This one landed the day after 4.0. There are no new features in it. Every line is somewhere the last release put something in place and left it slightly wrong.
If you write on a desktop, this is four small things: running-time estimates that are actually right, word counts that show the whole number, typewriter scrolling you can switch off, and a way to export the whole book.
If you write on a phone, it is bigger than that. Screenplays are editable there for the first time.
Screenplays now work on a phone
A .script file would open on a phone before. You could read it. That was all.
Now you can write in it. Tap a line, or tap a scene heading, and you are editing in place. Enter moves to the next line. Character names come from a quick picker instead of being retyped. Deleting a whole scene asks you first, because that is the one action in this editor you should never be able to fat-finger.
Running time: always in the toolbar, recalculated scene by scene
Episode running time
Before
Somewhere else, and 0 for AI-written files
The estimate was computed for the file as a whole. Scenes the AI wrote straight into it were never counted, so the number sat at 0.
Now
In the toolbar, recalculated per scene
Est. 5m / target 5m / 95%. Tap the target minutes to change them.
Because the estimate is now built scene by scene, the scenes an AI wrote for you stop counting as zero.
Two switches, two long-standing complaints
Typewriter scrolling is now optional. The switch is in the “…” menu, and again on the focus-mode bottom bar, each with a sentence explaining what it actually does to the page. It is off by default. Turn it on and the choice follows your account to your other devices.
Word counts show the whole number. The toolbar, version snapshots, the status bar and focus mode used to render 13,024 as 13K. Writers get paid by the word and plan by the word. Rounding to the nearest thousand helps nobody.
Exporting a whole book
Whole-book export
Three more things on mobile
Opening a book lands on the chapter list. It no longer drops you straight back into the chapter you had open last. If that is where you want to be, it is one tap away; if you wanted to see the shape of the book, you no longer have to back out of a chapter to get there.
The long-press menu stays open when the page scrolls behind it, and it can now use up to 88% of the screen, which is enough to see the whole menu at once.
Sign-out moved to the bottom of Account, and the wording changed. It now reads “Clear this device’s data (cloud backup unaffected)”, which is what the button has always done. If a book has not finished syncing, you get asked whether to sync before anything is cleared.
Also in this release
- On the whiteboard, double-click a group or a circle node to rename it. The name field stays visible with a ✓ to confirm, and confirming halfway through an IME composition no longer eats characters.
- Script Studio (legacy): deleting a scene no longer merges it into its neighbour, and Ctrl+Z works again. On the mobile book list the buttons are reachable and the header stops overflowing.
- The status indicator no longer claims “Synced” while you are still typing.
- Raising the phone keyboard no longer stacks two toolbars on top of each other.
Getting it
Reload the web app. The desktop app will prompt you. If you are coming from 3.4.5 in one jump, read the upgrade notes in the 4.0 release post first, since the local database migration has a few rules worth knowing.
More on how screenplays work now: Screenplays are a file type. Anything broken, write to [email protected] or say so on Discord.