Templates Mac

Preview, create PDFs, and print documents in your own style with templates in iA Writer for Mac.

The templates determine the style of your text in Preview and Print with elements such as the fonts, the margins, the line height, etc…

You can switch templates from:

• the Toolbar on Preview
• the Menu → View → Template

Built-in Templates

iA Writer comes with 5 built-in templates:

• Modern (Sans)
• Classic (Serif)
• Manuscript (Mono)
• Manuscript (Duo)
• Manuscript (Quattro)
• Github

Templates are visible from Preview, you can display them in Web or PDF mode. Here is a quick peek of each of them side by side in PDF mode:

Classic | Modern

Mono | Duo | Quattro

GitHub

The GitHub template stands apart from other built-in templates due to its primary focus on technical writing. Crafted by directly replicating GitHub’s CSS, this template does not support the Default Template Settings (such as Number heading, footer…) typically used for creative writing.

Additional Templates

Over the years, the iA Writer team has developed extra templates. You can individually download and install each of them in iA Writer.

Helvetica

Simple, Clean | Download

Palatino

A classic for prose | Download

Academic MLA

For academic writing | Download

Letter

For beautiful correspondence | Download

Fountain

The template for screenwriting | Download

Create Your Own

CSS and HTML DIY | Learn more

Installing Templates

Please follow these steps to install additional templates on macOS:

• download each of the templates directly from this page.
• the downloaded file will be a .zip: double-click on it in Finder to extract the template.
• in iA Writer, go to Settings → Templates → +→ Install Template…
• you can as well drag and drop the template file from Finder into Settings → Templates

Note: Mac Template bundles are copied when installed. Any changes made to the original bundle will not be visible in iA Writer. You may modify the installed bundles: to find an installed bundle, right-click one in Preferences and select “Show in Finder”.

Custom Templates

Users comfortable with code (CSS, HTML, and JS) can create custom templates tailored to their own tastes. For more on this please see our dedicated page: Custom Templates.

It is also possible to override some of the CSS for a selected template by adding an HTML style block in your document. In the example below, the code block modifies the font size in PDF rendering:

<style>
  @media print {
    body {
      font-size: 25pt;
    }
  }
</style>

This solution is great for users who aren’t comfortable with code or those who just want to add a few changes (font size or font color for example), without creating a template.

You can see the code and CSS classes to target by enabling the Web Inspector in Preview.

Templates