MarsEdit 4
Do stand-alone blog editors still make sense?
$49.95 From Red Sweater Software, red-sweater.com Needs macOS 10.12 or later
Not so long ago, weblogs and content management systems were horrible, and any blogger who cared about having a nice life used tools such as MarsEdit. You’d write and edit in the app and let MarsEdit do the publishing, sparing you the horrors (and crashes) of the online systems altogether.
Now, though, things have changed. Take WordPress: It’s really quite nice these days, it doesn’t fall over very often, and there are plenty of apps that can publish to it, such as our favorite everyday text editor, Ulysses. Is there still room for MarsEdit?
We think so. MarsEdit 4 is the same great app but with a facelift, improved WordPress support, and excellent system integration.
It’s a joy to write in MarsEdit, and to do the tagging, formatting, and media that are part and parcel of everyday blogging. Posts are automatically saved and versioned, and it works with the major platforms including WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and Movable Type. There’s also a Safari extension that enables you to start a MarsEdit post from within the browser — just pull up the share sheet, click the Send To MarsEdit option, and it’ll automatically format it according to the Quick Post template, which you can edit.
The built-in preview is particularly good; in our case it happily downloaded our site themes and showed our blogs in progress in real time exactly as they would appear online. It’s exceptionally fast and has a tiny footprint. On one blog we tested, we were able to switch instantly between any one of 2,580 posts spanning 13 years, and view or edit those posts without any discernible pause. The app’s CPU and energy requirements were effectively zero.
If you’re working across multiple sites, you’ll like the per-blog preferences — not just logins but default media sizes and editor options, publishing preferences, and WP custom fields. You can enable or disable comments and trackbacks, apply filters to content, and decide whether to publish immediately or save as drafts.
You don’t need MarsEdit if you post only occasionally. But if you’re a busy blogger, it will make posting effortless and reliable. A 14-day free trial is available, as is discount pricing if you’re upgrading from version 3.
The bottom line. A niche but excellent app for prolific bloggers.