Nisus Probably Moribund
For more than a year, we’ve heard scattered complaints: problems with Nisus Software’s website, particularly the user discussion forum; slow or absent responses to support requests; assorted bugs; and other issues. But earlier this week, on 22 October 2025, the reports changed to: “Did you know the Nisus website is completely down, and that Nisus Writer is no longer in the Mac App Store? Does this mean they’re out of business?”
On the one hand: The site is back online as I write this. The app still works. I’m writing the first draft of this article in Nisus Writer Pro on a Mac running macOS 26 Tahoe, and it’s fine. You can still download it and buy a license. At least one person is actively involved in the company, to some extent. It’s (mostly) alive!
On the other hand: All available evidence suggests that development and support for Nisus Writer have ceased, and barring some new information, its future is doubtful. It’s (mostly) dead!
[…]
Martin Wierschin, Dave Larson, and Mark Hurvitz (each of whom was the public face of Nisus Software at one point) are no longer at the company. Jolanta is in her late 80s, and Jerzy is older than Jolanta. As best I can determine, Jerzy is not actively involved with the business anymore, and Jolanta’s involvement appears to be minimal. I don’t think there are any other employees left at Nisus Software.
The latest update to the app was on 12 November 2024, and it appears the last time a Nisus employee posted on their discussion forum was also in November 2024.
It’s an odd situation, with no public activity in nearly a year and the apps removed from the Mac App Store but still available for purchase from the Web site.
And a sad one. Nisus Writer was the coolest demo I saw at my first Macworld Expo in 1992 or so, and it remained a great app through all of Apple’s transitions: PowerPC, Mac OS X, Cocoa, Intel, 64-bit, Apple Silicon, etc. But over time it became my favorite app that I no longer actually use. And I suspect that usage declined for others as well. iOS and Markdown brought a revival of apps that use plain text. And most people who need rich text don’t need the power of Nisus Writer. The more basic use cases got squeezed by Pages, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs, which are free and/or ubiquitous. But for those who need it, there’s no clear replacement:
True, there’s no shortage of other Mac word processors. I’m sure that for many people, any number of them would be perfectly adequate. However, if you’re the sort of person who needs the tools that only Nisus Writer provides, none of that matters. Although I can’t speak for anyone else, I can definitely speak for Take Control Books, and we would be unable to do what we need to do in any of those other apps. Users who have built up libraries of complex macros in Nisus Writer, or who require find-and-replace based on style-sensitive regular expressions (to take just two examples) would be seriously hampered by another app.
Here are some forum threads discussing the state of things:
Previously:
- Retiring Script Debugger
- Mellel 6 Leaves the Mac App Store
- Your Favorite Mac Word Processors
- Why I Prefer Nisus Writer
- Nisus Writer Pro
- Nisus Writer Express
Update (2025-10-28): John Gordon:
We are in the dark ages of word processing — Pages is buggy and incomplete and Word for macOS is eye-bleach.
Seems like an ignominious demise for a once-great app. Nisus Writer has been an acclaimed Mac-only (and Mac-assed) word processor since 1989. I never got into it, but I could always see the appeal.
As he says, one way to think of it was like a BBEdit for rich text. (The developers had previously built a plain text editor called QUED/M.) But while I prefer BBEdit, there are many plain text editors that can do regex processing, and there wasn’t really anything else like Nisus Writer.
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I'm going to guess that the kinds of people who used to use Nisus Writer - people who write a lot of structured textual content and really care about their tools - have probably mostly switched to something like a typst-based setup.
Last time I used Nisus Writer I was checking to see if it exhibited an RTF writing bug present in NSAttributedString. Nisus's implementation worked bug-free (for my tests) and Apple's didn't. They have their own RTF writer and reader implementation. There's some nice tech in there.
Another independent dev's effort besting Cupertino's finest Leetcoders.
I'm curious what devs have plans for an unexpected or inevitable death (be it personal or company).
Any dead-man switch services to announce things? What plans with your apps regarding your estate or what happens to them?
@Hammer Yeah, I really liked the way Nisus handled file formats. On classic Mac OS, they put the text of the document in the data fork and all their proprietary style information and metadata in the resource fork. So if you didn’t have Nisus Writer installed, you could still open the document in any other app, as if it were a text file. On Mac OS X, they used RTF with extensions for their own stuff so, again, you could open the document in any RTF-capable app and get the basic text and styles.
I plan to be around for decades to come, but a goal has been to design my apps such that your data isn’t locked in and that everything will keep working even if the servers go down. The domains and servers are prepaid for years in advance. I have written instructions for how to access all the accounts and code and a list of trusted people who know enough about the industry to figure out what should be done with the apps based on the circumstances at that time. I’m curious what plans others have.
Yeah, it did look nice when I played with it last, and it seems to have been unique in that degree of scriptability and using a proper Cocoa rich text widget.
But, ultimately there are tools for converting from markup languages, there's LibreOffice for the free option if you need a word "processor" (whatever that is) and ultimately TextEdit is fine for my basic rich-text needs (writing a letter that fits a page, etc).
So while I'm sad to see yet another dead native Mac app, on the whole, I do understand why it happened and am glad I didn't pick up a copy. I'm just not a professional writer who would have benefited from its power.
