iA Writer has no Android app any more
iA Writer for Android was removed from sale in September 2024, and the older Legacy build has not been developed since 2020. If you came here to install it, you cannot. Inkiostro is a native Markdown editor built for Android tablets, foldables and phones — one purchase, no subscription, and your documents stay ordinary .md files in a folder you choose.
This is the one comparison page on this site where the honest answer is not "here is why we are better". It is: the app you are looking for is no longer available. iA says so itself — iA Writer for Android 3.1.4 was discontinued in September 2024, iA Writer Legacy 1.5.2 has not been developed since 2020, and both are unsupported and may become less reliable on newer versions of Android. Some third-party integrations, Dropbox storage included, no longer work at all. If you already have it installed, iA warns that removing or reinstalling it without exporting your documents first will delete them.
The reason matters, because it is the reason Inkiostro is built the way it is. iA's Android app depended on Google Drive, and the trouble was Drive access: the API permission, then a yearly Cloud Application Security Assessment audit to keep it. Inkiostro never asks for Drive. It asks you, once, to point it at a folder — internal storage, an SD card, a USB drive — through Android's own document picker, and then it reads and writes .md files there. There is no cloud account in the loop, so there is no cloud API to lose.
What Inkiostro is not is a clone of iA Writer. It does not have iA's typeface, and it does not have syntax highlighting for parts of speech. What it does have is the shape iA Writer people tend to want on a tablet: the text on one side, the rendered document on the other, nothing else on screen, and a file that is still a file when you close the app.
Inkiostro vs iA Writer, feature by feature
A ✓ means it ships today. Notes mark the differences worth knowing about.
| Feature | Inkiostro | iA Writer |
|---|---|---|
| Available on Google Play today | ✓ | Removed from sale, September 2024 |
| Still developed | ✓ | No — Legacy build untouched since 2020 |
| Price | Free · Pro $34.99 once (US) · 7-day trial | Cannot be bought on Android |
| Where documents live | A folder you choose, as plain .md files | App storage; Dropbox integration no longer works |
| Needs a cloud account | — | Google Drive, which is what broke |
| Three panes on a tablet | Files, editor and live preview side by side | Editor with a preview view |
| Live preview styles | 11, free | One |
| LaTeX math & Mermaid diagrams | Free | — |
| PDF export | Free · a small credit line without Pro | ✓ |
| EPUB export | Pro | — |
| Version history | Pro · word-by-word diff, restore one block | — |
| Focus & typewriter mode | Pro | Focus mode |
| Receives updates | ✓ | — |
| Also on iPhone, iPad & Mac | Yes — separate purchase, no sync yet | Yes, and that is where iA Writer is excellent |
iA Writer — pricing and features checked on 1 September 2026 from iA Writer. own site. Both products change — verify before you buy.
Inkiostro Pro is $34.99 in the United States. Google Play converts that into each country's own price, with local taxes and rounding, so what you see on the store is the figure that counts.
Where iA Writer is still the better buy
- You are on Mac, iPad, iPhone or Windows. iA Writer is fully supported there and it is one of the best-made writing apps in existence — the typography alone justifies it. Inkiostro has its own Apple version, and there is an honest comparison of the two elsewhere on this site.
- You want syntax highlighting for parts of speech — adjectives, nouns, conjunctions — which is iA's own invention and nobody else does it as well.
- You already have it installed on Android and it still does what you need. Nothing here is a reason to uninstall a working app; just export your documents somewhere safe first, because iA warns that removing it takes them with it.
Where Inkiostro helps on Android
- It exists on Android, and it is maintained. That is the whole of the first argument and it would be dishonest to dress it up as anything more.
- It was drawn for the tablet first, not shrunk onto one: files, editor and live preview at the same time, with dividers you can drag, and a keyboard whose shortcuts behave like a desktop's.
- Your documents stay in your folder. No Drive permission, no account, no proprietary container — which is also why no policy change at Google can take the app away from you.
- LaTeX and Mermaid render live and survive the export as real text, not as pictures of text.
- Version history with a word-by-word diff, and restore of a single block instead of the whole file.
Getting your documents across
Export from iA Writer on Android before you uninstall anything — iA is explicit that removing the app deletes the documents inside it. Put the exported .md files in any folder your file manager can see, then point Inkiostro at that folder on first run. There is no import step and no conversion: they open as they are, and they stay where you put them.