Get to Work Even Faster With 3D Touch Quick Actions

Are you an efficiency enthusiast, eager to streamline your workflows? And do you own an iPhone 6s or newer? If your answer to both questions is yes, you should definitely check out 3D Touch (if you haven’t already).

3D Touch is, according to iMore, “multitouch made multidimensional”: By increasing the pressure when tapping the display of your iPhone, you gain access to actions that usually require several intermediate steps. Many of Apple’s system apps support 3D Touch, and if you want to learn more about their abilities, iMore’s detailed guide is a great resource. Ulysses also supports 3D Touch, and in this post we would like to introduce you to the possibilities it offers.

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Customize Your iPad or iPhone Writing Environment

Details matter and details help. When implemented, these subtle pieces reflect immediately in the big picture, refining it. Adjusting details in Ulysses according to your likes and preferences allows you to create a writing environment fit for your creativity.

Below, you’ll find a 6-step-guide to customize your text editor on iPad or iPhone. If you want to know how to do this on Mac, visit this post on our knowledge base. Know that if you prefer leave Ulysses as it is, 👍 — it has been carefully designed for a clean and focused experience.

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How Many Words Does My Novel Have? — Group Statistics on Ulysses for iPad and iPhone

The average reader would need around 2 days (with 8 hours for sleeping) to read everything I have ever written at work since I got here. How do I know? Would you like to know how many words you have published on your blog so far, or how many pages your novel has? In all of these cases, Ulysses’ group statistics can help. Since version 2.8 they’re available on iPad and iPhone as well.

Checking a group’s statistics is super easy: Go to the library, swipe left on the group in question, and select “Detail”. In the “Progress” section, you can check the combined word count of all sheets that live in this group and its subgroups. Now, tap this number to see all available statistics: from sheets to characters to words, sentences and pages to reading time.

If you need the combined statistics of a selection of sheets, you can check them, too: Switch to the sheet table, tap “Select” and mark the sheets in question. Your word count will be displayed at the top of the sheet list — again, tap it for detailed statistics.

Extra tip: If you rather want a different counter than the default word count, just tap it. It will then be displayed in the progress section and at the top of the sheet table.

For more information on how to take advantage of statistics for single sheets, or when working on the Mac, check out this knowledge base article.

Create Beautiful Presentations — With Ulysses and Deckset

At work with Ulysses I rarely hold presentations – we’re a small team, so it’s mostly easy to stay up-to-date with everyone’s projects without extensive meetings. For the rare occasions I need to prepare presentations, I happily rely on Deckset. I simply take down some bullet points in Ulysses and turn them into pretty slides with Deckset in a breeze. Deckset does the layout work for me, and I don’t have to fiddle around with Keynote or PowerPoint. It’s super fast and easy, especially if you’re familiar with Markdown (which you are, since you’re a Ulysses user).

Deckset turns Markdown files into presentations and works great with your favorite text editor – that is, of course, Ulysses! In the following tutorial, you’ll learn all you need to know to make both apps play together nicely. If you want, you can download Deckset’s trial version and a sample presentation for your first attempts.

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Protect Your Ulysses Text Library with Touch ID or a Password

Sometimes you might want to keep your work private from curious viewers: be it because it’s work in progress, or because it was meant for your eyes only from the beginning. Whatever the case, Ulysses’ new Touch ID and Password Lock helps you keep your texts exclusive.

Starting with version 2.8, Ulysses lets you protect your text library: once locked, a personal password or Touch ID (available only on supported devices) will be required to access the app. The idle time, after which Ulysses locks itself, can be determined individually.

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More Power to Ulysses’ Filters: Exclude Keywords or Text Occurrences

Ulysses’ filters can help you organize your work. They let you track the texts you want to keep your eye on. In Ulysses 2.8, we’ve added a new trait: You can now create filters based on negative criteria. That’s right! We’ve made it easier to sort out all the texts you don’t want to see.

Filters, as a reminder, let you sort your sheets according to certain criteria: text occurrences, keywords, or creations dates. Their uses are numerous and versatile. As a blogger, you can filter for blog posts with a keyword “In Progress”. As a novelist, you may want to filter incidents based on your main character’s name, to follow her or his actions through the course of the story. What’s new is that you can also collect sheets that do not contain a word or phrase, or that are not tagged with a certain keyword. 

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Ulysses 2.8 – Touch ID, Group Statistics, and the Return of Clarus the Dogcow

Touch ID

Hey there, friends. Ulysses 2.8 is upon you, and I’d once again like to take this opportunity to shed some light on what’s new, and why we thought the changes and additions were great ideas.

Touch ID

The most prominent new feature is Touch ID and Password Lock. It’s also the easiest to explain and rectify – locking was requested roughly a gazillion times, and seeing how Ulysses has moved to mobile devices, and how these device are oftentimes shared among family and friends, privacy is a major concern, and little if anything is more private than your writing (check your photos, though).

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Vegan Blogger Patrick Bolk: “I Try to Help Make This World a Better Place”

He turned his passion into a career: The German blogger and book author Patrick Bolk successfully publishes about the vegan way of life. Read in our interview what led up to it — and have the chance to win a copy of Patrick’s book “Vegan im Job” (“Vegan at Work”).

Patrick Bolk
Patrick Bolk
Please tell us something about you and what you are working on. 

My name is Patrick Bolk, I’m 43 years old, live in Berlin and Mallorca, and I do a lot of different things. Currently I am working on a new vegan cookbook and on a ghostwriting project. I also constantly write articles for blogs. 

What is the share of writing in your working life?

I write all the time. In every project I work on, writing is my no. 1 task. Of course there are also some other things to do: research for books, taking and editing photos, or building a website. But in the end, writing is my main thing. 

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Vote for Your Favorite Group Icon

Are you familiar with Ulysses group icons? You can assign an individual icon to each of the groups in your library; Ulysses lets you choose from around 200 different icons in total. (Read our short tutorial to learn how to use them.)

The motives of the icons are diverse, but seemingly not diverse enough: Every now and then there are users who can’t find what they need to represent their writing properly. We would like to change that! Which icons would you like to see added to Ulysses in the next release? Possibly a big bad wolf (“Little Red Riding Hood”), a skull (“Hamlet”) or bow and arrow (“Robin Hood”)?

The best ideas and the most-wished icons will make it into version 2.8. Just send your proposals by March 10 to support@ulyssesapp.com, subject “Group icon wish”, or comment on the respective Facebook post or tweet.