iA Writer 6 released, adds wikilinks, and is a free upgrade

iA Writer 6 has been released on all platforms, with support for wikilinks (no backlinks yet though, but they seem to be on the roadmap), improvements in handling hashtags, and a bunch of editor improvements:

https://ia.net/topics/ia-writer-6-now-with-lasers

It’s a free upgrade!

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Just realised it could be used to edit an obsidian vault as a companion app (joy of local markdown files free to be edited from any app). I love the typewriting experience in IA writer.
Anyone doing that?

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Yes, I often use iA Writer to edit and view my Obsidian notes. I find the writing experience better than Obsidian, but obviously there are things Obsidian can do that aren’t possible in iA Writer. The great benefit of markdown is you can use both!

Yes I use a multitude of apps to edit a vault of .md files. I think of each app as equivalent, not as it being an “Obsidian note”, although admittedly, when it comes to app-specific syntax, I follow Obsidian’s.

Been playing with this new iA Writer version on iPad all morning. It’s great. Far more pleasant than obsidian of course, but that’s not hard.
Needs a few tweaks, especially when it comes to navigating folders in the sidebar, but it’s absolutely great. They nailed the wiki link implementation, from a first look it seems that it can recognize the file linked even if it is several folders away and if you only used the file name and not full path. Good job!

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Is it possible to open a folder or can you only pick files one by one? I have been looking for the former and cannot find a way. I’d like to leverage the search and links.
I think I need to replace my IA writer library by my obsidian vault but it’s not straightforward.

It’s possible. When using an iPhone or iPad the Library Sidebar and tap the edit button at the top then tap “Add Location” then navigate to your Obsidian Vault Folder and select then tap done.

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do you mean dropping the folder here? I tried to drag a folder from dropbox but it does not work, may be it is a dropbox folder?

CleanShot 2022-06-15 at 08.12.36@2x

ignore the last post , I figured it now, I need to use the + icon

CleanShot 2022-06-15 at 08.15.41@2x

To be fair that button is tricky. You don’t see it by default (at least on the Mac). However, if your mouse hovers in that area parallel to Locations then you’ll see it. Simple once you know the trick, but far from obvious otherwise.

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Yeah, my post was specific to the iPhone or iPad. I edited my post to add that specific detail for clarity🤓

Thanks, that’s the one I was struggling with, I had no issue finding it on Mac but I was gettign confused by the various open actions and the file providers.
Just added my icloud vault folder and it works like a charm on IOS.

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Version 6 is good.

Two improvements to make it very good, IMHO:

  • Backlinks
  • Auto update of wikilinks when file name is changed
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+1 for iA Writer. Using it to replace extremely crappy DEVONthink editor as well.

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This would certainly be good to see in terms of features. But while backlinks seem to be on their roadmap, they also clearly do not wish to directly compete with Obsidian and the likes so this will probably take a while.

Probably nobody cares about this, but they also made some changes to Markdown metadata. You can now make metadata variables for content blocks. This is a nice feature for me because I use metadata variables for templates and I can now incorporate content blocks with the metadata instead of having to go to every individual document and copy and paste when I’m putting together a document from other documents. I like it.

Also, you can now format metadata variables with Markdown (html also works-at least so far as I’ve tested). That’s nice too.

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@dario I’m not sure they are “competing” with Obsidian. iA Writer is a gorgeous and wonderful environment to write in. Put kindly, Obsidian is not that. It seems some people use both with same folder. However, iA Writer does go through extensive betas before releasing a new version … so I’d guess they’ll start working on backlinks soon-ish, but may not appear for awhile due to their beta-testing process.

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I meant purely in PKM terms that iA is not aiming for that same space, as they also say in the linked blogpost (and that is fine — I also use it, along with Ulysses, primarily as a writing environment).

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I’m glad to read I’m not alone… :slightly_smiling_face:

They’ve made it too expensive for new users. No idea what made them bump up the price that much!

LOL. DEVONthink always been very stubborn to change their crappy editor :rage: It’s like using 1990 editor on a 2022 machine.

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