iA Writer left Android. What now?

What happened

In September 2024 iA, the company behind iA Writer, announced on its blog that it was freezing the Android app and taking it offline. The trigger was Google Drive. Google had revoked the app's Drive access, and restoring it meant passing a paid security audit every year, which iA said would cost one to two months of revenue. The app was removed from sale. Existing users kept it, and iA's help center now lists the Android versions as unsupported.

The versions for Apple devices and for Windows were not part of that announcement. If you write on a Windows laptop and used Android only for a phone or tablet, the gap is on the mobile side.

Your files are already portable

iA Writer's great virtue here is its format. Every document is a plain text file, usually with an .md extension, so any Markdown editor on Android or elsewhere will open it. What matters is where the files sit. iA's help describes two places: public files in the device's Documents/iA Writer folder, which a file manager can copy straight out, and private storage inside the app, which only the app can reach. Anything kept privately has to be exported or shared out of iA Writer first.

A few things are worth knowing before you move a book:

• Content blocks, the lines that pull another file into a document, are iA Writer's own convention. Another editor shows them as a plain line of text rather than the file they point to.
• The same goes for iA-specific markers such as the +++ page break. They survive as characters and lose their effect.
• Images referenced from a document are separate files. Move them with the text, keeping the relative folder layout, or the links break.
• Copy the files out before you uninstall. iA's Android help warns that removing or reinstalling the app without first exporting, backing up, or transferring its documents deletes them, and that Dropbox storage no longer works on recent systems.

In Tabularia

Tabularia runs in Chrome and other current browsers on Android, and it installs from the browser menu with Install or Add to Home screen, after which it opens like any other app and works without a connection. A tablet gets the full designed page. A phone gets a plain single column instead, with the Outline and Sheets still there but no rulers or minimap.

Markdown from iA Writer imports directly, with headings becoming chapters. When a file carries iA's table-of-contents marker, a content block line, and a +++ break together, Tabularia recognizes it as iA Writer's and tidies those conventions out of the prose. Anything else arrives as ordinary Markdown with every word intact.

One difference to weigh: iA Writer keeps text in files on your own disk, and Tabularia keeps it in the browser's storage. Moving between a phone and a laptop takes a Cloud subscription. On the Free plan the only route is an exported file carried across by hand and imported as a new project.