An iA Writer alternative for long writing

iA Writer is the best page to write on. People look for an alternative not because the page is wrong but because the book has grown past it: there are forty files now, and sources, and an editor who sends back Word documents. Grasmere is a Mac app for that stage, and we make it, so here’s where it differs and where iA Writer is still the better choice.

Download for macOS Free for 14 days, then $14.99 once · macOS 26+

What iA Writer does

Plain Markdown files, in folders you choose, on Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPad. A single purchase for each platform, $49.99 for the Mac. A page with nothing on it but the words, syntax highlighting that marks the parts of speech, a style check, and content blocks that pull other files into one document, which is how its users assemble a book. Export to PDF, Word and HTML, and Word import. Its Authorship feature marks what you pasted or took from an AI.

What it doesn’t have, as far as its documentation goes, is anything for the apparatus around a long piece: no sources, no citations, no way to bring an editor’s tracked changes back from Word, no manuscript or book layout.

What Grasmere adds

Grasmere works on the same kind of files, Markdown in your own folders, so the move is opening a folder. Around the page it adds the parts of long writing that iA Writer leaves to other tools.

The book as a whole. Chapters as cards with a synopsis and status, dragged into order. Word targets for the project. A Publish stage that makes one PDF in standard manuscript format or typeset as a book, or one Word document with a title page.
Sources. Web pages saved to read offline, PDFs, papers by DOI, books by ISBN, read and highlighted beside the draft.
Citations. Type [@ to cite; references written in APA, Harvard, Chicago author-date or MLA on export.
Review. Send a chapter as Word, and the tracked changes and comments come back onto your text to accept or reject.
Versions. Rounds, restore points and git commits, with a comparison between any two.

It’s $14.99 once, a third of iA Writer’s Mac price, after a 14-day trial.

Where iA Writer is still better

The page. iA Writer’s typography and its syntax highlighting are the result of years of care. Grasmere’s page is good; iA Writer’s is the reference.
iPhone, iPad and Windows. Grasmere is Mac only, macOS 26 or later.
Authorship. If you need to show what an AI wrote and what you did, iA Writer has the tool for it.
Years of use. Grasmere was first released in October 2026.

Using both

Plenty of people will. Draft in iA Writer, where the page is calmest, and open the same folder in Grasmere when it’s time to cite, review or publish. Each app shows the other’s edits as they’re saved, and neither changes a file the other wrote.

Questions

Will my iA Writer files open?

Yes. They’re Markdown. Content blocks, which are iA Writer’s own syntax, show as the file paths they are.

What about the iPad?

Keep iA Writer there. Sync the folder, and the Mac has Grasmere.

Does Grasmere have a focus mode?

Yes. ⇧⌘D keeps the current line in the middle of the window and can fade all but the current paragraph.

The same files. The rest of the job.

Grasmere is a Mac app for long writing in plain Markdown, with sources, citations, review and publishing built in. The trial is free for 14 days.