1. Best Free Word Processor App For Mac
2. Best Word Processor Program For Mac
3. Best Free Word Processing Software For Mac
4. Free Word Processor Program For Windows

A good word processor is one of the few pieces of software you simply can't live without. You might be able to manage without a spreadsheet tool or something for making slideshows, but text documents are unavoidable. Thankfully, you don't need to splash out on a full Microsoft Office subscription; there are some superb word processors available to download and use completely free.

Here we’re looking at the very best word processors that can be used offline (particularly useful for distraction-free writing), but there are also several excellent browser-based tools to consider if you'd rather do your writing online.

If you aren't a fan of Word, aren't interested in purchasing a full office suite, or you really just need a new, free word processor, check out the best of the best below. Top 4 Download periodically updates software information of mac word processor full versions from the publishers, but some information may be slightly out-of-date. Using warez version, crack, warez passwords, patches, serial numbers, registration codes, key generator, pirate key, keymaker or keygen for mac word processor license key is illegal. It is a combination of word processor and page layout. For an absolutely straight word processor, Word is more powerful. But for many projects the page layout features are useful, and iWorks can handle ligatures and some other features with OpenType fonts.

Google Docs is the most obvious choice, and has the advantage of saving your work automatically so you don’t have to worry if your connection fails. It’s also a good choice for collaborative working, and means you don’t have to upload work to a separate cloud storage service. However, it has a limited selection of templates, there’s no way to import content from other Google applications, and any online tool is going to be surrounded by distractions like social media.

For the rest of us, below are some free word processors for Mac that will get the job done for writers: WPS Writer by Kingsoft WPS Office by Kingsoft is a free suite of software available for multiple platforms including Windows, iOS, Linux, and Android. If you’re an Apple lover and a Mac OS X user, this word processor program is definitely for you. But the fact is IBM has released a word processor program that is free of cost. IBM’s free productivity package, known as the IBM Lotus Symphony, comes with a word processor program, a spreadsheet editor and a presentation editing software. If you aren't a fan of Word, aren't interested in purchasing a full office suite, or you really just need a new, free word processor, check out the best of the best below. AbiWord is a free word processing application very similar to Microsoft Word. It is available for Linux distributions only. It is available for Linux distributions only. The software is fully compatible with not only Microsoft Word, but also OpenOffice.org, Word Perfect, Rich Text Format and more.

If you'd prefer an offline word processor, read on – the perfect one is only a click away.

1. WPS Office Free

A word processor with cloud storage and support for all text files

If you’ve used a modern version of Microsoft Word, there’ll be no learning curve when you switch to Writer – the word processing component of WPS Office Free.

This free word processor looks and behaves almost exactly like its premium counterpart, and even has its own equivalent of OneDrive, offering 1GB free cloud storage.

Its selection of pre-installed templates gives you everything you need for common document types, and you can easily create your own for bespoke tasks. It’s compatible with every text file format you can think of, including current and legacy versions of Microsoft Word dating back to Office 97.

WPS Office Writer is supported by discrete ads, which can be removed by upgrading to the premium version, but they’re barely noticeable and no features are locked behind a paywall. Overall, WPS Writer is very impressive, and in our opinion it’s the best free word processor available to download today.

WPS recently launched a free PDF to Word converter as well, which is a great companion to its word processor.

2. LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice

All-singing, all-dancing word processors for any text-based work

LibreOffice is a fork of Apache OpenOffice, and although there are some differences between the two suites (LibreOffice receives more frequent updates, for example, and has a more lively userbase), their word processing components are so similar, we’re listing them together.

Both versions of Writer are feature-packed analogs of Microsoft Word, packed with all the features you could possibly need for any text-based work.

The two versions of Writer include wizards and templates for common document types, such as invoices and letters, and it’s easy to create your own templates for future use as well. The word processors also work together with the other office software in their respective suites – so you can use Base to create a bibliography, for example.

Both word processors support all the most popular file formats, and can export documents to PDF without the need for additional software. If you’re looking for a word processor that can stand in for Microsoft Word, either of these two will be a perfect candidate.

3. FocusWriter

The ideal word processor for first drafts, with no fussy formatting

If you simply want to hammer out some words without worrying about formatting, you could just use Windows’ built-in Notepad app, but FocusWriter is full of clever tools that will help you maximize productivity without ever getting in the way.

As the name implies, FocusWriter blocks out all distractions so you can give that all-important first draft your full attention. In normal use, all you see is a blank page – toolbars are only visible if you move your mouse pointer to the edge of the screen – but there’s a killer feature in Focused Text, which fades everything into the background except the current paragraph or sentence.

FocusWriter also features alerts that are triggered at certain times, or when you’ve reached a predefined word count, so you don’t need to worry about watching a counter (as you would in Microsoft Word). This also makes FocusWriter a good tool to use in tandem with the Pomodoro Technique, which involves working hard for a period of time that’s long enough for you to work productively, but not so long that you become fatigued.

It’s not suitable for editing, but for productivity, FocusWriter is hard to beat.

4. SoftMaker FreeOffice

Another great looking word processor, but watch your file formats

TextMaker – the word processing element of SoftMaker FreeOffice – is good looking, and comes with several handy templates for creating letters and other everyday documents. The selection isn’t as extensive as some of its rivals’, but you can also make new designs for future use and save them in TMV format.

All the features you’d expect from a modern word processor are present and correct, including advanced formatting options, the ability to create databases for managing bibliographies and footnotes, and a function for tracking changes to collaborative projects.

The only real drawback of TextMaker is its inability to save your work in DOCX format (though you can open and edit these files with no difficulty). This feature is limited to the premium version of SoftMaker Office, which retails for £48.20 (about US$60, AU$75).

5. Writemonkey

Productivity-focused word processing with quick shortcuts

WriteMonkey is another no-frills word processor designed to help you maximize your output without fussing with editing and formatting. It’s not intended for documents like letters or CVs, but is great for committing early ideas to paper (or screen) so you have the raw material to develop later.

Unlike FocusWriter, which is compatible with all the most common text formats (including Microsoft’s DOC and DOCX), WriteMonkey only works with TXT files, so you’ll have to convert any works in progress before opening them. WriteMonkey’s hidden controls are tricker to navigate, too – everything is accessed via a large right-click menu, or a vast collection of keyboard shortcuts.

That said, if you’re happy to commit those shortcuts to memory, you’ll find WriteMonkey faster to use than toolbar-based alternatives.

Best Free Word Processor App For Mac

We also like the ability to look words up in Wikipedia, Google Images, Poetry.com, Answers.com, and many others without opening a browser winder manually and leaving yourself open to the temptations of Twitter and Facebook.

WriteMonkey is a portable app, so there’s no need to install it – just extract all the downloaded files to a removable drive or cloud storage service and fire it up by running the file WriteMonkey.exe.

Finding sources to cite is easy5 Ways to Get Your Hands on Academic Papers Without Losing Your Mind (or Money)5 Ways to Get Your Hands on Academic Papers Without Losing Your Mind (or Money)For a lot of people academic journals are hard to get hold of. They are also expensive. But with the right tools, you can get your hands on any academic journals you want.Read More. Planning a paper is easy. Sitting down and writing the thing? Much harder, and though there’s no shortage of word processors, not all are well-suited to academic writing.

As someone currently working on my dissertation, I know this problem all too well. So I found five popular Mac applications commonly used for academic writing and reviewed each in order to see which excelled the most when it comes to writing college papers and dissertations.

Here’s what I found.

Ulysses ($45)

At just short of $45, Ulysses is one of the more expensive applications in this rundown. I reviewed version 2.0, which runs exclusively on 64-bit Macs running Yosemite. There’s also an iPad version ($19.99), which Bakari reviewed recentlyUlysses, Pages & Write: 3 Very Different Writing Tools for iPadUlysses, Pages & Write: 3 Very Different Writing Tools for iPadWe're no strangers to the Mac versions of Pages and Ulysses or the earlier version of Write for iOS, but which is of these apps is best for writing on your iPad?Read More.

Ulysses is, like Desk and iA Writer, a markdown-oriented text editor. Markdown allows you to format text using a special syntax, rather than pressing a button in an application. The advantage of this is that it doesn’t break your workflow, and text written in MarkDown can be copied between applications without losing formatting.

Another advantage of Markdown is that it’s incredibly easy to learn, not just because we published a guideLearning Markdown: Write For The Web, FasterLearning Markdown: Write For The Web, FasterMarkdown is the best way to write in plain text but still create complex documents. Unlike HTML or LaTex, for example, Markdown is simple to learn.Read More to it last year. Ulysses is different from other markdown editors in a number of ways that distinguish it from the pack.

Firstly, it allows you to separate texts into individual sections, each within their own writing space. This is handy if your university project is effectively an anthology of texts, as most dissertations are.

Secondly, Ulysses allows you to change the theme from a bright one, to a more subdued night-mode version which looks great when working in the dark. It also comes with a command palette that feels oddly reminiscent of Sublime Text 2Try Out Sublime Text 2 For Your Cross-Platform Code Editing NeedsTry Out Sublime Text 2 For Your Cross-Platform Code Editing NeedsSublime Text 2 is a cross-platform code editor I only recently heard about, and I have to say I'm really impressed despite the beta label. You can download the full app without paying a penny..Read More, which allows you to navigate your document without endlessly scrolling, just like VimThe Top 7 Reasons To Give The Vim Text Editor A ChanceThe Top 7 Reasons To Give The Vim Text Editor A ChanceFor years, I've tried one text editor after another. You name it, I tried it. I used each and every one of these editors for over two months as my primary day-to-day editor. Somehow, I..Read More.

Ulysses also makes it easy to set goals, which is handy when you’re unmotivated and trudging through the tedium of a literature review. Unfortunately it doesn’t natively support any major reference managers, such as EndNote and ZoteroTake The Stress Out Of Referencing With ZoteroTake The Stress Out Of Referencing With ZoteroEssays are dry. They're time consuming. They're dull. And the worst part of it? Referencing. Thankfully, there's an app out there making referencing less frustrating.Read More, and it doesn’t allow you to embed images or graphics.

Despite these limitations, it’s a perfectly adequate markdown editor, and one that lends itself favorably to academic applications.

iA Writer Pro ($20)

I’m a fan of iA Writer. We reviewed the non-proiA Writer for Mac & iOS: The Best Word Processor You've Never UsediA Writer for Mac & iOS: The Best Word Processor You've Never UsedBe it a school paper or a blog post, all of us at some point find ourselves in the position of having to dump a bunch of characters into a text file. While cell phone..Read More version of it back in 2013 and it immediately became my writing application of choice. Why?

The app is markdown-based, so you can add formatting as you write without getting distracted or having your writing pane filled with superfluous toolbars and ribbons. It also allows you to focus on the writing, as it puts the text in the center of your screen and a simple, readable typeface contrasts with the austere, white background.

That’s the cheaper, non-pro version. I’ve since moved on to the professional version, and I’m convinced it too is an excellent choice for markdown aficionados tasked with academic writing.

iA Writer Pro comes all the same features of the cheaper version that allow you to focus on the writing, but brings with it a ‘night mode’ theme, which is great for late night work.

It also allows you to drill-down on your text and identify parts of your writing you can remove and refactor, such as adverbs, verbs, and prepositions. Given academic writing strongly emphasizes conciseness and precision, this is really helpful.

But iA Writer Pro is lacking some features that are helpful when it comes to academic writing. It doesn’t support third-party plugins, which makes it hard to import your citations in from Zotero, or any other reference manager. It also only lets you to work one document at a time, unlike Ulysses’s multi-sheet approach to document editing.

Despite those drawbacks, it’s only $20 and makes it easy to be focused and productive, and is therefore worth a consider.

Using it sometimes result in performances issues that may not be acceptable to you. Best malware program for mac.

Scrivener 2 ($45)

Scrivener is an inexpensive application with an excruciatingly steep learning curve. It’s commonly used by people working in the creative industries, and has found a niche as a tool for writing screenplays and scripts. But despite this pedigree, it is also worth considering for your next academic paper.

Scrivener, like Ulysses, lets you break your document into manageable chunks, and tackle them one at a time. Editing is done through a graphical interface, with formatting added through the application, rather than using Markdown syntax.

But perhaps the killer feature of Scrivener is its ‘cork board’. This allows you to manage, collect, and collate resources you might want to use in your paper, such as images, notes and references.

Free pdf printing program for mac. Scrivener supports a handful of popular third-party bibliography applications, which means you don’t have to adjust your system of managing citations and references. It also allows you to create snapshots – or versions – of your text, and revert back to them when you want to return to an earlier form of your work. This is similar to how Git worksWhat Is Git & Why You Should Use Version Control If You’re a DeveloperWhat Is Git & Why You Should Use Version Control If You’re a DeveloperAs web developers, a lot of the time we tend to work on local development sites then just upload everything when we’re done. This is fine when it’s just you and the changes are small,..Read More, which is a version control system used by programmers.

However, Scrivener lacks the sleek, distraction-free aesthetics of iA Writer and Ulysses, which makes it less than ideal for long writing sprints where your focus might wander. It’s also rather expensive, and takes a few hours (and a lot of reading) to fully get to grips with.

Microsoft Word 2016 Preview Edition (Free)

It’s hard not to talk about word processors, and not mention Microsoft Word. It’s the incumbent, and has been for a couple of decades now. Go to any university, and you’ll find Microsoft Word is the de-facto word processor. This due to that fact that it’s well understood, supported by Microsoft, and works well with other the packages in the Microsoft Office family.

Microsoft recently released the preview version of Word 2016, and is currently available as a free download before being publicly released.

This latest version represents the biggest change to Microsoft Word on OS X for almost 5 years. It comes with a sleek new aesthetic that makes it feel like the modern, premium word processor it is. For once, you’re going to want to write with Word.

But as a tool for writing Academic papers, how does it stand up? Well, it’s not a distraction-free editor like iA Writer is, but that’s fine. It makes up for that by being well-rounded and complete, boasting all the features any university student or academic could possibly need.

One of the most compelling features for any student is its built-in citation manager, which offers many of the features of Zotero, and can produce references in APA, MLM and Chicago style.

Unlike iA Writer Pro and Ulysses, Word allows you to insert and embed figures and graphics, and create charts that underscore the points you make.

This makes it one of the more compelling packages for academic writing. The only problem is that when it exits the beta phase, it will ultimately cost a good chunk of change. This free version will eventually cease to work, so you’ll have to purchase Word as part of the Office 2016 release if you want to keep the functionality you’ve gotten used to. In the Apple Store, Office 2011 costs $139.95, so expect Office 2016 to cost something approaching that.

It’s also worth noting that beta applications can ship with bugs that might end up destroying all your hard work. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to make regular backups if you decide to use it.

Best Word Processor Program For Mac

Pages (Free/$19.99)

Pages is part of iWork, Apple’s flagship productivity suite. Apple made it available free of charge to anyone who purchased Mac on or after October 1, 2013. Everyone else can purchase it for $19.99 on the Mac App Store, which is pretty good for a fully-fledged word processor.

As a tool for getting words on a page, it’s solid. It comes with a number of templates for academic writing. However, these overwhelmingly are geared towards a style of academic writing that’s more common in the American university system, than in the British and Antipodean ones. That said, it’s easy enough to tweak a template, and formatting text in Pages is simple enough for this not to be too much of a barrier.

Pages also supports academic citations through EndNote, a perfectly competent though expensive reference manager, with a license costing around $250. The closest free alternative, Zotero, hasn’t released a plugin for iWork and given the niche status of Apple’s iWork when it comes to productivity software, I doubt they ever will.

Pages can also produce incredible graphics and charts with a button’s press. This makes it ideal for those writing papers with a somewhat>

I used PEERLA for college papers until I had the professor that is now wanting the APA in 1/2 top margins and 1' side. I turned in my paper having just done the APA format on my program but my prof nailed me. Which has the correct APA or lets me tweak margins?

Thank you so much for sharing all of this information. I appreciate the time and effort you offered.

April

Although it is expensive and was originally created for DOS and then Windows, but runs very well on WINE, the great Nota Bene, available at notabene.com at special pricing for students, is THE academic suite of tools for writing dissertations and theses. It combines an incredible powerful and intuitive word processor with a fantastic bibliography and text-based data processing program. You can download or enter bibliographical data only once and have it formatted for over 400 different style sheets. You can link notes to the works cited. And you can index every single word on your entire hard drive in seconds and search, using Boolean logic, ideas, keywords, phrases, and bring up the files and enter them into your thesis. It was designed by an academic for academics and it has saved hundreds of people thousands of hours. It has three levels of footnotes/endnotes. You can use a command line, the menu, a mouse, and even the Help files to do virtually anything, so the more you are familiar with the program the easier it becomes to work. The files are all ASCII files, so you can actually edit the formatting codes directly as well. I have been using this program since the DOS days and can attest to its power, speed, intuitiveness, and depth. There is also an incredible and supportive listserv.

Although it is expensive and was originally created for DOS and then Windows, but runs very well on WINE, the great Nota Bene, available at notabene.com at special pricing for students, is THE academic suite of tools for writing dissertations and theses. It combines an incredible powerful and intuitive word processor with a fantastic bibliography and text-based data processing program. You can download or enter bibliographical data only once and have it formatted for over 400 different style sheets. You can link notes to the works cited. And you can index every single word on your entire hard drive in seconds and search, using Boolean logic, ideas, keywords, phrases, and bring up the files and enter them into your thesis. It was designed by an academic for academics and it has saved hundreds of people thousands of hours. It has three levels of footnotes/endnotes. You can use a command line, the menu, a mouse, and even the Help files to do virtually anything, so the more you are familiar with the program the easier it becomes to work. The files are all ASCII files, so you can actually edit the formatting codes directly as well. I have been using this program since the DOS days and can attest to its power, speed, intuitiveness, and depth. There is also an incredible and supportive listserv.

I don't get why 'Ulysses is one of the more expensive applications in this rundown' and 'Scrivener is an inexpensive application' when both are priced for $45..

Over all. I'm a iWorks fan. Numbers and Keynote are excellent, but Pages has a lack of development – there missing really a lot of functionality which university student really need every day.

iWork does not support automatic tables or images counting, links to another part of the same document and many many useful function that Microsoft support. Also missing support of text styles is really disappointing.

You missed Byword, darling. ;)

Best Free Word Processing Software For Mac

For students at many universities, MS Office is free, so it may actually be the most complete and cheapest solution. For a number of situations, it is also required, but other programs might be more suitable for productivity, depending on the person. Depending on what I am writing, I might use a combination of writing tools. It might also be time to simplify a little.

Free Word Processor Program For Windows

I'm utterly disappointed that you overlooked Nisus Writer--Yes, the Pro version is expensive, and even Lite is not so cheap, but it is a heavy weight at least as good as Word, and much more writer-friendly. It really deserves a look-see. It's my go-to word processor.