Stay up to date with new features and improvements to Essay.app!
A new home for everything shipping in Essay: new features and improvements, updated automatically as we release them. Follow along here, subscribe via RSS, or check What's new in the app.
Dragging the selection handles on mobile no longer gets mistaken for a swipe between tools, so the workspace stays in the editor while you select text.
Edit freely while you rewrite: reshape paragraphs, add sentences, split or merge them, and your rewrites stay synced with their matching sentence better than ever.
You can now add a comment to a sentence that has an active rewrite.
Searching a long essay no longer freezes the editor while you type. Even single-letter terms with thousands of matches highlight instantly. Highlights also line up correctly when "Ignore diacritics" is on.
Opening a promo link now applies your discount code automatically at checkout, so there's no need to copy and paste the code.
Footnotes in exported Word documents now have a space between the footnote number and the text, matching Word's own footnote layout.
Pressing Cmd/Ctrl+A on shared and read-only essays selects the essay text instead of the whole page, and readers no longer see an empty title placeholder on untitled essays.
Pick a color for each outline section from the new hue-sorted picker, select multiple sections at once, and untitled topics now show clear placeholders.
Click the editor toolbar's drag handle to choose which tools appear for each essay, with matching controls in workspace settings.
Small app updates no longer interrupt your writing session. You're only prompted to reload for bigger releases.
Hyperlinks in exported Word documents now use Word's link style, so they show up blue and underlined instead of looking like plain text.
Selecting sentences that contain footnotes in the Reorder tool no longer duplicates the footnotes in your essay.
The notes toolbar now has tabs to switch between notes linked to the essay you're working on and all of your notes.
Blocks in the editor get a new actions menu with save-for-later and copy, drag-and-drop reordering, and toolbars for working with multiple blocks or list items at once.
Name your essay right in the workspace, independent of its title. Exports gain workspace-styled title layouts, citation-free title modes, and an additional text field.
Imported documents now keep the file name and the document's own title separate, instead of turning the file name into a heading.
Scrolling through past versions of your essay on iPhone and iPad now responds correctly to touch.
When you edit a link, the editing popover now appears directly under the link instead of floating near the toolbar.
Pasting from Word, Google Docs, Notion, or Markdown now preserves your headings, lists, and formatting as proper essay blocks.
Straight quotes become curly quotes, double hyphens become dashes, and other typographic touches are applied automatically as you write.
Footnotes imported from Word documents no longer carry over unsupported formatting.
Restoring an earlier version of your essay now keeps the citation style you had selected.
Underlines and unicode subscripts now render correctly in exported PDFs.
Essay now has a free plan alongside the new Core and Pro tiers, so you can start writing for free and upgrade when you need more.
Gift purchases and redemption have been redesigned, and gift emails now arrive from the person who sent them.
A rebuilt product tour walks you through the workspace when you're getting started.
You can now drag list items into a new order from the Reorder and Sentence views.
Search your essay for a word or phrase and replace it everywhere at once.
PDF export now supports title pages, running headers, and margins formatted to APA, MLA, or Chicago style, with your bibliography included.
Manage your card, billing email, and subscription directly from the new billing settings page.
Essays in the trash now open in view-only mode so you can check the contents before restoring or deleting them.
Add in-text citations and footnotes, browse your reference library, and export your essay right from your phone.
Document stats now show an exact page count, plus word and character counts for selected text in the goals toolbar.
Adding references is now one streamlined flow with advanced search, type and year filters, and duplicate detection.
Offline writing is now sturdier, with hardened syncing, cached fonts, and clearer feedback when you're disconnected.
Getting started is faster, with topic recommendations and a cleaner signup flow on desktop and mobile.
Version history now lives in a dedicated modal with previews and inline actions, on desktop and mobile.
Bring existing writing into Essay. Imports preserve headings, highlights, blockquotes, and fonts.
Connect your Zotero account to import your reference library, including your notes.
Choose between footnotes and endnotes for your essay. Endnotes carry through to PDF preview and Word import.
The new Discover tab recommends books and papers for your topic, searching Crossref and Open Library as you type.
Export your essay to Google Docs, a Word document, or Markdown, footnotes included.
Build a reference library, cite sources in your text with page locators, add footnotes, and generate a bibliography in APA, MLA, or Chicago style.
Saving, naming, and restoring versions of your essay is now faster and more reliable.
Not sure what to write about? The new topic tool suggests essay topics and angles based on your interests, with quizzes to help it get to know you.
Our landing page has been redesigned from the ground up to better show what Essay can do.
Add checklists to your essays and notes, and insert links in the editor, notes, and comments.
Readers of a shared essay can now highlight passages and leave comments.
