Atlas: Write and Collect, A Creative Workspace for the Apple Ecosystem

Hey everyone! It wasn’t too long ago that I posted here with my app Fox Issue Tracker, and I am back with the second my app shop has put out, this one much newer called Atlas: Write and Collect. I know… Markdown editors and noting apps are a heavily competitive category with some very solid, free, and established tools out there, but I’ve been working on this particular app for about 3-4 years now despite it being in the store for just 5 months so way too much sunken cost fallacy ;) I don't think I can claim to be better, but my aim is to offer solid value that helps others in the same way Atlas has helped me. The Problem Atlas grew out of the inability of Scrivener to meet my needs for writing and world building back around 2022, particularly: I love Markdown as a format to write in. I think it’s much easier to prevent issues with markup and it can be transformed into so many outputs. However, a lot of markdown editors lack real interactive elements like images, tables, rich links, etc. I lost work, a lot of work, through their crappy sync mechanism tacked onto DropBox. It just wasn’t good and I preferred the ease of iCloud. The iPad / mobile app was, at best, usable. When inspiration strikes, I want to be able to jot it down or write wherever I am and I work on a desktop if not an iPad or iPhone—no laptop at the time. I wanted an app that had feature parity on all platforms.. I am tired of baby software ugh. I know this sub is for macOS apps, but I like integration across the Apple ecosystem. There wasn’t any way to create links between documents that updated text with their titles. (Seriously one of the first things I added). Overall, the app was aging and just needed some lovin’ + continued iteration. I personally feel that all apps need this nowadays (See pricing and please don’t crucify me…). Like, the cork board was cool but it didn’t let you freeform move things! Atlas was created to solve these problems and provide a solid experience for creative workspaces. In fact, throughout the development cycle, my goal was always to do better by looking at some of the best apps to refine Atlas’s feature set, which you can see an overview of on the website: https://contagious.dev/atlas/features/. Just like Fox, I also maintain an up to date help documentation website which basically outlines all of the functionality as well as how it works: https://contagious.dev/help/atlas/. But, to keep it short, I think the feature page’s snippet on the creative workspace really hits it on the head: Atlas provides a creative workspace where you collect material, organize it, and write — all in one project, instead of scattered across several apps and devices that never quite talk to each other. Chapters, research, images, PDFs, web pages, and sketches live side by side, structured the way you think about the work. On a working level, it supports Markdown text documents with a “hybrid rich” editor, Canvases, Folder Outlines, Media, Web Pages, and Apple Pencil Sketches as document types, and organizes content into Projects which open in a workspace with an Organizer, Editor, and Document Inspector. There’s a deep search which works alongside tags and metadata, a web clipper built as an extension (so available on any browser on iOS and most on macOS), templates, and a flexible export/publishing tool among some of the highlights. On a functional level to meet my goals: it uses a completely custom Markdown parser, editor, and rendering pipeline. Sync wise, it is built on iCloud using a robust engine built up over ~6 years and was designed for the needs of Atlas’s document sync. I’ve also been an iOS and mac developer since 2008 so… I know what I am doing as far as building solid apps outside of those. :) For some nerdy notes, see below! Comparison and what makes us different from: Scrivener I’ve already spoken a lot, but this app was designed to replace that for myself and has successfully done so for over 2 years. In a nutshell, I implemented everything from my list above, including feature parity across platforms, specifically: An improved writing and publishing Workspace that uses Markdown as the primary language. Sync that works with has deep integrations to iCloud and a robust conflict resolution solution. A more useful exporting and publishing scheme/tool. Atlas implements these through a separation of written content and published content and supports bulk export through the Folder/Outline document type (but my goal is to merge this with the in-app search to better improve the flexibility). Obsidian: Alright, I can hear it already: Why not Obsidian? I know, I know. To be fair, I don’t think Obsidian was as big when I started this app. But Atlas isn’t trying to be Obsidian, though it did look at it greatly as inspiration and continues to be so. The biggest difference, and likely will be a turn off for many so I'll say it now, is how they treat data. Atlas boxes it in the user’s ~/Library/Containers out of sight while Obsidian sits on top of data in the user’s local file system with a vault. And while Atlas stores data as markdown files in its container, they are organized for machine reading and the library metadata is a sqlite database. There are a few reasons for this: It’s a sandbox app. I just write them, it’s how I do things. Atlas strives to remain interoperable (you can export docs and full projects in MD with front matter, canvas in Obsidian JSON format, etc…), but Atlas holds onto data you put in it and works to take special care of it. Atlas is tied directly to iCloud through CloudKit to support some of the advanced content resolution features, especially related to document syncing and resolution. Basically, it’s an engineering choice of design to enable a lot of the functionality! Don’t come at me, I know there are ways to design around many of the challenges, but… Atlas isn’t really designed to be what Obsidian is. I hope I didn’t digress… ha. Anyway, here are a couple of things that make Atlas stand out in comparison: One-stop shop: Markdown editing, syncing, inspiration collection, publishing… no plugin dependencies or external systems needed for these things. A featured exporting and publishing tool, which exports ePub and PDF output. Feature parity across the supported platforms for every feature offered. I may be reaching on this one though… I’ve never used the Obsidian mobile app. Ulysses & Bear Two Markdown editor sandboxes that are major inspirations for Atlas and what I consider one of the best Markdown-like editors available to iOS and macOS. I actually created interoperability for the editor and publishing themes with Ulysses! However: Atlas offers an expansive collection workspace features including folders, canvases, and a home for external media. It’s a creative workspace, not just a note taking tool. There’s wider support for Markdown interoperability, like front matter exporting. Atlas includes web clipper which converts webpage content to Markdown. Speaking of which, Atlas’s web clipper actually supports Obsidian web clipper templates, too! (Funny enough… I worked on Twig back in the day (ouch), so this was a fun project to implement). Pricing Atlas is a subscription which costs $3.99/month or $24.99/year USD. Your purchase grants universal access on Mac, iPad, and iPhone. There’s a 14 day trial to give it a shot and a tour project you can explore before even committing to that. Edit: After much request, I decided that I will offer limited time lifetime offerings from time to time for $59.99! This current one will last until July 31st :) You can find Atlas on the iOS and Mac app stores here! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/atlas-write-and-collect/id6755169090 I know it's a tough sell, please don’t crucify me, but there are a few reasons I am offering a subscription without a lifetime option for this app: Writing an editor like this is hard and involved and despite having worked on it for years, there is always something to fix or improve—especially related to the Markdown engine/editor and syncing. I can’t write bug-free code. It just is what it is. Even with a part-time QA tester and 2000+ tests between the markdown engine, components, and the app itself, I can’t deploy perfection. The true cost of this app is "spread out" to help support that. :( Software in 2026 requires ongoing maintenance. For system updates, updated system integrations, ensuring UI is proper… I am a small app shop of one and two halves: subscriptions help support the longevity of the app! I actually offer real customer support because you are continuously paying. Through the app, you can reach out with questions, problems, or ideas for how to improve the app. This isn’t software by a faceless corporation: I value feedback, interaction, and will always try to get back within 48 hours. If that jives with you and you do like Atlas, use the code REDDIT3FOR1 to get the next three months for the price of one (i.e., $3.99 usd for 3 months)! It’s valid until the end of the month in case you want to give the trial a shot first. A few nerdy things I started Atlas originally as a small way to compile some worldbuilding documents in a place that supported iCloud sync and expanded a customized sync engine that I had built off the CloudKit infrastructure that began around 2019 for Fox. A lot of this predates the frameworks we have today, so these pieces we built from the ground up and iterated over the last 7 or so years in production apps which have synced thousands of items at once. It’s funny, when Apple debuted NSPersistentCloudKitContainer, I looked at it and it operates a lot how my own system is built! Though my engine takes special care syncing document assets, handing situations off to Atlas which can allow it to move forward but queue up conflict resolutions safely for the user. Anyway, this was a big deal for me and also is one of my speciality areas so getting to flex it is awesome. The Markdown engine is entirely custom as well. It was shortly after I saw John Sundell’s Ink that I got inspired to write the parser—internally called Nifty which is a reference from my teenage programming days—and it functions similarly Ink to get close to O(N). I also built the editor from scratch on top of TextKit (1, because 2 is borderline unusable for something like this) in both AppKit and UIKit over the course of maybe three years? It was first deployed in Fox and saw several iterations as I refined or rebuilt pieces based on how borderline insane some of those APIs are and users gave me feedback. Another Atlas internal tool (which I sherlocked the name Rosetta for) does a lot of the Markdown conversions to support the conversions, exporting/publisher, and web clipper but honestly that was easier. There’s a lot going on under the hood here to deliver on the promises I am making! I could go on and on… the sync and markdown components are obviously some of the bigger ones, but there’s a lot to an app like this! If you’ve any questions, please let me know. Final Notes Finally: Though I am a developer and have been for a long time (coughouch), I myself am a creative and love to both write and especially worldbuild! I use Atlas for all of my projects so I have trust in it being a solid tool that delivers on the promises I am delivering :) And honestly, so far, I’ve had some really great interactions from users and I hope to continue that! Personally, you can find me on https://iosdev.space/@nemesisprime. Bests! —Dandy