Authorship Windows

iA Writer for Windows lets you label text by source: Human, AI-generated, or Reference.

Authorship is a manual process; iA Writer does not automatically detect the source of your text. You must explicitly assign authorship using Mark as…, Paste as…, or Paste Edits from… options.

When Authorship is enabled, you can distinguish source types:

• Human contributions appear in subtle tones.
• AI‍-‍generated text is shown with a colorful gradient.
• Reference material is dimmed.

In documents with AI authors, the Stats bubble at the bottom right also shows how much of the text, or of the selection, is attributed to AI. See Stats.

Authorship does not modify your content in any way, and your text is not sent to a server to detect authors. Everything happens locally, on your device. Your data is yours, in compliance with our Privacy Policy.

When you edit as the primary author, your own writing remains in full focus so you can clearly see where your text ends and externally sourced content begins.

Want to learn more about our perspective on AI and how to use it to improve rather than replace writing? Read Turning The Tables on AI.

Enable or Disable Authorship

You can always mark a selection or paste text as any author type. You can also paste edits over existing text as any author. To see source distinctions in the Editor, enable Authorship first.

You can enable Authorship from the menu bar: Authors → Enable Authorship. Note that when using Authorship for the first time, you will be prompted to Set up Authorship.

To show or hide author colors in the Editor, use Focus → Show Authors. You can show all authors or only Human, AI, or Reference text.

Pasting

Paste as Author

Choose the author and type before pasting clipboard content.

Paste Edits From

Overwrite an existing span of text with clipboard content and add authorship attribution.

Copying and Pasting Between Existing Documents

If a copied span of text includes authorship data, iA Writer lets you choose:

Marking Existing Text

Use this when you want to add attribution to existing text.

After selecting a range of text:

Managing Authors

Global Settings

Manage your authors in File → Settings → Authors, or choose Authors → Authors….

In Authors settings you can:

• Add or remove an author
• Edit an author’s details: a Name (required), an optional Identifier such as an email address or a website, and the Kind (Human, AI, or Reference)
• Set a Text Color for a human author: Automatic (the default) or a specific color

Removing an author does not remove authorship already assigned in existing documents.

In a Document

With a document open in the Editor, go to: Authors → Edit Authorship

This opens a popup with the document’s author list and character count per author.

You can also:

In a document with existing authors, select an author and right-click or press the edit icon:

Annotated Files

Files that include authorship data show a blue Ⓐ icon in the Library listing.

iA Writer stores authorship metadata at the end of the file. This metadata is hidden in Writer’s Editor, but visible if the file is opened in other text editors or apps.

Export

iA Writer automatically strips author metadata when exporting to Markdown, HTML, PDF, and MS Word.

Authorship