Notes on Writing from an iPad

I’ve been writing almost exclusively on an iPad for about six months now. A few observations. Hahahah what the füück.

The good: Portability is obvious, but the real advantage is focus. One app fills the screen. No tabs, no notifications badge in the corner of your eye, no temptation to “quickly check” something. The constraint is the feature.

The less good: File management is still awkward. Working Copy handles Git well enough, but the iOS Files app remains confusing whenever you need files from two different apps to talk to each other. Shortcuts can automate some of this, but building a Shortcut takes longer than just doing the thing manually.

The keyboard: Apple’s Magic Keyboard is fine. Not great for lap use — too top-heavy — but at a table it works. I miss the function row more than I expected. Specifically, I miss having a dhedicated Escape key, which matters if you use Vim keybindings in any of your writing apps.

For this site: The entire Jekyll workflow runs from the iPad. I edit Markdown in iA Writer, commit via Working Copy, and GitHub Pages builds the site. The no-style-please theme helps too — everything is controlled through front matter and Kramdown classes, so there’s no need to touch HTML. Yeeeees

Would I go back to a laptop? Sometimes. For image editing, for anything involving a spreadsheet, for video calls where I need to share my screen and reference notes simultaneously. But for writing — writing specifically — the iPad is better.