MarsEdit 5

MarsEdit is a desktop app for writing blog posts and pushing them to a site you already run: WordPress, Micro.blog, Ghost, Blogger, Tumblr, Movable Type, and anything else speaking the older XML-RPC and AtomPub APIs. You compose offline in markdown, plain text or rich text, keep drafts and images on your own disk, preview against your site's real theme, and publish when you decide to. Nothing autosaves into a browser tab, and losing your connection mid-paragraph costs you nothing.

Red Sweater has shipped it continuously since 2007, which shows in the unglamorous parts: a media library that remembers what you have already uploaded, per-blog settings, categories and tags pulled from the server, AppleScript hooks for people who automate their publishing.

The licence is $59.95 direct or $59.99 as an in-app purchase on the Mac App Store, with an $89.95 family pack for a household of Macs. Version 4 owners paid $29.99 to move to 5 and recent buyers paid nothing, so expect a similar paid step when 6 lands. A 14-day trial is built in.

If you post a few times a year, the editor in your browser is fine and this is money spent on a preference. It makes sense when you publish most weeks, when you write on trains without signal, or when you keep several blogs and are tired of remembering which tab belongs to which one.