PolyWrite — Tutorials

1 Opening & Saving Files

What you'll learn: opening existing documents and saving your work in the correct format.

Opening a file

1. Click the Open button in the toolbar (folder icon), or press ⌘O.
2. Choose any .txt, .rtf, .rtfd, .md, .html, or .docx file. PolyWrite detects the format automatically and opens it in the correct mode.
3. Recently opened files are available under File → Open Recent.
4. You can also double-click a PolyWrite file in Finder to open it, or drag a document onto the PolyWrite icon in the Dock. Each file opens in its own window.

Saving a file

1. Press ⌘S or click the Save button (down-arrow icon). If the document has never been saved, a Save dialog appears.
2. To save to a new location or under a new name, press ⇧⌘S or click the Save As button.
3. The file extension is set automatically by the current mode: .txt for plain text, .rtf for rich text, .md for Markdown. You can change the extension in the Save dialog if needed.

Supported formats

2 Switching Between Modes

What you'll learn: moving between Plain Text, Rich Text, and Markdown, and understanding what changes with each switch.

The mode selector is a menu in the toolbar, showing the current mode — Plain Text, Rich Text, or Markdown. Click it to switch.

Switching to Rich Text

Rich Text mode enables the formatting toolbar below the main toolbar. You can apply bold, italic, underline, font, size, color, alignment, and lists. Switching to Rich Text from Plain Text keeps all your text and adds formatting capability.

Switching to Plain Text

A confirmation dialog appears: "Switching to plain text permanently removes all formatting, fonts, colours, and images." Click Remove Formatting to proceed. This is not reversible — the formatting is gone, though you can undo within the same session with ⌘Z.

Switching to Markdown

Markdown mode works like plain text but saves as .md. If you are currently in Rich Text, a confirmation dialog appears warning that formatting will be removed. PolyWrite converts bold, italic, and heading-sized fonts to Markdown syntax where possible.

3 Rich Text Formatting

What you'll learn: applying and removing formatting in Rich Text mode, using colors, adding links, and the Format menu.

The formatting toolbar

In Rich Text mode, a second toolbar appears below the main toolbar. Left to right:

• Font picker — click to open a searchable list of all installed fonts
• Size field + stepper — type a size or use ▲▼ to change it
• B / I / U / S — Bold (⌘B), Italic (⌘I), Underline (⌘U), Strikethrough
• Link (⌘K) — add or remove a hyperlink on the selected text
• Alignment — Left, Center, Right, Justify
• Lists & Ruler — toggle the paragraph ruler with list and tab controls
• Indent — Decrease indent / Increase indent
• Writing direction — a globe icon (🌐) near the right end of the toolbar; toggles right-to-left text flow for Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, etc. Not to be confused with the translate globe in the main toolbar above — that one opens a translation sheet (see Tutorial 7)
• Text Color — color swatch labeled "Text"; sets character foreground color
• Highlight Color — color swatch labeled "Highlight"; sets character background color
• Zoom — Zoom Out, zoom percentage (click for Actual Size), Zoom In (⌘−, ⌘0, ⌘+)

Applying style formatting

1. Select the text you want to format.
2. Click the formatting button, or use the keyboard shortcut.
3. Formatting applies immediately. Click the same button again to remove it.
4. If no text is selected, the style applies to text you type next (typing attributes).

Text color

1. Select text, then click the Text color swatch in the toolbar.
2. The color picker opens. Choose any color — the selected text updates immediately.
3. The color is stored in the document and saved in .rtf and .docx files.

Highlight color

1. Select text, then click the Highlight color swatch in the toolbar.
2. Choose a color and opacity — full opacity gives a solid highlight; lower opacity gives a tint.
3. To remove highlighting from text: select it, open the Highlight picker, and drag opacity to zero.

Hyperlinks

1. Select the text you want to make into a link.
2. Press ⌘K, or click the link icon (🔗) in the toolbar, or choose Format → Add Link…
3. A small popover appears. Type or paste the URL and click Apply.
4. The selected text becomes a clickable link — underlined and shown in the document's link color.

To remove a link: click anywhere in the linked text, press ⌘K, then click Remove in the popover.

Format menu

The Format menu (in the menu bar) provides additional text transformations:

Copying text — plain vs. formatted

PolyWrite separates the two common "copy" intentions so your clipboard doesn't pollute other apps:

• ⌘C — Copy (plain text) — copies the characters only, no fonts, colors, or styling. Safe to paste into any app.
• ⇧⌘C — Copy with Formatting — copies the full RTF, preserving bold, italic, colors, and font choices. Paste into another RTF-capable app (Mail, Pages, another PolyWrite window) to keep the formatting.

4 Themes & Appearance

What you'll learn: choosing an app theme and understanding what it changes.

Opening the theme picker

1. Press ⌘, or go to PolyWrite → Settings.
2. Click the Appearance tab.
3. Click any theme swatch to apply it instantly. The entire app updates — editor background, toolbar, status bar, and AI panel all change together.

Available themes

5 International Writing & Right-to-Left

What you'll learn: using PolyWrite with multiple languages and enabling right-to-left writing for Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, and other RTL languages.

Multilingual spell check

PolyWrite enables macOS's continuous spell checking with automatic language detection. You do not need to configure anything — just write. macOS identifies the language of each passage and checks it with the correct dictionary. Red underlines appear under misspelled words in every language you use.

The language badge

When you have written at least 30 characters, the status bar shows a language badge — a globe icon with the detected language name. This is the dominant language of your current document.

1. Tap the language badge to open the language menu.
2. If PolyWrite detects a right-to-left language (Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Persian, etc.), the menu offers Switch to Right-to-Left.
3. Tap that option — the entire editor switches to RTL layout. Cursor position, paragraph alignment, and the writing direction button in the toolbar all update.
4. To switch back, tap the badge again and choose Switch to Left-to-Right.

Setting writing direction manually

In Rich Text mode, the formatting toolbar includes a writing direction button — a globe icon (🌐) near the right end of the second toolbar row. Click it to toggle between left-to-right and right-to-left regardless of the detected language. This is useful when mixing RTL and LTR content in the same document.

This globe changes text direction only. It is different from the globe in the main toolbar above it, which opens a translation sheet — see Tutorial 7.

RTL languages recognised for auto-detection

6 AI Writing Assistant

What you'll learn: using the AI panel to improve, summarise, translate, or ask anything about your document.

Opening the AI panel

1. Click the brain icon in the toolbar, or press the AI button. The panel slides in on the right side of the window.
2. Close it by clicking the same button, or the × at the top of the panel.

Setting up AI (first time)

The AI panel requires one of two providers:

• Apple Intelligence — go to Settings → AI and select Apple Intelligence. Requires Apple Silicon Mac, macOS 26, and Apple Intelligence enabled in System Settings. No API key needed.
• OpenRouter — create a free account at openrouter.ai, generate an API key, and paste it in Settings → AI → OpenRouter Key.

Quick-action buttons

The row of buttons across the top of the AI panel runs preset actions on your document (or selected text, if text is selected):

Using the result

1. After a result appears in the panel, click Insert at Cursor to paste it into your document at the current cursor position.
2. Or click Copy to copy the result to the clipboard.
3. Click Clear to dismiss the result and try another action.

Free prompt

1. Type any instruction in the multi-line prompt box (e.g., "Rewrite this as a bullet list" or "Add an opening paragraph about the history of this topic").
2. Press ⌘↩ or click the Send button.
3. If your document contains text, it is included as context — you don't need to paste it into the prompt.

7 Translation

What you'll learn: the two globe buttons in PolyWrite and how to translate text into your language.

Two globe buttons — not the same thing

PolyWrite has two buttons that look identical — a globe icon. They do completely different things:

The Rich Text toolbar globe changes how text flows on the page. It does not translate anything. For translation, always use the globe in the main toolbar.

Translating a document or selection

1. Optionally select just the text you want to translate. If nothing is selected, the entire document is used.
2. Click the globe icon in the main toolbar (top row, between the magnifying glass and the printer). It is only shown on macOS 15 or later.
3. A translation sheet opens and PolyWrite tries Apple Translation first — fully on-device, no data sent anywhere.
4. If Apple Translation does not support the language, PolyWrite automatically retries with the AI engine you have configured in Settings → AI (Apple Intelligence or OpenRouter).
5. The translated text appears in the sheet. Review it, then click Replace to swap it into your document, or Cancel to discard.

Translating to a specific target language (AI panel)

The translate globe always targets your Mac's system language (English for most users). To translate to a different language, use the AI panel:

1. Open the AI panel (brain icon in the main toolbar).
2. Find the Translate to row and choose a target language from the dropdown.
3. Click Go. The AI translates the document and the result appears in the panel.
4. Click Insert at Cursor to place it in your document, or Copy to send it to the clipboard.

8 Open in FusionMD

What you'll learn: handing a document from PolyWrite to FusionMD for publishing.

FusionMD is DataIsland's full document studio — ePub3 export, IDML export to Affinity and InDesign, a complete Writing Coach, 40-language support, and a template engine. When your PolyWrite document is ready to publish, Open in FusionMD is a one-step handoff.

Using Open in FusionMD

1. The Open in FusionMD button (↗ icon) appears in the toolbar only when FusionMD is installed on your Mac. If you don't see it, FusionMD is not installed.
2. Click the button, or go to File → Open in FusionMD (⇧⌘F).
3. PolyWrite converts the current document to Markdown:
   • Bold text becomes **bold**
   • Italic becomes *italic*
   • Heading-sized fonts become # headings
   • All other formatting becomes clean plain text
4. FusionMD opens with the converted Markdown document ready to edit.

When to use this workflow

• You've written a long document in PolyWrite and want to export it as an ebook (ePub3)
• You need to hand the document to a designer in Affinity or InDesign (IDML export)
• You want to use FusionMD's Writing Coach — spell summary, grammar descriptions, overused words, style analysis
• You want to add a template layer to produce variant documents from the same content

9 Settings & Preferences

What you'll learn: all PolyWrite preferences and where to find them.

Opening Settings

Press ⌘, or go to PolyWrite → Settings.

Appearance tab

• Theme — 23 built-in themes. Click any swatch to apply instantly. Remembered between launches.

Editor tab

• New Documents → Default Format — choose whether new documents start in Plain Text, Rich Text, or Markdown. Takes effect the next time you create a document with ⌘N.
• Plain Text Font Size — the base font size for the plain text and Markdown editors. Use the stepper or drag the slider (10–36pt). This is independent of zoom — zoom magnifies on top of this size.

AI tab

• Provider — choose Apple Intelligence or OpenRouter.
• OpenRouter API Key — paste your key and click Save Key. The key is stored in your macOS Keychain.
• Model — if using OpenRouter, choose which model to use (Claude, GPT-4o, Gemini, etc.).