This page contains detailed information about new features and other improvements in new versions of the app.
Folding for Markdown sections and TaskPaper projects – this allows you to hide the contents of a section/project by tapping the triangle next to the header (in the left margin). For Markdown documents, the header level (number of ‘#’s) determines how much text is folded (e.g. folding a level-1 header also folds any level-2 headers below it, up to the next level-1 header). You can quickly unfold all text in the current document by tapping the triangle button in the top-left corner.
The label next to a folded header shows the word count (Markdown) or number of tasks (TaskPaper) in the hidden text.
Using the new Fold Text, Unfold All Text, and Fold Lines Containing... actions, you can also fold text from your own workflows. The editor Python module also has a few new functions to work with folded text.
Quick settings – by tapping the “Aa” button (main toolbar on iPad and iPhone 6 Plus, in the outline popup on other iPhones), you can now change editor-related settings more quickly. This includes a new “Text Zoom” setting that greatly simplifies changing the overall font size.
You can also change the syntax highlighting mode from the quick settings. The selected mode becomes the default for all documents with the same file extension, which makes the various confusing file extension settings of previous versions obsolete.
If you primarily type with an external Bluetooth keyboard, you can also disable the extra on-screen keyboard row from the quick settings.
There’s a new “Arrange Paragraphs” mode that you can turn on from the quick settings as well. When it’s enabled, drag handles are shown for every line, basically like in TaskPaper mode, but this works for Markdown and plain text. This can be particularly useful in combination with folding because when you drag a section that’s folded, the entire contents moves with the header.
Document templates – Significantly improved New File menu with customizable templates and the ability to import photos from the camera roll.
Document templates are essentially workflows that contain a single “Create Document” action by default. This allows you to set the initial content, filename and selection range/cursor position of a new document. Filename and content can contain variables, so it’s possible to include the current date, clipboard, etc., similar to snippets. But since templates are full-fledged workflows, you can do a lot more with them, e.g. show a dialog before creating the document, use the selected text in the current document to create a new one, etc.
Improved support for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus
Improved in-editor search – on the iPad, there are a couple of new options for replacing occurrences, matching only full words, etc., and the highlighting of search results looks better.
There’s a new “Highlight All” menu item when you select a word or sentence. This basically applies the selected word as a search term, but without showing the search bar. In addition to ad-hoc searches, you can also use this for things like highlighting the current sentence while you scroll around in a document, so you can find your way back more easily.
Browser tabs – The accessory panel has a completely new, much more flexible tab UI. In its default state, only the Markdown preview is shown, but you can add the console, documentation, and browser as tabs when you need them. I wanted to reduce the visual clutter, and I’m pretty sure that most people use the help and console tabs rarely, if ever (they’re still there of course, you can get to them from an empty browser tab).
There can be multiple browser tabs, and you can open links in new tabs via tap-and-hold. The “Open URL” action also has new options for controlling in which tab a page is opened. By default, pages are opened the last-used browser tab, but you can change this to either always open a new tab, or to use a tab with a given ID (so that URLs from one workflow always open in the same tab...).
New share button in browser tabs; the share button in the Preview tab also uses the system share sheet now, so you can send the HTML to app extensions you may have installed.
1Password support in the web browser
HTML/CSS editing with basic syntax highlighting – this is primarily intended to make editing custom preview templates more convenient.
Improved auto-pairing for quotation marks, including curly quotes (on the iPad, curly quotes can now be accessed by tapping and holding the " key).
Indentation can be changed more easily for multiple paragraphs (“Indent” item in editing menu).
The editor now remembers the scroll position and folding state of recent files.
On the iPhone, the on-screen keyboard can now be dismissed by swiping down in the editor – if you prefer to use a button for this, there is an option to disable it in the Gestures settings.
New “Edit as Text” option when you open a text file with an unknown extension. When you do this once, the extension will be remembered automatically. You can restore the default behavior in the new “File Settings” section.
Improved support for third-party web browsers. In addition to Chrome and iCab, you can now select Opera Mini, Coast, and Mercury. You can also choose to open links from the editor and preview in these app (instead of the in-app browser). If you select Chrome as the external browser, a “back to Editorial” button is now shown by default (you can disable this in the settings).
