher: ABBYY. Modification Date: May 25, 2018.
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.7 or higher File Size: 619.3 Grammarian Pro 2.1.0 Grammarian PRO, the professional writer's tool kit, is the ultimate writing tool to combat those embarrassing writing errors that everyone tends to make, a universal interactive grammar check, contextual spelling check, punctuation check, dictionary, thesaurus, AutoCorrect, and AutoType tool that virtually works within every program on your computer. License: Demo, $50.
Developer/Publisher: Linquisoft. Modification Date: November 16, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or higher File Size: 18.6 LibreOffice 6.1.4 LibreOffice is a powerful office suite – its clean interface and feature-rich tools help you unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity. LibreOffice includes several applications that make it the most powerful Free and Open Source office suite on the market: Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing). LibreOffice is a powerful office suite – its clean interface and feature-rich tools help you unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity. LibreOffice includes several applications that make it the most powerful Free and Open Source office suite on the market. License: Freeware.
Developer/Publisher: The Document Foundation. Modification Date: December 14, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.9 or higher - File Size: 250.8 MB MacVim 8.1.577 MacVim is a port of the text editor Vim to macOS.
License: Freeware. Developer/Publisher: macvim-dev. Modification Date: December 13, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.10 or higher File Size: 16.4 MB Mariner Write 3.9.5 Mariner Write is a powerful yet streamlined Mac word processing application. Boasting an elegant and easy-to-use interface, Mariner Write can run on only 2MB of RAM. And that's no typo; only 38 MB less than Word.
License: Shareware, $30. Developer/Publisher: Mariner Software. Modification Date: October 9, 2015. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.7 or higher - 32-bit File Size: 11.5 MB MassReplaceIt 3.0 Have you ever wanted to change the extension of hundreds of files at once? Or have you ever needed to change an email address on 50 different pages of a website? Then MassReplaceIt is the tool for you.
MassReplaceIt takes a list of files, searches either their contents or their filenames, and replaces every occurrence of your search term with something else. Not only that, but it provides numerous features and options to give you control over the changes you want to make. For example, you can optionally create a mask to filter which files are searched.
Say you have a folder with thousands of documents inside it, but you only want to search html files modified in the last week. MassReplaceIt makes it easy to do this. License: Freeware.
Developer/Publisher: HexMonkey Software. Modification Date: September 9, 2018. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.7 or higher - 64-bit File Size: 893 Kb Mellel 4.1.4 Mellel is an advanced, multilingual word processor built for Mac OS X. Designed for scholars and writers, it offers innovative page, paragraph, and character styles, outline, tables, headers and footers, citations and bibliography, tabs, and much more.