MasterWriter vs. Byword vs. WriteBot: The Best Writing App for You

^{Photo via MasterWriter}

TL;DR: Compare Byword, MasterWriter, and WriteBot to choose the ideal writing app for your needs: minimalist, feature rich, or AI driven.

Here’s an old saying that will forever be true: "a writer writes."

While writers would love for it to be so simple, it can be hard to produce when you’ve got a bunch of noise in the way. Visual or audio, real-world distractions can hamper anybody’s ability to write.

While the term “distraction-free writing tool” might seem a little unrealistic, if you can find software that removes clutter so you can focus on words, ideas, and stories, you can better enjoy and execute what you love: writing.

Byword: A Distraction Reducer

Byword text editor is a writing tool by Metaclassy & tinyTree that is simple to use and essentially turns your Mac into an old-school word processor.

Contrary to most modern apps, it forgoes features in the interest of focus, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to subscribe either at just $11 in the Apple App Store. 

When using Byword, nothing should distract from what you’ve sat in front of the screen to do: write.

Byword allows for full-screen writing and provides the option to use a writing area focused on the center of your screen. The number of lines a user can focus on ranges from single lines to full paragraphs (as shown in the image above).

Byword also lets users customize the interface with presentation types of varying widths and a range of background colors.

One potential downside to a “distraction-free” writing tool like this is that it could potentially benefit from more bells and whistles.

Perhaps some options for importing custom fonts, or an AI-driven writing assistant would be preferable to writers with more modern sensibilities? 

To speak to those writers, we're going to take a look at a couple of other writing-focused productivity tools available through StackSocial. 

MasterWriter: A Suite of Writing Tools

Rated 4.4/5 stars on Trustpilot, MasterWriter offers a lot more as a collection of writing tools that are designed to help users find words more easily, access cultural phrases with greater precision, and filter searches based on what they're looking for. 

MasterWriter organizes itself through a series of specialized dictionaries curated to help writers fill their sentences and action lines with the perfect vocabulary. One popular example is MasterWriter's Word Families collection of references and descriptive words that work well together. It features dictionaries for synonyms, phrases, speech types, and rhymes, too.

It's also been touted by many pros including Bob Zemeckis—writer and director of Forrest Gump and Back to the Future—who noted that MasterWriter "is an absolute necessity for today's creative writer." 

A two-year license for MasterWriter costs only $100 for a limited time.

WriteBot: An AI-Powered Writing Tool

WriteBot uses AI technology to help you write at a rate that it claims is 100 times faster than normal.

We wouldn't recommend this for all types of writing, but any writer who turns away from a new-age tool like this is ignoring the potential to grow and improve, not to mention learn prompt engineering skills that could become essential to landing new editorial gigs.

From blog ideation to letter writing and SEO copy generation, WriteBot can streamline writing for the first and possibly subsequent drafts of projects that you might need to get started for work.

For the many of us who value a human touch, you can always use a tool like WriteBot to get the ball rolling on a piece and then edit and hone from there for an expedited process that's not totally outsourced.

If you do come to trust it totally for shorter-form things like social media ads and meta descriptions, you can delegate those assignments to WriteBot and free yourself up to focus on more long-form or creative works. 

You can get a lifetime of AI-powered WriteBot for just $40. Or you can read more about the tool in our WriteBot review.

Which Writing App is Best for You?

The marketplace of writing-focused apps online has grown to feature tools that can support all varieties of writers. If you need to simplify, then a tool like Byword might be worth securing.

If you're a writer who loses track of time looking for the perfect word, a dictionary-rich platform like MasterWriter should be more than worth the download cost. 

For writers embracing the future, letting AI take the wheel for a bit with WriteBot could be the way to go. 

Regardless of the approach you choose, creating stories and content can be made easier by leaning on one or more of the various tools and apps available to writers today. 

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