Writality release notes.

Feature

• Added automatic readable backups. You can now select a folder for writality to backup your data in either .md or .docx format. It will structure your files the same way you have them in Writality.
• Added custom concept Icons. You can now have custom icons for each concept, otherwise they default to their type icon. If untyped, they have the default cube icon you're used to.

Improvement

• Added ability to delete custom themes
• Added builds for Flatpak and rpm
• Type colours now auto adjust their hue depending on the theme background colour. So your colours are always legible regardless of your theme :))
• Updated tab history shortcuts to browser-style `Cmd/Ctrl + [` and `Cmd/Ctrl + ]` so back/forward no longer overrides fast text cursor navigation with arrow keys.
• Added it so you can now create Major versions. These versions will not be purged regardless of your version settings.
• Added more information for your daily word tracking. Now it will breakdown which segment/concepts you edited.
• Added sidebar border toggle in the themes settings

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue with en-US translations not working???
• Fixed issue where writing activity near midnight could be counted on the wrong day for some timezones. Daily word counts now use local time instead of UTC.
• Fixed issue where on some screens the window was being clipped. Now min window height is 400px
• Fixed issue where some menu items where getting clipped below the app shell
• Fixed issue where image modal was not scrollable on smaller screens
• Fixed issue where Manuscript paragraph spacing wasn't being translated into DocX
• Fixed issue where Manuscript Title was using DocX Title, now it will use text. Keep in mind, not all fonts from Writality translate to Word/Google Docs
• Fixed issue where tray icon was not showing on some linux distros
• Fixed issue where you could not remove earliest or latest year in era settings in the timeline
• Fixed issue where newly typed note content could disappear when quickly switching away and back before save completion. Note updates now stay visible immediately while the save finishes in the background.
• Fixed issue where newly typed or moved segment text could briefly disappear when switching segments immediately.
• Fixed issue where some users could get stuck with an incorrect File Location. Added a `Change dir` action so you can repoint Writality to an existing workspace folder without moving files.

Feature

• Added editor notes. Now you can select text on the editor and create a note. There is also a floating note button on the right of the editor allowing you to quickly create a note.

Improvement

• Added project rename option to project card in overview.
• Removed the deleted page in the settings and added it to the sidebar instead. This should hopefully remove some confusion among people.
• Added a button to go to overview on the sidebar so its more visible.
• Discovered that some people didn't know you could nest types so added a + button to folder and concept types so its obvious items can be nested within them.
• Various small UI/UX improvements.
• Menu buttons on the sidebar now don't take up space until you hover over an item.
• Added sorting to the relationships in the concept. You can drag the relationship item in the relationships to sort them. This order is not global, so each concept can have its own relationship order :))
• Added dialogue highlight. In the editor settings you can toggle this feature. When active, any text within "quotation marks" will be highlighted with a colour. This colour can be changed in the theme settings ;)).

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue where you couldn't use the tag name of a soft-deleted tag.
• Fixed issue where toast messages were appearing under the dialogs
• Fixed issue where for some themes the title of the cards disappear when you hover over the column in the kanban board
• Fixed issue where italics was not showing on the manuscript view
• Fixed issue with fonts not working correctly on the manuscript view

Feature

• Added theme customisation.

Improvement

• Simplified theme colours - You might notice some of your themes look different. Sorry :(. But now you can edit the themes yourself!
• You can now export your themes, download new ones or edit existing.
• As per request: Added option to change page and text colour in concepts and segments. This works on a per concept basis, meaning if you change it in one place it won't be changed in another
• Added opacity slider to the colour picker. You can now change the opacity of anything that uses custom colours.
• Added automatic page break toggle. You can select to automatically toggle pagebreaks after every segment now instead of having to do it manually.
• Added syntax highlighting and language selector to the editor codeblock

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue where en-US translation suggestions were not working.
• Fixed a bunch of theme issues
• Fixed issue where manuscript format reset was not working.

Feature

• Added discord server ✨.
• Added external links. You can now save HTTPS source links from selected text, manage them in settings, use them from the slash menu, and open them from a little preview popover in the editor.
• Added more editor customisation and preferences. This can be seen in the top bar of concepts and segments.

Improvement

• External links now show up in the references section together with your concept and segment links, but manuscript/pretext pages keep them as plain text so prints and exports stay clean.
• External link popovers now show page preview metadata when the HTTPS site provides title, description, favicon, or preview image data.
• Internal links and external links can now be edited directly from their preview popover.
• New manuscripts now show up expanded in the Manuscripts sidebar straight away, so you can add segments and structure without an extra click first. Same idea as when you create a folder in the files sidebar.
• Cleaned up manuscript segment rows a bit: word counts use a shorter label (think 1k / 1.4k / 1.5M) so titles get more room, and word count is shown on hover.
• Resolved issue where dates on gantt chart were overlapping.
• Reworked manuscript pagination logic with a faster bespoke solution. It should now work a lot faster. Tested with 200k + words.
• Increased the max setting of story graph settings. Now you can eg have larger node sizes in the graph.
• Added option to delete and remove items from the kanban board.
• Added a new Notion-inspired topbar editor preferences menu (with Phosphor icons and theme-consistent styling) for Segment, Concept, and Manuscript views. You can now control editor width, body font mode, title font mode, body/title size, line height, text alignment, scrollbars, and visual paragraph indent for Segment/Concept from one place, plus use read-only and import/export actions from the same menu.
• Simplified Studio > Fonts so it now focuses on app/interface font selection and preview. Title font selection for Segment/Concept editing is now handled in the editor preferences menu where it belongs.

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue where on windows, every update was removing project preferences.
• Fixed issue where pagebreak was adding an extra page. Page breaks now only make the following segment start on a new page.
• Fixed issue where there were no options to update the `Title` added to manuscript
• Fixed issue where deleted concept still showing up in the graph view

Bug fixes

• Temporarily disabled custom theme editing, including the create/import theme menu. This feature was not complete and was mistakenly included in the 1.6.0 update.
• Fixed issue where changelog was not formatted correctly

Features

• Completely revamped manuscripts. You can now build a professional manuscript directly in Writality, with proper A4 pages, running headers and footers, title pages, spacing controls, and export options that SHOULD be good enough for real submission drafts.
• Most of the features you will just have to play with. As I have never fully finished a Manuscript, there are probably some things that can be improved, so I will await user feedback. Otherwise here are some quick features.
• Added dynamic headers and footers where you can add page numbers and whatever else you want.
• Can export to PDF and Docx and should be consistent with the UI you see in writality.
• Added total word counts of the manuscript.
• Added more page breaks, and more spacing options.
• You can now choose to format you text in many different ways, align them, indent first paragraphs or not.
• Added ability to change width of the text on the page, as well as font sizes, title sizes etc.
• This took longer than expected, so sorry for the slower updates recently :)).
• Added customisable themes.
• You can now make your own theme, share it and even install other's themes.

Improvements

• Updated tag pickers so scoped tags stay discoverable without cluttering the main list: tags scoped to the current entity show first, while other project tags remain available under “Other tags.” Kanban tags still keep the one-status-at-a-time behaviour.
• Added tag ordering on segments and concepts, so you can move the tag you care about most to the front from the tag chip menu.
• Added sorting to notes when they appear in sidebars (Concept + Segment). You can now drag notes and order them to your liking. This order is global
• Added more monitoring around spellcheck so hopefully I can figure out why it is not working for some people.
• Added russian translation as per user request

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed issue where adding tags to note when they are in the segment / concept sidebar was not working as menu was opening and then immediately closing.
• Fixed Linux AppImage startup on systems that crash with a GTK 2/3 and GTK 4 symbol conflict.
• Fixed issue where editor UI was shifting under certain actions like using page up/down
• Fixed issue where timer was not allowin custom inputs.

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed the issue where updating a tag from the settings was not updating the Kanban board
• Fixed issue where creating tag with an existing tag name was silently failing. There should be an error message now.
• Fixed issue where `/` menu on the editor was not using the theme styling
• Fixed issue where soft-deleted tags were not showing on the deleted list. You should not be able to permanently delete tags!

Features

• Added the highly requested Kanban board module. This can be toggled on and off in the settings.
• Kanban board can be styled, you can add notes, concepts, segments and images to the board. Each column is a Tag scoped as Kanban. Moving entities across columns automatically updates their tags.
• Added scoped tags. Tags can now be scoped to segment, image, concept, note, kanban, folder, or block, and you can also keep tags global with the new `unscoped` option.
• Tag management has been expanded: scope is editable in tag dialogs and Settings, filters now respect scope context, and list item menus now include quick tag update actions.

Improvements

• App now remembers window state. Meaning it will open in the same position and size as you left closed it.
• Window restore is more complex than it sounds across different OS, monitor setups, and scaling combinations. We now use safer restore rules so windows reopen in visible areas and keep maximized/fullscreen state more reliably.
• This is still a best-effort system and some OS-specific layout states (like certain tiling/snap behaviors) cannot always be restored exactly, but it should work well for most scenarios.
• You can now edit tags for segments and concepts etc from their dropdown menus without needing to navigate to them.
• Added text alignment options to the editor bubble menu. You now get a single alignment icon with a dropdown for left, center, right, and justify.
• Added a full editor right-click context menu (not just spellcheck). You now get quick actions like undo/redo, cut/copy/paste, select all, and basic formatting options.
• Spellcheck suggestions and add-to-dictionary actions are still available in the same right-click menu when you click a misspelled word.
• The image dialog now tells you where an image is being used across your project, including editor content, concept headers, and project images, so it is easier to reuse or clean up images safely.
• Removed icons from tags. They were too small to be meaningful and the UI is better for it.
• Clicking on "Create type" will no longer automatically create the type. The type will be created when you press create on the popup.
• Added ability to rename concepts, folders, segments and manuscripts through their `...` menus.
• Pressing projects from the overview opens the dashboard immediately.

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

Features

• Added details option to editor with styling. Details are toggleable sections and can be added through the slash menu.
• Added customisable Blocks to editor - You can now select text and create reusable blocks for quickly adding repeated content. This can be edited in the new block settings.
• Added PDF export option.
• Added fine control over the storygraph. You can now control sizing, radius and even whether to show images or not.

Improvements

• Lots of small UI fixes and improvements. Menus and dropdowns and modals should now have more consistent styling and behaviour.
• Improved icon selector UI and matching. Searching should be more intuitive now. Eg searching "Character" should also show "User" icons.
• Added replace functionality to versions. You can now replace your content with a previous version. This will also save the replaced content as a new version.
• Added recently used icon section to icon selector.
• Added more missing translations.
• Changed the icon for the concept section in the sidebar
• Added sidebar reset option. You can reset sidebar sizings by right-clicking the open/close icon.
• Added storygraph as module which can be toggled per project. You may not want the graph in some projects and now you can toggle it in the settings.
• Story graph is more center stage. Removed the side with the content and the modal.
• Version cleanup is now configurable per project in Settings. We previously auto-cleaned older minor versions; now the default is unlimited retention so you decide if and when to prune. Version snapshots stay lightweight. More version updates coming soon.

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed issue where daily word count graph in dashboard was showing 2025 even when there are no activities in that year.
• Fixed issue where manual backups were being cleaned up. Now we only clean up automatic backups!
• Fixed issue where icons were showing up twice in the icon selector. (Some types may need to have icons added again)
• Fixed the issue where the sidebar state was not being saved per concept or segment. Now each segment and concept should have its own sidebar state. Meaning you can have the sidebar closed for one concept and open for another.

Features

• Added markdown export option.
• Added Localisation so users change ui language. This can be found in the language settings. I tried to cover everything, but there might still be some things not translated. More languages to be added later :)).

Improvements

• Added editable dates in the gantt chart view. You can now edit a date directly from there.
• Added description field for dates.
• Removed underline from links in editor.
• Moved language spell check settings to its own language settings page.
• Added ability to delete notes... Sorry ;(
• Added ability to minimise note.

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed issue where popover on dates in the chronology were being clipped by sidebar
• Fixed issue where forward and backward menus were not using theme styling
• Fixed issue where eras were not starting at year 1.
• Fixed issue where backward era years could show negative values in calendar jump/edit fields.
• Fixed backward era year numbering so years now reset correctly at each era start.
• Fixed chronology era colour bands shifting when zooming or panning the timeline.

Features

• Added back and forward buttons so you can easily navigate back after visiting a page. These are based on tabs so each tab has a history. Moreover, you can navigate back and forth using cmd | ctrl + (left / right) arrow keys.

• You can see tab history by right-clicking the back or forward buttons.

• I am apparently a hoarder who has never deleted a tag. Added tag deletion in the settings.

Improvements

• Added concept addition to the manuscript menu as well as at the bottom of the list. This seemed to have caused a few issues and keeps it consistent with other menus.
• Formalised table designs and logic so now they are paginated and can be sorted easily.
• Improved chronology gantt chart logic so now it uses a canvas which means for timelines spanning many many years it is still buttery smooth. In addition added a minimap view so its easier to get your bearings.
• Added ability to add dates concept dates straight from the chronology tab
• Added export to html. You can now export pages to html to share to host somewhere yourself. The design is a bit simple at the moment but its there. Will be improved in the future :))

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed bug where start of first day of month in year was resetting every year.
• Fixed issue where clicking the menu on a segment on the sidebar also takes you to that segment
• Fixed issue where clicking an external link breaks the app. Now it is handled gracefully by opening a new window for the link. Not entirely sure what I want to do here just yet but this should fix the issue.
• Fixed issue where creating, editing or adding to concept types would trigger open and close actions.
• Fixed issue where exporting to DocX was making everything strike-through, bold and italics. My bad
• Fixed issue where upon renaming an image, the title still shows old name despite having updated.

Features

• Added more in-depth imports. Now you can import markdown and there is an import page in the settings for importing multiple files at once. For each file you will be asked to specify whether you want it made into a concept or a segment.
• Added zoom and scaling. You can not set the scale of the app in studio settings.

Improvements

• Expanded table logic to be more feature rich. You can now use tables for any sort of layouting you want to do. Want to split content in 2? 3? maybe even four? Table.
• Added background colours to table. You can now add distinct colours for each cell.
• Added customisation to table. You can remove borders, show only inner border, only vertical, only horizontal etc..
• Improved bug report loading UI
• Added ability to disable spellchecker

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed the issue where the linked concepts were not opening the popover on click when the editor was not in focus.

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed recurring migration problem :(

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed stale migration issue causing segments and concepts not to show/load

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed stale migration issue causing segments and concepts not to show/load v2

Features

• Added background images to concepts. You can now add an image similar to folders and position them. On the editor or chronology page, it will still show the concept image or the background image if there are no concept images.

Improvements

• Folders now don't default to having a background image. You can add your own or use the project background image or show nothing.
• You can now open a concept type by simply pressing it rather than having to specifically press the icon
• Improved calendar date logic so if you add 999999 years the entire app doesn't freeze
• Added season indicators to calendar views
• Added sorting and searching to bug reports page -> more coming soon

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed issue where image with apostrophe was not rendering in the concept sidebar.
• Fixed issue wasn't gracefully navigating forward and backwards eras when pressing next and back in the calendar views

Features

• Reinstated backwards eras

Improvements

• Various attributes improvements.

• Added sorting to attributes on a concept level. Each concept can sort attributes as they like.
• When creating new concepts of a type, it automatically prefills the attributes from the last created concept of that type

• Improved era logic and gantt chart logic. More improvements coming soon on this

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed the issue where you couldn't easily add seasons spanning closing months to beginning of month
• Fixed issue where you couldn't remove the colour applied to eras
• Fixed issue with era colours and coming back to default
• Fixed issue where you could not go back to default tag colour
• Fixed issue where deleted image still shows on concepts.

Bug fixes

• Fixed the issue where segments and manuscripts were not showing for certain users thanks to faulty migration. Thank you so much to the good samaritan who helped me debug this!

Feature

• Added more data like migration run and database schema when exporting from console so it's easier to see what exactly is going wrong

Bug fixes

• Adding segments to manuscript and titles and spaces should not work seamlessly.

Improvements

• So I messed up the icon colours when fixing the editor colours. This should be resolved now

Features

• Added a way to edit the name the app uses to refer to you

Improvements

• Upon creating a new type, the dialogue opens so you can immediately add icons and colours. Also made sure the newly created type is open on the sidebar
• Updated the commands and shortcuts so on windows it correctly states `ctrl` instead of `⌘`
• Opening and closing the left sidebar animation improved so you don't have a state of overlap
• Restoring from existing writality data is smarter now, it will keep digging in the folder until it finds the data.

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed issue where unlinking a mention deletes the word from the editor
• Fixed for norwegian spell check suggestions
• Fixed the issue where the writality icon was not showing on Windows
• Fixed the issue where colour wasn't working when text is bold or italics
• Fixed the issue where gantt chart colours were not being updated
• Fixed issue where the content of segments was not being rendered in the manuscript

Features

• Someone requested ability to update where your files and data is stored. Added a page in the settings for moving your files to a new location.

Improvements

• Changed mentions from @ symbol to `[[]]` syntax. Everything should work the same as before except now you can start typing `[[` to select a concept
• You can now also create a new concept through the editor by using the aforementioned `[[]]` syntax. Should make things a lot easier
• The concept attributes has been updated so now it shows you existing attributes so you can quickly select them when adding new ones. Attributes should be used for things like height, eye colour and other simple { key: value } pairs. In the future the graph view will be able to filter them. So you can imagine wanting to see only people with blue eyes in your story.
• Made calendar date selector more performant and UI slightly better (still needs some love)

Bug fixes

Super grateful to the people submitting bug reports ✨. You know who you are!

• Fixed the issue where calendar opens really slowly when you add a bunch of moons and the UI is broken
• Fixed the issue where the app was freezing and refusing to start when Portuguese and Italian languages were selected. Turns out those dictionaries are huge :/
• Fixed the issue where using arrow keys or keyboard to navigate the slash menu would not automatically scroll to the other items

Features

• Segment folder pages now have editable background image.

Improvements

• UI now expands to fill the space when searching icons.
• Position the buttons to update the project image in the dashboard to the top left instead of top right
• When scrolling a segment folder the backgrounds scrolls also.

Bug fixes

• Fixed the issue where concepts and segments with images in the editor would have incorrectly formatted content when searching using the global search

Features

• Added split screen view ✨. You should be able to drag any page or item on the list to create a new split view. This view will update as your navigate various pages.
• Split view is limited to a tab, so you can have multiple tabs each with their own split view

Improvements

• Improved the story graph rendering and styling. I tried Obsidians graph view again recently and I quite liked it. So I updated it to match the obsidian interaction more.
• Pressing Ctrl/CMD + F when searching on a concept or segment now autofocuses even when the search is already open
• Versioning is more reliable. Now it doesn't create new versions if there has been no changes

Bug fixes

• Fixed the issue where concepts and segments with images in the editor would have incorrectly formatted content when searching using the global search

Bug fix

This update fixes the bug where the image selector in the concept sidebar does not adjust to screen height

Manuscript revamp

This update fixes some of the issues in the manuscript view. The idea is this: Manuscript is the whole, segments are the parts you piece together into a manuscript. I have made this a lot easier and more UX friendly. It does involve removing existing manuscripts though. Sorry :P

Manuscript flow improvements

• Manuscripts now has three distinct parts (`segment`, `title`, `empty space`) these are orderable. Best way to check it out is to just play around with it.
• Repeated segment usage is visible with duplicate occurrence.
• Segment rows include a visibility toggle for showing/hiding segment headings in reader mode.
• Entry actions now include insertion points and segment navigation from the manuscript list.
• Manuscript deletion now uses the app delete dialog flow.

Sidebar performance improvements

• Fixed the issue where on windows, some shortcuts were not working. Specifically the secondary sidebar opening and closing
• Improved sidebar resizing logic so now its a lot snappier

Reader and navigation behaviour

• Reading of manuscript is now easier and you can go to segments easily from the manuscript
• Sidebar entry clicks navigate and scroll to the correct reader location.
• Empty page separators render as spacing blocks with hover effect to show.
• Added manuscript as a module. So you can disable it in the settings if you haven't reached the point where you need it or your project is purely worldbuilding.

Small quality of life updates

• Ctrl|CMD + click opens segment/concept/page in a new tab

Testing coverage and general robustness improvement

I expanded automated coverage and tightened the UI flows that were touched while writing those tests.

New feature:

• I added an in-app changelog section in Settings so its easier to know what has changed every update.
• Added variable names. I expand on this on the alias section below
• Ability to preview image in full on the concept sidebar

Added end-to-end coverage

• I added a bunch of tests across many parts of the app.
• This matters because better test coverage helps me catch regressions earlier, ship updates with more confidence, and reduce random breakages in day-to-day writing flows.

UI and editor updates

• I refined concept sidebar behavior, date editing, image selection, and relationship editing flows.
• I added alias guidance in the concept sidebar via an inline help popover.
• I improved modal/dialog performance across the app, so scrolling and interactions should feel smoother in general.
• I improved several sidebar and list-item interactions used during file and folder nesting.
• I tightened tag, dialog, and top bar behavior to match the new tested flows.
• I adjusted time system editing paths used by chronology-related tests.

Alias-aware linking (`@`)

• I expanded the old concept-linking action from the toolbar.
• Now, to link a concept, you simply type `@` and select the concept from the picker.
• Linking using the menu will smartly create aliases for you automatically
• Mentions should change if the concept name changes.

Aliases and naming in the sidebar

• In the concept sidebar, I now let you add extra names (aliases) for the same concept.
• Example: a character concept named `The Battle Queen` can also have aliases like `Queen`, `Her Majesty`, or `General`... Hell, you can even assign an alias called `she`. All depending on how you refer to that character in different scenes.
• All of those still point to the same concept, so you can write naturally while keeping links consistent across the app.

Naming and rename propagation

• I made alias handling first-class in the concept sidebar (add, edit, delete) and tied it directly to mention behaviour.
• If you rename a character or concept later, linked mentions can update everywhere automatically.
• This makes large naming changes safer and faster, especially during drafts when character names may evolve (idk I have never finished a draft :/).
• Renaming now propagates by mode:
• if you simply used the concept name in text like `@The Battle Queen`, when you change the concept name, it will update everywhere.
• if you used an alias like `queen` and rename that alias to `king`, it updates everywhere that alias is used
• from the mention display menu, `New Alias` creates and saves the alias directly on the concept, so it appears in the concept sidebar and can be reused later
• if an alias is in use, deletion requires confirmation with impacted mention/source counts
• links are preserved after deletion and mention labels fall back to the concept name

Bug fixes

• I fixed notes persistence when pasting content: copied content in notes now saves immediately without requiring additional typing.
• A couple more bugs but I won't mention them all.

Desktop and packaging work

• I improved desktop build and release support so Writality works more reliably across platforms.
• I now ship separate Mac builds for Intel and Apple Silicon!
• Also added support for linux machines

Bug fix:

• Fixed the issue where images were not loading correctly