Bicycle For Your Mind
Actions Arrive in Drafts on macOS
drafts icon
Product: Drafts for macOS
Price: $19.99/yearly or $1.99/monthly for Drafts for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and macOS.
I have covered Drafts in a previous article.
Drafts version 16 ships with Actions. It is well implemented and makes Drafts a compelling solution for folks looking for a text editor.
In my review I had made the following suggestions:
How Can the Drafts Experience Be Improved on macOS?
These are some suggestions to improve the experience of using Drafts on macOS:
- Actions.
- Typewriter Scrolling.
- A keyboard command to tag multiple files.
- A way to export multiple files out of Drafts as individual files. I can merge them together and export the whole thing as one file, but that is not an ideal solution. I want a bunch of individual files to be exportable at once.
Actions have been implemented. They are fantastic.
You can tag multiple files at once. Select them and assign them a tag. Doesn’t have a keyboard command, I used Keyboard Maestro to assign a keyboard command and I am happy with that.
Typewriter scrolling is missing. I am unhappy about that. Makes writing in it a painful experience. Although strangely, when you reach the bottom of the page, the caret jumps to the middle of the page and you continue typing. It is an improvement but somewhat disconcerting.
The ability to export multiple files at once as individual files is missing and it is a serious omission. I don’t like to be locked into one program and this is a friction point which makes me stay away from Drafts as my main text editor.
Some Interesting Actions
This is a list of actions I found interesting:
- Stats (selection) | Drafts Action Directory
- Preview in Marked 2 | Drafts Action Directory
- Share as Text File | Drafts Action Directory
- shortcuts | Drafts Action Directory
- Text Modifier… | Drafts Action Directory
Actions are grouped around a theme. Some of the groups I have found interesting are:
- Bullet Journal | Drafts Action Directory
- Editing | Drafts Action Directory
- Scene Writer | Drafts Action Directory
- Actions-Apps | Drafts Action Directory
- TaskPaper | Drafts Action Directory
Conclusion
I am excited by Actions. I am sure that the thriving community around Drafts is going to extend Drafts in interesting ways. I am eagerly waiting for that to take off. At this point, Drafts is already a great solution for your text editing needs.
Typewriter scrolling and the ability to export multiple files are the only remaining friction points for me. Hope they get added soon.
Drafts is a one-of-a-kind product in the text editing space and I recommend it with some reservations.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie.