Contact iA Writer Support

by Tom Hanks Is Bela Lugosi

Whatever iA Writer does to sync your text files with iCloud, it does a lousy job of it. It loses text at a frankly unforgivable rate. I've seen it delete chunks of my writing multiple times within the same MINUTE—I write, it deletes, I rewrite, and it deletes again.

If you look at the developers' responses to other users who've complained about this on the App Store, it seems they're willing to blame iCloud Sync for this, as if the problem is endemic to Apple's implementation of file synchronization. But other developers have seemingly worked out a solution for this: Bear doesn't lose my files like iA Writer does, and neither did Editorial (RIP). This arrogance on the part of the developers suggests they turn a blind eye to their own failures. At what point does intentional ignorance become functionally equivalent to incompetence? I'm not sure. Perhaps the developers of iA Writer should be asking themselves this question.

Fundamental inability to store data aside, iA Writer is a lovely app. File management could be a bit more graceful, but admittedly it's a trickier problem to solve on iOS devices—and the developers seemingly have bigger file-related issues to tackle first. I'd have rated this app four or five stars, but a synchronization issue seems to have wiped a few of them out of existence.

by Chicagotree

iA writer is a terrible app. I don’t mean to be mean at all. I just feel obligated to leave a review for other people who wants to try this app. So it has syncing issues, which means it will constantly loose your writings and if it saves any, it will make several copies of writings that you are trying to edit so every time you have to be very careful not to delete anything from the mess that it made in my cloud and look for changes you made and copy it. Worst experience ever. Never had this problem when I used Evernote and Note app. The app just doesn’t save changes and doesn’t know how to do so. What’s the point of using an app at all? Save yourselves and get other apps like Note app. It doesn’t support markdown but Note app never loose anything.

UPDATE: Thank you for replying on my review. The cloud I am referring to is not just iCloud. I also mean Dropbox. Please don’t make it look like Apple’s doing wrong. I had so much troubles because of your app. Not because I am doing something wrong or Apple’s doing wrong but your app is so buggy.

by Hfismfnfjxm

I was delighted by this app right up until I lost data, which happened almost immediately. I was editing a file stored in my Dropbox, switched to another app, and when I came back the last few changes I'd made were gone. This has happened to me several times in just a few hours of using the app. Whatever the underlying issue is, it also seems to cause crashes, and sometimes the app is unable to start up again.

I've seen a couple of replies from the developers in here in which they claim that cloud sync issues are essentially out of their hands. Yet, other apps don't seem to have the same issues. For instance, I've been using Scrivener on iOS for a year or two, storing files in Dropbox, and I've never, ever lost data.

I'm sure it's a pain to get this right for all the different cloud services, and I have no idea what constraints the developers are working under. But Dropbox integration is critical to me, and I verified that the app supported Dropbox before I bought it. Now that I'm trying to use it, though, it seems very broken, to the point that I can't trust it with my data.

I really wish I could use this app, but I don't think I can until the Dropbox support improves. This three-star rating is just because it doesn't do what it says on the tin; if it ever does get functional Dropbox support, I will be happy to come back and use it, and I think it will be worthy of five stars.