Welcome to Ulysses – Overview

Nice to have you here! If you want to learn more about Ulysses’ philosophy and features, you’ve come to the right place.

If you’re entirely new to Ulysses, welcome aboard! Let’s cover some basic concepts to get you started.

1. We believe that writing is about content, about what you want to say—not about fancy formatting. This is why writing in Ulysses means writing plain text, but at the same time, more than plain text. We call it “plain text enhanced”. We will come back to this later. 
    
2. Ulysses is a single-library app, and all your texts live in this single library. There is no “Open,” “Save,” or “Finder” access—it all happens right inside the app. 
    
3. If you allow it, Ulysses will fully utilize iCloud to store your texts. You can then access your texts from all of your Macs, iPads and iPhones, at home or on the go. They’ll sync automatically as soon (or as long) as you’re connected to the web. 
    
4. Ulysses does not offer WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) styles and formats like MS Word. Instead, your text will be automatically formatted once you export it as a PDF, web page, or ebook.

Most importantly, Ulysses is built to grow and adapt. You can use it as a sophisticated notepad, or you can create the next Great American Novel. You can feed your blog, keep everything neatly organized, or mess around at will.

There is no “right” way to do things here, so make yourself comfortable and make it your own. 

Navigating Ulysses

Let’s first get you some sense of direction. Ulysses' UI is split into three panes:

• Library
• Sheet List
• Editor

The library lets you access your texts. You will see different sections here depending on whether you’ve enabled iCloud. If you want to learn more about the library, take a look at our guide.

The sheet list is where all your texts reside.

The editor is where you write.

To switch between three panes (library, sheet list and editor), two panes (sheet list and editor) and an editor-only view, use the shortcuts ⌘1, ⌘2 and ⌘3. You can also switch views via the toolbar button on the leftmost side.

Groups & Filters

Groups and filters are your main tools to keep your library organized. They’re similar to Finder’s folders and smart folders.

You add groups and filters via the “File” menu on Mac and the ellipsis next to the section on iPhone and iPad. You can place groups and filters inside other groups. If you select a group in the library, its contents will appear in the sheet list. Select a sheet, and it shows up in the editor.

Filters are a special kind of group. Once set up, they look at the group they’re in and list all sheets that match the set criteria. For example, you can set up a filter that only lists sheets with the keyword “fantastic.” If you place it deep within a nested group, say, six levels down, the filter will only show matching sheets within that group.

You can even select multiple groups and filters (by holding down ⌘) and get their combined contents listed in the sheet list.

For more information, please see the guide “Sheets & Groups” and the FAQ article “How Do I Set a Filter?”.

Projects

While the Library can hold every text you’ll ever write, you’ll probably want to keep your library tidy. This is where projects come in handy.

Projects are self-contained, uhm… projects like books, papers, or blogs. They offer a predefined distinction between “content” and “extras,” making it easy to keep chapters separated from research or posts separated from mere ideas.

You can create a new project in the project section of the main library. On Mac, you can also just drag and drop an existing folder onto the project section and have it converted into a project. On an iPhone or iPad, touch and hold a group, select “Move,” and then tap the + button in the Projects section.

To find out more, take a look at our Projects guide.

iCloud vs. On My Mac/iPad/iPhone

By default, your texts are stored on iCloud, making them available on all your devices running Ulysses. Of course, you can also decide to store your texts locally or freely move them from the cloud to local storage only and vice versa.

Obviously, everything stored in the On My Mac/iPad/iPhone section will no longer be available on all the other devices you own and use, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it?

Would you like to know how to activate or deactivate sections in Ulysses? Check out this guide!

External Folders

In Ulysses, all your texts live in a library, and the only way to access them is via this library. Ulysses keeps track of all your texts, so you don’t have to. Sometimes, however, you may not want Ulysses to manage your documents. Sometimes, you might even want to have control over where Ulysses saves your writings. This is possible in the “External Folders” section.

External folders live outside of the standard library. They are folders on your local hard drive or on a cloud service (Dropbox, for example). They also work differently from Ulysses’ groups.

Sounds exciting? Read our External Folders guide for details.

Sheets

All writing is done in Ulysses’ sheets. Sheets are somewhat equivalent to classic documents, though they don’t require a “title” or a “file name” or such.

On Mac, you create sheets via ⌘N or the “New Sheet” button in the toolbar. On an iPhone or iPad, select the “New Sheet” button in the editor or tap the + button in the library/sheet list. Alternatively, you can also touch and hold the Ulysses icon on your home screen.

Sheets can hold any amount of text, and you can freely move sheets around and sort them at will. You can also select multiple sheets and glue them together. They will then behave as a single sheet in the editor, which is especially cool if you would rather have a lot of small chunks than a single, monolithic wall of text.

You can also split a sheet in two at the current cursor position and merge two or more sheets to form one. Or mark frequently used sheets as favorites so they will appear in the respective group in the topmost section of the library. 

Learn more about sheets in our Sheets & Groups guide. 
 
Of course, you can also import existing text documents into Ulysses for further editing. Importing will copy the document into the library, keeping the original file untouched. 

More on that in our Import guide.

Material Sheets

Many authors collect information, ideas and material before they begin writing. These things are obviously not meant to become an actual part of the final text, so there’s the option to mark them as material. Material sheets are excluded from export and statistics. In a sheet’s context menu on Mac, select “Use as Material Sheet.” On iPad/iPhone, touch and hold a sheet to see this option.