The anticipated update for Ulysses on iOS -- Ulysses Mobile v2.5 -- is available on the App Store. The app is now universal for all iOS devices, iPhone, iPad, iPad Pro. After a few minutes with it I think the winning features are full support for Split View, especially on the iPad Pro, and the new share sheet. Split View makes reading and writing side by side a pleasure. When Apple updates iOS to support dragging text from one side to the other it will just get better. The share sheet is good when browsing and collecting snippets of info.

I've also been experimenting with iThoughts on one side and Ulysses on the other -- doing reserach and collection in iThought's browser, arranging outlines, and exporting it to Ulysses in the other pane.

The share extension is beautifully designed. Select text in a document in some app, select Ulysses from the share menu and the text opens in an intermediate window so you can edit if and choose what group in Ulysses you want to send the text to. If the selected text comes from a browser, the share extension automatically adds a link back to the source web page.

I'm using Ulysses here on an iPad Pro that I bough in anticipation of this Ulysses upgrade (and, eventually, Scrivener iOS). No regrets -- it's a great writing environment.

Okay, Paul, now I'm dribbling with envy... but my FD won't countenance an iPad Pro, ever since I snuck a couple of iPod Touches through on my IT budget (for filming corporate videos, honest!).

Ulysses does look frickin' awesome!

There's a good review of Ulysses 2.5 for those who don't know it (and even for those who do) on MacStories:

https://www.macstories.net/reviews/review-ulysses-2-5-for-ipad-and-now-iphone/

Ulysses for iOS has an update today that includes Dropbox sync. Formerly, Ulysses iOS only synced via iCloud, and a feature to open from Dropbox, but not sync. Dropbox sync with Ulysses has been a frequently requested feature, apparently.

Unfortunately, it looks like it might be unreliable, according to this:

http://www.macdrifter.com/2016/08/ulysses-for-ios-updated-with-dropbox-sync.html

I use Ulysses for iOS quite a bit, but I used iCloud sync and never pined for Dropbox sync -- so I have nothing of significance to test the new Dropbox sync, myself.

Well, I've installed the new Ulysses for iOS on all my machines (iPhone, iPod, iPad 2, iPad Mini 3) and it's brilliant! Dropbox sync seems to work well, as a matter of fact - it's very easy to set up, and the documents start populating the library immediately. Stuff I've edited in Ulysses but also access through other Markdown editors (e.g. FoldingText) has been correctly synchronised. Let's face it, all sync services sometimes have problems; the trouble is, just a single, widely read journalist having a horrible time can make it sound as if an entire, globally active system is fundamentally flawed.

But the best thing is the new universal search function, which works really well - it's essentially based on the "Quick Open" function in the main desktop application, but as a general search engine, is extremely efficient.

Things I still find annoying about Ulysses:
- it doesn't use standard Markdown syntax (e.g. unconventional use of square brackets for links, non-use of double tildes for strikethrough [in fact, there's no support for strikethrough at all]); this is something I can see blocking its further evolution, unless a fairly drastic executive decision (or two) is made at some point in the near future,
- inflexible tag support (you can set up filters like anything, even very complex ones; but you can't - and this really surprises me - simply click on a tag and immediately see a list of all items with that tag).

And the really fussy one:
- it still doesn't fold text under headings! Okay, you could argue the whole idea of folding is antithetical to Ulysses, which would prefer users to put together text fragments. But it's a question of preferred working method.

Cheers,
Bill

Having made soothing noises about Dropbox, I feel honour-bound to mention that I don't synchronise more than one Dropbox folder with Ulysses (you appear to be able to add as many as you like). I don't know how synchronising multiple folders would work - maybe that would result in issues?

I would mention, however, that my one folder does include several subfolders, and - so far - they all seem to sync fine.

Reading the MacDrifter article, I see that the journalist has indeed tried to sync all his text files in one go (loads of subfolders with over 2000 files!). Bold, but perhaps a little rash with a new iteration?!

It's been years since I did anything as optimistic as that ;-)

I am a complete twerp. There I was, lamenting Ulysses's non-standard use of markup - and totally forgetting that you can produce your very own markup scheme, using your own preferred codes. Doh!

That's a level of flexibility that blows everybody else away, actually, and almost makes up for the lack of support of e.g. tables ;-)