I use “Sync with external folder” to be able to write small bits on my Android phone. I used to use IA writer on the phone for writing. It is good, but bit more advanced (and costly) than I actually need. What do other people use for writing in Android that synchs with Scrivener? Any recommendations? It really is for jotting my thoughts down and make them appear in Scrivener, so nothing advanced.
Obsidian.md (free for personal use) works well and in some regards even better, e.g. it comes with an optional “live preview” Markdown editor.
BUT – it’s not as easy to set up as iA Writer is, in terms of connecting a Dropbox account and go. It’s also really bad for procrastinators, lots of plugins, themes, options, etc.
Probably not the best idea if you didn’t want to start a personal knowledge “Wiki” anyways. But if you already use Obsidian for this purpose, you might as well external-sync a Scrivener project into an Obsidian vault. Works great.
Thank you, I’ll have a look. It being bad for procrastinaters sounds a but worrying though when it comes to me 
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Hmm. I think you have hit the important point in highlighting easy, smooth operation.
That’s what IAWriter gives. I’ve used it for a long time, on Android phone and more recently on an iPad. No problems, easy to work with files on Dropbox, and indeed it does have an alternate look preview, on a button, helpful to spot what you don’t in looking over what you 've just written.
Obsidian, on the other hand, I got interested in a while back with the idea of linking or multiple viewing of notes. Unfortunately, this is kind of a disaster for sharing with other apps and platforms, because Obsidian insists on putting your note files in its own space – it’s own folder, to make things simple.
This does not work in any easy way with Dropbox, looking like you’d need an external app or signing up with their service, an ongoing expense. And even if you did so, I just tried the Obsidian app on my not-so-old Android phone, and it pretty clearly is silently not working, thinks the phone is out of date. So, not exactly dependable over time, I think.
The pricing on IAWriter has become high enough for full purchase, but on Android it’s 4.99 a year, so you could get a very good idea of worth before committing much. The guys who build it live in Switzerland and Japan (also Swiss), probably accounting for their idea of reasonable 
The underlying situation, I just looked into. There seem no other apps on Android that do what you’d like, or are at all reliable and supported, or don’t force you into an own-files problem like Obsidian, so they can sell extra features. And I can’t see that very many of them actually can do Dropbox at all.
I’ve had very good fortune with IAwriter, no muss, no fuss, instantly there to take any length of journaling, for many years now. All the features you’d like are there, but not in your face.
In other words, it lets you write. I think that’s worth the price, including the full purchase.
Hope Sunday thoughts help and gave me a chance to catch up on the scene so I don’t need to do it again soon…!
a p.s. – On Windows, I use the excellent Typora, which is similar to IAWriter, but not available on Android. This is for journals themselves.
I hadn’t thought about your synced folder for Android, but that’s a nice idea, to directly operate on a Scrivener project, and could be handy.
What I do with all the journal notes is copy-paste the text when I want this directly in Scrivener later, and that suggests another method I also use sometimes as appropriate, as when iPad or Android sharing puts something there. This is Google Keep, which is free and everywhere , and actually quite, quite good itself. I find it nice to have alternate ways, so mention this.
Thank you so much for your elaborate answer! I looked through things yesterday and is about to draw the same conclusion as you, thanks for confirming my suspicions: If you want a text editor that saves directly to Dropbox (or Google Drive or Onedrive) in the right format and thus syncs smoothly with Scrivener, IA Writer is about the only one. An app called Quickedit came fairly close but I haven’t tried it out properly (also paid if you don’t want ads every five seconds, but cheaper). I even set up a folder sync between my internal memory and Onedrive. The sync worked but it didn’t really help, as many apps still use their own folder structure that doesn’t match Scrivener.
So my conclusion is that mayby five dollars a year isn’t all that much fot IA, I might not be needing it in a couple of years. Maybe L&L has come up with an android app by then… (this is not high on my wishlist at all, as I don’t work with structure in the phone, but maybe if they came up with an android text editor that synced smoothly with Scrivener… 
)
As for your own solution, writing notes and copying, well that is probably the most clever way to do it, given how complicated the syncing seems… But I just want it to work! And I think I would forget transferring my notes from Evernote, which I use, to Scrivener…
Thanks again, that’s what I like about those forums, there is always someone somewhere who has experienced the same problem as you.
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