You can move away from Acrobat using Preview. It has a 2 page view. With multiple pdfs open, you can also drag and drop pages between the documents and delete the pages you no longer need. Though, I’m not as fond of Preview filling out a pdf form.
Wow, a deep dive here of all things Mac! Great job laying all this out. I’m a big believer & user of Pages, Vellum & ProWritingAid (although i override its suggestions when it just doesn’t sound like me). I wasn’t aware of how Notes can be used so powerfully, thanks for that! I’m saving this article!
This article was such an eye opener for me. It truly speaks about how we tend to follow "what everyone else is using" when we already own functioning tools. I don't own a Mac but I own an iPad with a keyboard case which I use to manage my personal life and writting.
I will definitely be making a switch. Thank you for your recommendations !
I have both a PC and a Mac for various reasons. I will always go to my PC if I have a choice because the file explorer is so much easier to use, I use keyboard shortcuts and they’re just wrong on Mac 😂 and because the PC is smoother and easier.
On mobile, though, Apple is fabulous!
I think it’s hilarious how accurate the “I’m a PC. And I’m a Mac” commercials were. I’m totally a PC but I enjoy reading about productivity tools and how authors simplify the business of things 🙂
the bit about paying for stuff you already had for free is too real. i did this exact audit a few months ago and found i was paying $29/mo for a tool whose free tier did literally everything i needed. felt real dumb but also weirdly liberating deleting those subscriptions lol
This was genuinely useful, and also rude in the way practical advice tends to be when it catches you wasting money.
I love the reminder that we do not always need another app, another subscription, another perfect system before we can write, organize, publish, or function like semi-responsible adults. Sometimes the tool we already have is enough. We just have not bullied it into serving us yet. This also made me want to look at my own setup before paying for one more shiny little promise with a monthly fee.
This is so incredibly helpful. Some of these I use a lot, others I’ve dabbled with, and some I’ve not even touched! I really need to make more use of that tag system because I’m forever losing track of things!
One of these days I’m going to have to fuel up on a quad shot of espresso and just…go through 4 years of files to tag them all 😅 Right now my #1 Victory is at least having a clean desktop that looks cute 💕 (accomplished by the right-click + Use Stacks quickie hack and a set of fantasy library-themed folders from Etsy)
I had no idea what Freeform was--tbh, I just assumed it was another app that would immediately go into my "junk" folder. I'm definitely going back and exploring it.
What a great article. I'm sure others will throw in their recommends as well but as a writer, I happened upon an app (free) many years ago, that I can't live without. I have used it for years, it syncs across all your devices and frankly, I don't know how I ever worked without it. It's called IA WRITER (I have no affiliation other than being a big fan). Check it over. You drop it on your device and type. That's it. It's a close to a typewriter as you can get. No tracking changes. No fiddling with fonts that look nice. You simply type. Amid all of this tech, one can forget that writing should be 95% of the work. For me it's a productivity powerhouse - if one other person gets out of it what I do, this was worth posting.
Man that was a fantastic read! I saved the link to your article on my notes app in my iPhone. I’m an avid notes user. Lately I’ve been thinking about building a better system to help me keep on track or just be better organized so I meet deadlines rather than fall behind 😅 thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on these tools!
Thank you so much for this! I've been a Mac user since 2008 and it's one of those things where you settle in to your ways of doing things and you stop looking for native apps, keyboard shortcuts, etc. Until you're reminded that there is a Better Way.
Scrivener is much the same in that regard, now that I think of it.
I was sooooooooo excited to read about Freeform. I love the way you used it and will be checking it out ASAP. Until I read this article, I didn't even know it existed.
I will forever be a Scrivener devotee for drafting. Unfortunately, once I got to the actual publishing stage with Vellum, I found that Microsoft Word was the best program to do the draft pre-formatting in (importing it direct from Scrivener was a nightmare; please tell me if you know a better way). At least I get Word from work for free so it's not so bad.
If I ever get to do this gig full time, Canva will be another thing I will consider a must-have, since it's so easy and quick to do marketing materials with it.
I think tomorrow’s article will be about Scrivener, so I’ll make sure to include a bit about how I compile for Vellum! Once I figured out what I was looking at (I made myself a “vocab bank” in Apple Notes, lol), it became so much easier to click-click-transfer from Scrivener into Vellum and then just tweak from there 💕
I used InDesign years ago when I was in journalism, and tried using it when I fairly recently owned an editorial…and honestly, found it to not be worth the expense. Far too many glitches and problems (a sneeze could throw off the entire layout of a 400-page novel) and the monthly/yearly subscription was such a budget-killer. I never had a need for Photoshop or Illustrator (there’s a free website I’m blanking on that I’ll go to for the super occasional Photoshop-esque need).
Instead, I use Canva Pro for almost everything—none of the AI features, but all of the editing capabilities—and then Vellum for formatting. I got that software on a steep Black Friday discount, one-and-done, and it’s been worth the money ever since!
This is an amazing article. I am a total tightwad and use my Mac programs for everything. Pages, numbers, and notes are where all my work gets done. But I didn’t know about highlighting in Books or Freeform! You have taught me so much! Thank you!
You can move away from Acrobat using Preview. It has a 2 page view. With multiple pdfs open, you can also drag and drop pages between the documents and delete the pages you no longer need. Though, I’m not as fond of Preview filling out a pdf form.
Great resources and descriptions!!! Thank you for sharing <3
Wow, a deep dive here of all things Mac! Great job laying all this out. I’m a big believer & user of Pages, Vellum & ProWritingAid (although i override its suggestions when it just doesn’t sound like me). I wasn’t aware of how Notes can be used so powerfully, thanks for that! I’m saving this article!
Great idea
This article was such an eye opener for me. It truly speaks about how we tend to follow "what everyone else is using" when we already own functioning tools. I don't own a Mac but I own an iPad with a keyboard case which I use to manage my personal life and writting.
I will definitely be making a switch. Thank you for your recommendations !
I have both a PC and a Mac for various reasons. I will always go to my PC if I have a choice because the file explorer is so much easier to use, I use keyboard shortcuts and they’re just wrong on Mac 😂 and because the PC is smoother and easier.
On mobile, though, Apple is fabulous!
I think it’s hilarious how accurate the “I’m a PC. And I’m a Mac” commercials were. I’m totally a PC but I enjoy reading about productivity tools and how authors simplify the business of things 🙂
the bit about paying for stuff you already had for free is too real. i did this exact audit a few months ago and found i was paying $29/mo for a tool whose free tier did literally everything i needed. felt real dumb but also weirdly liberating deleting those subscriptions lol
This was genuinely useful, and also rude in the way practical advice tends to be when it catches you wasting money.
I love the reminder that we do not always need another app, another subscription, another perfect system before we can write, organize, publish, or function like semi-responsible adults. Sometimes the tool we already have is enough. We just have not bullied it into serving us yet. This also made me want to look at my own setup before paying for one more shiny little promise with a monthly fee.
“And also rude” made me laugh because it’s SO TRUE 😆
This is so incredibly helpful. Some of these I use a lot, others I’ve dabbled with, and some I’ve not even touched! I really need to make more use of that tag system because I’m forever losing track of things!
One of these days I’m going to have to fuel up on a quad shot of espresso and just…go through 4 years of files to tag them all 😅 Right now my #1 Victory is at least having a clean desktop that looks cute 💕 (accomplished by the right-click + Use Stacks quickie hack and a set of fantasy library-themed folders from Etsy)
I had no idea what Freeform was--tbh, I just assumed it was another app that would immediately go into my "junk" folder. I'm definitely going back and exploring it.
What a great article. I'm sure others will throw in their recommends as well but as a writer, I happened upon an app (free) many years ago, that I can't live without. I have used it for years, it syncs across all your devices and frankly, I don't know how I ever worked without it. It's called IA WRITER (I have no affiliation other than being a big fan). Check it over. You drop it on your device and type. That's it. It's a close to a typewriter as you can get. No tracking changes. No fiddling with fonts that look nice. You simply type. Amid all of this tech, one can forget that writing should be 95% of the work. For me it's a productivity powerhouse - if one other person gets out of it what I do, this was worth posting.
Man that was a fantastic read! I saved the link to your article on my notes app in my iPhone. I’m an avid notes user. Lately I’ve been thinking about building a better system to help me keep on track or just be better organized so I meet deadlines rather than fall behind 😅 thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on these tools!
Thank you so much for this! I've been a Mac user since 2008 and it's one of those things where you settle in to your ways of doing things and you stop looking for native apps, keyboard shortcuts, etc. Until you're reminded that there is a Better Way.
Scrivener is much the same in that regard, now that I think of it.
I was sooooooooo excited to read about Freeform. I love the way you used it and will be checking it out ASAP. Until I read this article, I didn't even know it existed.
I will forever be a Scrivener devotee for drafting. Unfortunately, once I got to the actual publishing stage with Vellum, I found that Microsoft Word was the best program to do the draft pre-formatting in (importing it direct from Scrivener was a nightmare; please tell me if you know a better way). At least I get Word from work for free so it's not so bad.
If I ever get to do this gig full time, Canva will be another thing I will consider a must-have, since it's so easy and quick to do marketing materials with it.
I think tomorrow’s article will be about Scrivener, so I’ll make sure to include a bit about how I compile for Vellum! Once I figured out what I was looking at (I made myself a “vocab bank” in Apple Notes, lol), it became so much easier to click-click-transfer from Scrivener into Vellum and then just tweak from there 💕
Yes I would really appreciate some tips about that!
What do you use as replacement for Adobe Creative Cloud? If you need an alternative for Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, I recommend Affinity.
I used InDesign years ago when I was in journalism, and tried using it when I fairly recently owned an editorial…and honestly, found it to not be worth the expense. Far too many glitches and problems (a sneeze could throw off the entire layout of a 400-page novel) and the monthly/yearly subscription was such a budget-killer. I never had a need for Photoshop or Illustrator (there’s a free website I’m blanking on that I’ll go to for the super occasional Photoshop-esque need).
Instead, I use Canva Pro for almost everything—none of the AI features, but all of the editing capabilities—and then Vellum for formatting. I got that software on a steep Black Friday discount, one-and-done, and it’s been worth the money ever since!
This was fantastic and so helpful. As a type B person that likes to cosplay as type A I love organizing and planning tools. Thank you for this!
OMG “cosplay” 🤣 Saaaame!! I always say I love to schedule and plan and then immediately ignore all of it 😆
This is an amazing article. I am a total tightwad and use my Mac programs for everything. Pages, numbers, and notes are where all my work gets done. But I didn’t know about highlighting in Books or Freeform! You have taught me so much! Thank you!
I’m so happy this helped! Freeform is everything 👀 🤩
I'm playing with it right now 😁