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Essayist

Essayist

Create properly formatted academic papers with built-in APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard styles, citation management, automatic bibliographies, and Apple device sync.

Writing
Product preview
Essayist showing an academic paper with formatted citations, references, and document controls

Write the paper while Essayist handles the format

Essayist combines academic writing and reference management in one app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Start by choosing APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, or Harvard, then write in a document whose page setup, citations, footnotes, references, and bibliography are formatted by the app. Citations can be inserted from the project’s reference list without interrupting the draft.

Build a reusable research library

The built-in Reference Manager stores and organizes sources, then generates the bibliography from what you cite. Officially documented input routes and document tools include:

  • Add a result from Google Scholar through the app’s integration.
  • Search for books and journal articles or paste a URL.
  • Import an existing BibTeX collection.
  • Track journals, books, websites, legal cases, datasets, interviews, and other reference types.
  • Export the finished work to PDF or Word.

Support more than continuous prose

Essayist can place figures, tables, and equations while managing titles, captions, and numbering. It also supports structural sections such as an abstract, table of contents, chapters, and appendices. That makes the workspace relevant to essays, dissertations, reports, and other formal papers where consistency across many moving parts matters. Apple named Essayist Mac App of the Year 2025, a distinction linked from the official product page.

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