Finding your way
With your project open, let's find where your work shows on the screen. We'll start in Concepts, then use Segments when we're ready to write the narrative.
Read the workspace from left to right
| Area | Where it is | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Navigation rail | Narrow strip of icons at the far left | Switching between your library, project pages, documentation, and settings. |
| 2 · Primary sidebar | Beside the rail | Browsing concepts, segments, and folders, or navigating settings and documentation, depending on the page you're on. |
| 3 · Top bar and tabs | Across the top | Moving between open pages, creating tabs, and accessing the writing timer and theme selector. |
| 4 · Main area | Centre of the window | Showing the page you've opened. A concept or segment opens its editor here; settings, documentation, and other pages have their own views. |
| 5 · Context sidebar | Right side of concept and segment pages | Details and tools belonging to the document in that pane. |
| 6 · Manuscript area | Opened from the bottom right of the footer | Selecting and arranging narrative for a readable draft. |
Use the rail to move between areas
Hover over an icon on the rail to see its name. The rail gives you access to more than the documents in your project:
- Library opens the overview of your stories, where you can create a project or switch to another one.
- Study is the hub for the current story, with writing progress, quick actions, and a story graph when that module is enabled.
- Other project pages offer different ways to work with the same story. Outline helps you review its structure, Gallery keeps project images together, and optional pages such as Chronology, Cartography, and Kanban support dates, maps, and planning. We'll explore these as we need them later in the guide.
- Docs, near the bottom of the rail, opens this guide inside Writality.
- Settings, also near the bottom, is where you adjust appearance, editor preferences, shortcuts, modules, backups, and other workspace options.
Your rail can look different depending on the project's enabled modules and the pages you've chosen to show. Use + to add an available page or a shortcut to a concept or segment. You can drag project icons to reorder them, or right-click one to hide it from the rail.
The primary sidebar changes
On project pages, the primary sidebar shows your concepts, segments, and folders. It stays available while you move between the Study, editors, and other project views.
Open Settings and that space becomes a searchable list of settings sections. Open Docs and it becomes the guide's chapters and pages, with its own search. Choosing a section or guide page opens it in the main area. The rail always stays (unless you have focus(zen) mode activated) on the left so you can return to a project page whenever you're ready.
Find something without opening folders
Press CtrlP on Windows or Linux, or CmdP on macOS, to open global search. After creating Alasdair, try searching for his name. Type > to look for commands instead of story material.
You can also toggle the project sidebar and the context sidebar independently. The keyboard reference has both shortcuts.
Resize
Resize the any of the sidebars in the app. Make Writality a comfortable space for you. Hide a sidebar when you don't need it, then bring it back when you want the details. You don't have to leave everything visible.