Author Tools
Which writing tools genuinely work offline, which only appear to, and a ninety-second test you can run on any app to find out for yourself.
Disclosure: AuthorAZ appears twice below and is made by the author of this site. Until version 2 it was not a writing tool at all; it now drafts and dictates, so it is listed in the drafting table as well as the business one. Both entries say what it is worse at.
"Offline" has quietly stopped meaning one thing. An app can be described as working offline while doing any of three quite different things, and the difference matters enormously if your reason for wanting offline is that you'd rather your unpublished novel not sit on somebody's server.
So: definitions first, then the ninety-second test, then the tools.
1. Offline-capable. The app keeps working when the connection drops, then syncs when it returns. Your file lives on their servers; the local copy is a cache. Google Docs offline mode, Notion offline, most modern web apps.
What you get: uninterrupted work on a plane. What you don't get: privacy. The document is on their infrastructure either way; you've only changed the timing.
2. Local-first. The file lives on your device and is the authoritative copy. Sync, if it exists at all, is optional and additional. Obsidian, Scrivener, iA Writer.
What you get: the file is yours, works with no connection, and survives the company going out of business.
3. Genuinely offline. No network capability in the workflow at all. Nothing is uploaded because there is nowhere for it to go.
For an author, local-first is usually the right target. Fully offline is stricter than most people need and costs you convenience. Offline-capable, despite the name, gives you almost nothing on the privacy question.
Every claim in this article, and every claim any vendor makes, can be checked yourself.
Step 4 is the one people skip and it's the one that separates local-first from offline-capable. A cache survives a dropped connection; it doesn't always survive a restart.
Step 5 is the honest one. If reconnecting triggers a sync, the app is offline-capable, not local-first. That may be perfectly fine — just know which you bought.
| Tool | Category | Platforms | Model | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scrivener | Local-first | Mac, Windows, iOS | One-time, ~$60 / ~$24 iOS | Project file lives on your disk. Optional Dropbox sync is opt-in and off by default. The strongest all-round answer for long-form |
| Obsidian | Local-first | Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android | Free personal use | Plain Markdown files in a folder you choose. Sync is a paid add-on you don't have to buy. Nothing is more portable than a folder of .md files |
| iA Writer | Local-first | Mac, Windows, iOS, Android | One-time, ~$30–50 per platform | Clean, fast, opinionated. Files are ordinary text on your machine |
| Ulysses | Local-first with iCloud | Mac, iOS | Subscription | Excellent, but its library syncs via iCloud by default — check the setting |
| LibreOffice Writer | Fully offline | Mac, Windows, Linux | Free | Unglamorous, capable, no network component whatsoever. Exports .docx for editors |
| Microsoft Word (desktop) | Depends entirely on setup | Mac, Windows | Subscription | Local files if you save locally, but AutoSave-to-OneDrive is on by default in many installs and "connected experiences" send content for some features. Auditable, but you have to audit it |
| Google Docs | Offline-capable only | Web | Free | Best-in-class collaboration. Your draft is on Google's servers. Not a privacy option |
| AuthorAZ (ours) | Fully offline | iOS, iPadOS, Android | One-time | Phone and tablet only, and deliberately small: chapters, autosave, find and replace, chapter history, and export to DOCX, TXT, Markdown or a zip of text files. No binder, no corkboard, no compile, no desktop app — if the book has a complicated shape, Scrivener is the better answer and this is not trying to displace it. Dictation uses the device's own on-device recogniser and refuses to run if the device can only do it over the network. Android release builds ship without internet permission |
The short recommendation: Obsidian if you want free, portable and genuinely local. Scrivener if the book has a complicated shape. LibreOffice if you want zero moving parts. On a phone, the honest options are narrower than on a desktop, which is the gap the last row is aimed at.
This is the hard category, because the mainstream tools are cloud services by architecture — they send your text to a server to analyze it. That isn't a policy choice they could easily reverse.
| Tool | Category | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| LanguageTool (self-hosted) | Fully offline | Open source; can be run locally. Requires setup effort most authors won't want |
| ProWritingAid desktop | Mixed | Desktop app, but analysis is server-side. Check current terms |
| Grammarly | Cloud | Sends text to servers by design |
| Built-in OS spellcheck | Fully offline | Catches less, sends nothing |
| System text-to-speech | Fully offline | On-device voices on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android. Listening to your manuscript catches missing words and rhythm problems that reading misses — and it costs nothing and uploads nothing |
Honest take: the read-aloud approach is genuinely underrated. It's the only proofreading method in this table that is simultaneously free, offline and effective. It's also slow.
| Tool | Category | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Vellum | Fully offline | Native Mac app, processes locally. Mac only |
| Atticus | Offline-capable | Browser-based with offline mode; the project lives in their cloud |
| LibreOffice / InDesign / Affinity Publisher | Fully offline | More work, complete control |
| Kindle Create | Fully offline (desktop app) | Free, Amazon-shaped output |
| Tool | Category | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Affinity Studio | Fully offline | Free since October 2025, professional-grade. Processes locally; a free Canva account is needed once to activate |
| GIMP, Krita, Inkscape | Fully offline | Free and open source |
| Canva | Cloud | Fast and convenient. Files render on their infrastructure, and cloud design tools are the main source of the content-provenance metadata that platforms read when applying "made with AI" labels |
| Photopea | Browser, local processing | Runs in the browser but processes on your machine |
| Tool | Category | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A spreadsheet, saved locally | Fully offline | Free, portable, and completely adequate for one or two books |
| AuthorAZ (ours) | Fully offline | Mobile/tablet vault for book metadata, ISBNs and ASINs, blurbs, covers, buy links, quotes, reviews and pen-name branding, alongside the drafting tools in the table above. No account, no cloud, no AI. Passes the ninety-second test by design — there is no server. Phone-shaped, so bulk data entry is slower than a spreadsheet on a laptop. Free for 14 days, then $29.99 once, no subscription; backup and export stay open after the trial so your work is never locked in |
| Notion / Airtable | Offline-capable at best | Cloud-native |
An honest accounting, because most articles in this genre skip it:
The backup point deserves repeating. An author who goes fully local and doesn't fix their backups has traded a privacy risk for a much more likely data-loss risk. That is a bad trade. Encrypt a copy, put it somewhere else, and test restoring it once.
Total recurring cost: zero. Total one-time cost: between nothing and about $260, depending on how much you value not fighting your formatting tool.
Tool categorizations and prices verified 10 August 2026. See the author tools directory for current figures. Architectures change — Architectures change — run the ninety-second test yourself.
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