iA Writer 2.0 for Windows is (Sort of) Now Available in Public Beta

I switched back to Typora for my Markdown-based writing needs this past year, in part because iA Writer for Windows is a pale imitation of the Mac version. But that’s about to change, iA says.

“Rebuilt from the ground up in the Windows 11 design, iA Writer 2.0 [comes with] a new foundation, a complete UI overhaul, the same dynamic type engine as the Mac apps with liquid font weight, width and line spacing adjustments, a much-needed performance boost, and [a lot] of careful improvements,” the announcement post explains. “Our main goal was to improve iA Writer’s general responsiveness. It now boots in a whizz, and it is snappy as jazz when you type.”

According to iA, it split the iA Writer codebase into two parts, one a minimal and fast-loading core and the other a set of secondary components that load in the background. The result is faster load times with no impact on usability. So it split time-consuming processes into two parts as well, one that sends immediate feedback and one that handles heavier workloads. It also rewrote several subsystems.

Aside from the performance improvements, iA Writer 2.0 also brings new features, including full width preview–a years’ long most popular request–comments and notes improvements, a redesigned stats indicator, and multi-line expansions in Snippets so you can add custom-typed shortcuts.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to try it yet: Instead, you can sign up for the waitlist to test iA Writer 2.0 in beta.