Eli
The good writing apps (Ulysses, iA Writer) are subscriptions; the free ones are unpolished Electron shells — Eli claims beautiful + free + native. SwiftUI + AppKit for macOS 13+, a TextKit editor with typewriter scrolling, focus and compose modes, and 10 themes, organized as chapters with optional scenes and Draft/Revising/Done statuses. Translation is first-class: chapter-by-chapter Tagalog-to-English via Gemini (bring-your-own-key, stored in Keychain) with a glossary that keeps names consistent. Exports print-ready 6×9 PDF, EPUB (own ZIP writer, no Pandoc), DOCX, RTF, Markdown, and plain text, with automatic compressed backups.
What Wasn't Working
Beautiful writing apps are subscriptions and Apple-locked; free ones are unpolished non-native shells — and none treat translating a manuscript into publishable literary English as part of writing.
How I Fixed It
A native SwiftUI/TextKit app where you draft a chapter, translate it with Gemini side by side, and edit the result — with a per-name glossary so re-translating never overwrites your edits, and automatic storage so there's never a file to find.