Keys for Writers in Drafts

As I use Drafts further more, I built actions to aid my writing. In this article I'll share 4 actions I use all the time whenever I write in Drafts.

View clipboard

Did you ever forget what's on your clipboard while you cut and paste bits of text across your document? This action displays a simple prompt with your clipboard and two options: Paste or Cancel.

Get the View Clipboard action here.

I prefer to trigger this action from the action drawer instead of the enhanced keyboard, all the other actions in this article will be triggered as script keys.

Moving cursor between words

Drafts has a built-in script keys to move the cursor between words, you can access those and other commands by tapping the pencil icon in the enhanced keyboard to edit your keys, then the plus icon to create a new key and selecting Command, there you'll find cursor interactions, undo/redo actions and a toggle between light and dark themes.

I developed my own alternative because I dislike how the aforementioned handles selected text, the built-in key will deselect any text and move to the next word, my version expands the selection by word. If you ever had to select text on iOS you can see the advantages of my approach.

Get the script key to move the cursor left by word here and to move the cursor right by word here.

Select nearest word

As you may presume, I'm displeased by selecting text on iOS and this action selects the word closest to the cursor in a tap, then I can use the previous keys to expand my selection into any direction if I wish.

Get the script key to select nearest word here.

Short and sweet

There are plenty more actions and script keys for Drafts that you may appreciate in the official directory. A few more I use:

• Title case: An improved version written by Dr. Drang to convert selections to title case.
• Get symbol: My own port to my action to pick any symbol from Symbolay and place it your document.
• Smart parenthesis: opens and closes parenthesis, it is one of those simple tweaks that will change your life forever.
• Paste: Another tiny convenience I can't live without.

Enjoy!