If you pair your iPad with a great wireless keyboard you’ll open up many new possibilities. For example, I switched to iOS and my iPad to write articles like this one, and I managed to achieve high level of productivity and overcome some initial limits. As you know, iOS is quite closed but very capable mobile system, and its greatest selling point is its huge ecosystem of apps. This means that it’s also important to know that there some very interesting iOS text processors which are compatible with numerous OSX- and Windows-friendly file types.
I still haven’t found my favorite iOS text processor, and I am using Pages for most of my writing. The main reason for this is effortless cloud integration with OSX and very capable formatting options, but I am always happy to try out some other solutions. During my time as a reviewer of iOS apps, I had a chance of reviewing a number of Pages alternatives, and I going to show you the latest one in this article. We’ll be taking a look at Jot – Refined Text Editor, which could be downloaded for $4.
In contrast to many iOS text editors, Jot is designed to be used on an iPhone. The main idea behind this app is ease up writing on a smaller screen, which can be very complicated and time consuming. I am pretty sure that most of us used Notes app to write some short notes and thoughts, but that you turned to your computer to write majority of text. Jot is trying to change that, and I was interested to see how this idea was going to be materialized.
The first thing that you might want to do is to setup your Dropbox account, in order to keep all the files synced. Jot will create its own folder in the cloud, as expected. Once you start typing you’ll notice that this app uses very dark theme, mostly black and white in fact. Even though this seemed odd at first, I realized that this worked very well in practice. This color combination is easy on eyes, so the text and keyboard will stand out. As you type you’ll notice that Jot comes with its own autocorrect system, so you’ll get to review your spelling mistakes that you can check and correct in just one tap.
If you take a look at the screenshots, you’ll notice the big red button above the keyboard. This button can be used to move the cursor around, which can be tiresome and confusing with iOS’ default setup. This way you can move the cursor very accurately and highlight some text as well. There’s also the bar with some of the most commonly used punctuation symbols, which can be found on the both sides of the big red button.
The only thing that I would like to see added to Jot is the Markdown support, and I believe that many users would also love to see this option. I would recommend trying this app even in its current condition, which is fully usable and beats any of iOS’ default writing tools.
