Rough Draft App Reviews

Nice interface, but it does not work with Typinator (strikethrough appears everytime an expansion is activated), so the whole app is pretty much useless to me. Maybe it does work with TextExpander, but I’m out of luck as a Typinator user.

The application is based on an interesting premise and has a nice design. It can be very appealing to people interested in producing text. However, it does not work with latin signs like tilde etc.

all the text go to left side, fix it, i like it the app.

Good Idea but the In-App-Purchase for eporting is a hefty 14,99 Euro.

The spelling correction only works in English. Unfortunate for me using German. Anyway - an interesting concept!

I miss the feature to have my documents synced via iCloud. I’d love to begin a rough sketch on device 1 and continue it on device 2. Please add that - then it will be 5 stars :) Sometimes I wish there would be an UNDO function so I could correct spelling errors. (the line through-function is only helpful for word changes not for spelling errors)

It’s a nice way to dump all your thoughts. When I write stuff I just want to brain dump into something, and Rough Draft is a great place to do it.

This is something that I’ve been waiting for! Everyone knows what it’s like a revise a document multiple times only to discover that the original word was the best. And what was that word again? Very well designed - minimilist and clean. A must have for anyone interested in writing!

Good concept! I agree that you spend to much time editing and rough drafts are just for getting ideas out.

Great little app that forces you to write forward thinking, and leave the editing for later. It seperates the editing from the writing, much like a typewritter. Just needs a little further development to integrate iCloud/Dropbox type syncing so we can use it on two seperate devices and pick up on laptop from where i left off on desktop. You should definitely develop an iPad version as well, it will sell.

The concept behind this application won me over. I’m the type of person who tries to get everything right on the first draft. This habit slows me down and makes me lose pace. This application has solved that. Unfortunately, it’s far from polished, especially with regards to performance. Theres a second delay between clicking the gear icon and the settings drawer awkwardly sliding out. Transitioning from documents to folders has unnecessary slide animations that appear to lag behind my inputs. Opening an existing or new document is slow, although the interface glides smoothly. Lastly, backspacing to delete (oops, strikeout) words has some lag, which causes me to either backup too far or not far enough (when I’m compensating for the delay). This lagging also increases CPU use, which makes Rough Draft a huge battery hog. While I don’t have dyslexia, the theme itself just makes the interface and writing area yellow. How a yellow theme (without changing spacing or font) aids people with dyslexia is beyond me. Overall, the idea is excellent, and the very few features present are enough. My earnest suggestion is to consider the software feature-complete and allocate resources towards tuning it under the hood to ensure it runs smoothly and without hiccups.

New and unique way to write. Give it a shot !

Perfect tool to write down your thoughts. It feels very natural and more productive too. Highly recommended for whoever loves writing, taking notes, and brainstorm.

This app is amazing to write and manage your writing. Gotta try this!!!

Really helping me get my ieas out, as long as Im not writing in Japanese. Thats what most of my writing is though, so Im enjoying just writing with little to no editing!

When typeing text in Japanese with English keyboards, users must use some Input Method software. It converts a combination of one, two or three alphabets into one Japanese character. But in this App, Input Methods are disabled. So when I tried to input text in Japanese, only vowels can be inputted in the App, because a Japanese consonant is inputted by two alphabets. If the developpers are planning to support Japanese (and maybe Korean and Chinese have similar problems), Supporting InputMethodKitFramework will help.

The app is useless without the Export function, which costs €15. But at least you can try what is really a demo mode, to see if it actually helps your writing.

I really enjoy using Rough Draft as a low-stakes way to get past my anxieties in writing. There’s something wonderful being able to witness how messy writing is, as well as how much work it takes to get a handful of usable sentences. Lots of great potential here. That said, I am a little hesitant to use this version for any long writing sessions because it is still buggy. I had the same issue as another reviewer where the app suddenly only showed the right 50% of the writing window as if the text window was scrolled all the way over. Restarting the app and my computer didn’t help. Deleting it from the Applications folder and re-installing from the App Store didn’t work. I was still getting the weird cut-off issue. I began a thorough purge, including removing the related system files and temp files. But when I did this, my content was gone. I waded through the trash files and could not tell where the content was stored, so I restored all the system files and reopened Rough Draft. Sure enough, the data was back, and so was the screen problem. I started deleting *.plist files instead. The app created a new one the next time I opened it, I could see my text! But every time I open the app, it makes me go through the onboarding and creates new copies of the default folders. What a headache! I don’t mind doing a little troubleshooting, but I was in anguish thinking that I might have lost my drafts. They aren’t stored as separate files in the system folders, they aren’t stored in iCloud, and you can’t specify where to store them. This is a big deal breaker, especially for written content which takes a ton of time and revision.

I bought this app months ago and tried using it a couple of times, but didn’t find myself falling in love with it. I thought it was just a gimmick. Now…I’ve changed my tune. After you get into the hang of letting your typos go (which is DIFFICULT), the words will start to flow…more than you can imagine. It truly works! I’ve gone from spending a week trying to finese 1,500 words to putting out nearly 15,000. (It will need heavy editing, but that’s the point!) That being said, there are a few buggy issues, but when I reached out to them asking for help…they responded personally (not some form letter) and it a timely fashion. I’m optimistic that they’ll get this firing on all cylinders. Now, I just hope I don’t get TOO used to ignoring all of my errors.

Okay, Now working.