Author
Author is a macOS writing app for drafting, reading, and citing long-form documents with tools designed for research-focused work.
What is Author?
Author is a native macOS word processor for people who do serious writing based on research. It is built to help writers draft, organize, read, and refine long documents without losing sight of structure or source material. The app includes outline-style document folding, a dynamic document view, reading and editing modes, and citation tools for academic papers, books, web sources, and video references. It also works with the companion Liquid utility for fast lookup, search, translation, and other text actions across macOS. Author supports continuous saving, iCloud workflows, and export options that fit writing, study, and knowledge-work tasks. It is aimed at users who want a desktop writing environment that combines word processing with research and document navigation features.
Key features
- Write and edit long-form documents in a focused macOS word-processing environment
- Collapse headings into an outline to navigate and reorganize document structure
- Switch between reading and editing modes for different review and writing tasks
- Create and check citations for papers, books, websites, and videos
- Use dynamic document views to inspect text and relationships within a draft
- Recall previously cut text with the Cuttings history feature
- Use text-to-speech during reading mode for selected passages
- Work with iCloud and continuous saving across supported Mac workflows
Review app leftovers with diCleaner
Inspect caches, support files, containers, and login items before cleaning.
Safety overview
Status: Mostly safe
Author is a legitimate writing application for macOS. Access to your documents, iCloud files, and selected text is consistent with its purpose as a research and writing tool. If you also use the separate Liquid companion utility, text-based lookup features may work across other apps, so use those features only where sharing selected text is appropriate for your workflow.
Recommendation: Keep Author if you use it for writing, research, or document review on your Mac. Remove it if you no longer use the app, but expect to lose easy access to its document workflows and any app-specific settings stored on your Mac.
Common paths
/Applications/Author.app
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