Saving Life Time: Quick Open on iPad and iPhone

What’s new in Ulysses 2.6? In a series of blog posts, we’ll closely look at each of its new features and examine how they can help writers to get their work done.

Quick Open is part of Ulysses for Mac since its launch back in 2013. When Ulysses for iOS came out last year, users missed the feature sadly, and kept asking for it. Well, it is finally there! Quick Open is, in short, meant to save you time and effort. You can search your entire library within seconds, and instantly open a sheet for editing, without the need to navigate through your group hierarchies. Sounds like a small thing? Hey, if you only save only 10 seconds per sheet thanks to Quick Open, and you’re looking for 6 sheets per day for the next 30 years, this sums up to 8 days in total! Time you could spend on vacation or use to write a short story, for example.

How to Use It

Do you see an icon with a loupe on letter trays in the toolbar? Say hello to Quick Open!

If you own a 3D Touch-ready iPhone, you can also tap and hold the Ulysses icon (force touch) on your home screen to evoke Quick Open.

With Quick Open, you can search either your entire library (including the introduction), the current section of your library (i.e. “iCloud” or the Dropbox folders added to your library), or your current group. To switch between these options, swipe downwards on the search results displayed in the Quick Open panel:

Per default, Ulysses displays the most recently edited sheets on top.

You can narrow down the results by entering a search term. This can be a word or phrase either contained in a text, group title, or file name (if saved in Dropbox).

Now tap the sheet in question to open it. And that’s it! You can start writing.

Quick Open on Mac

If you’re a Ulysses for Mac user and still click through groups and subgroups before you start writing, today may be the day to change your habit and embrace Quick Open. All you need to do is to memorize this shortcut:

⌘O (command-O like Open)

This will search your entire library, and should be enough in the most cases. To limit your search to the current section, use ⇧⌘O (shift-command-O); for searching the current group, type ⌥⌘O(alt-command-O). Or select the respective option from the menu (“File › Open From”).

If an external keyboard is attached, the above mentioned shortcuts also work on iPhone or iPad.