7 minimalist alternatives to OmniOutliner

Looking for great alternatives to OmniOutliner? Here are some of the best distraction-free writing app alternatives to OmniOutliner.
Bike Icon

Bike

Write to think. Bike is an unusually fast outliner. Unlike a web app, Bike is efficient and at home on your Mac.

Outline writing, lists, and notes

Use Bike to organize your thoughts. Make lists, take notes, and save your ideas. Bike is a powerful outlining tool for thinkers and writers.

Outlines are powerful, but can be confusing. Bike outlines are fluid. Your ideas flow across the screen instead of jumping from position to position. This makes it easier to track what’s going on, and it’s fun!

Why Bike Outliner?

I think macOS needs more "bicycles for the mind".

Bike is small enough to fully understand. Once understood it’s flexible enough use for many purposes.

Bike is small, but designed for real work. It’s fast. It can handle big outlines that break other outliners. Bike's also fast at the basics–opening files, scrolling views, and resizing windows. Bike won’t slow your Mac down.

Bike makes your writing open and accessible. Outlines are stored in text files using standard file formats. Bike is also scriptable. Automate and extend Bike with scripts.

Features

  • Clean macOS native outlining software.
  • Innovative rich text editor. Format your text easily and precisely.
  • Fast and efficient by design. Bike's editor is custom built to provide a fluid outlining experience.
  • Outliners are powerful but constraining. Text editors are freeing but weak on structure. Bike is good at both.
  • Bike respects your computer's memory and battery. Bike is a macOS native app and passes the Moby Dick Workout.
  • Improved macOS text checking. Autocorrect, user replacements, and spelling errors with a more consistent user interface.
  • Bike uses open file formats. The .bike file format is HTML–you can view it in your web browser. Bike also supports .opml and .txt.
  • Distraction-free outlining. Full screen, typewriter, and focus modes. You’ve seen these features before, but not combined with Bike’s speed and fluidiy.
  • Live word counts and other text statistics display in the status bar.
  • Follow deep-links into your outline from other apps. Bike links don't break when you rename or move your outline file.
  • Bike is scriptable. Use AppleScript to control and automate Bike and integrate Bike with other scriptable applications.
Paper Icon

Paper

Super-clean writing space with a lot of configurability that stays out of sight when you don’t need it.

  • Gorgeous writing space
  • Silky-smooth typing
  • Deep personalization (Pro)
  • Markdown or Plain Text
  • Syncs with iCloud
  • Writes and edits texts with ChatGPT AI
  • Publishes drafts to Medium, WordPress, or Ghost
  • Exports to PDF, HTML, RTF, DOCX, image, or clipboard
  • Works seamlessly across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac
Bear Icon

Bear

Markdown Notes for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Bear is a beautiful, flexible writing app for crafting notes and prose.

Ready when you need it

Bear works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, so you can write wherever inspiration strikes. Use todos to stay on task across every device.

Organize easily

Link notes to each other to build a body of work. Add hashtags to organize the way you think. Use Face/Touch ID to protect sensitive notes.

Write your way

Bear is perfect for everything from quick notes to in-depth essays. A focus mode helps you concentrate, and advanced markup options are an online writer's best friend. Full in-line image support brings your writing to life.

Gorgeous settings

Packed with beautiful themes and typography and Dark Mode, Bear makes your writing look great before and after publishing.

Keep notes safe

With Bear Pro, you can encrypt individual notes to keep them safe and lock Bear to keep away nosy friends, family, and coworkers. Set a unique password that only you know, use Face/Touch ID to open your notes, and know that your Bear is safe from everyone.

Edit and export

Bear's simple tools take the effort out of writing, whether you need to hit specific word counts and reading times, or you need to convert your writing into PDF and Word docs. With Bear's custom markup shortcuts, you can add style and links with just a tap or keystroke.

Spaces Icon

Spaces

The joy of writing, elevated. A distraction free writing app built with an intelligent editor, smart organization & a design brought to perfection after years of iterations.

Practically magic

The pure joy of bringing words & thoughts to life is what makes writing magical. Unable to write freely, that flow is disturbed. It takes the magic away.

While most apps have a toolbar that makes you choose different options & rest of them support markdown with a syntax that is visible all the time...

Spaces blissfully integrates Markdown & hides all your syntax, as soon as you move your cursor away. It's practically magic!

People loveeeee Spaces

Thousands of people already in love, and we couldn't be happier! Just getting started.

Everything you need

Pin, archive, add to favorites or simply mark your notes as unread to visit them one more time. Sort your content into spaces using hashtags and/or add them into custom filters.

At your fingertips

All your options, spaces & filters available at a swipe with the gesture perfected to milliseconds after 100+ tests so that you get a flawless experience. Every. Single. Time.

An app you can trust

Spaces is built by a truly independant team of passionate people. All your data is synced using Apple Cloudkit.

We don't have access to your data, it is synced directly using Cloudkit, which also powers native Apple apps like iMessage, Reminders etc.

Ulysses Icon

Ulysses

The Ultimate Writing App for Mac, iPad and iPhone. Powerful features and a pleasant, focused writing experience combined in one tool, made for people who love to write and write a lot — this is Ulysses.

Like 12 Fingers, 25 Hours a Day

Some things simply work better when you’ve got the right tool. Ulysses’ well thought-out features boost your productivity through the entire writing process; its distraction-free interface keeps you in the flow so you can get things done.

Projects Cannot Get Too Big

Be it college essays, blog posts, or the next Great American Novel: No matter what you’re working on, Ulysses is equipped for managing writing projects of all sizes and ambitions.

Built-In Proofreader and Editing Assistant

Write with confidence: Ulysses’ built-in grammar and style check helps you avoid mistakes and meet the right tone. Available for over 20 languages, it offers suggestions for capitalization, punctuation, semantics, redundancy, style and more.

Let Your Words Shine

After you’re done writing, Ulysses can turn your texts into beautiful PDFs, Word documents, ebooks and even blog posts. Everything is just a click away, with on-the-fly switching of styles and a live preview built right in.

iA Writer Icon

iA Writer

Get focused. iA Writer offers a unique writing experience that lets you concentrate and clarify your message. Used by half a million people worldwide, its powerful interface is crafted to cut out noise, let you focus on what you want to say, and help you structure and trim your text. Available for Mac, iOS, Windows, and Android.

Simple and Powerful

No rulers, no formatting bars. iA Writer provides the crisp, uncluttered environment you need to write well, supported by discrete, powerful features, from Content Blocks, to Syntax Highlighting.

Focus and Flow

Focus is the key to good writing, and the guiding principle behind iA Writer. With shortcuts and simplified settings, you can keep your hands on the keyboard and your mind in the text.

Ownership and Control

We think every craftsperson should own their own tools, so when you download iA Writer, you own it. No forced subscriptions, microtransactions, or compatibility concerns. Your work, your files, your app.

Hack Your Syntax

Highlight parts of speech to improve your writing. Spot superfluous adjectives, weak verbs, and unwanted repetitions. Developers have long used syntax highlighting to improve their code. Now you can hack your text.

Power of Style Check

Style Check is like having a personal editor-in-chief on your device, carefully reviewing your text for redundancies, clichés and filler words as you type. It’s simple, different, and powerful.

The Original Focus Mode

Focus only on the sentence or paragraph that you’re working on. Introduced in 2010 with the original iA Writer, Focus Mode has since been copied by many writing apps. This is the original, and still (we think) the best.

Flexible Content Blocks

Swap sections around, add media, and construct your content with flexible building blocks of text, .csv tables and image files. Stitch separate chapters together into one master file. Express yourself through experimentation.

Optimized Typeface

We have created an innovative typeface for iA Writer, specifically designed to enhance the writing experience. The family comes in three flavors: classic Mono, Duo for larger screens, and Quattro for small devices.

Parallel PDF Preview

iA Writer now offers a live, paginated PDF preview, parallel to the text you are editing. Instantly see how your document translates into PDF pages, as you edit.

Advanced Markdown to Word Export

iA Writer features one of the most advanced Markdown-to-Word export functions available anywhere. Quickly export your Markdown documents to MS Word (and back too!). Includes support for tables, images and footnotes.

iWriter Pro Icon

iWriter Pro

iWriter Pro is elegant and minimalist text editor with built-in MultiMarkdown support.

Clean and Simple

iWriter Pro is designed to be easy yet powerful text editing app. It provides distraction-free writing experience with a bunch of handy features.

Markdown Highlighting

Markdown is a good way to format your text, apply styles, insert lists and block quotes. iWriter Pro automatically highlights text as you type.

iCloud Support

Use iCloud to store your documents. You can easily create, view and edit your files on Mac, iPad and iPhone devices.