Changelog

Every release, newest first. For what the app does today, with screenshots and the walkthrough video, see all features.

1.4.1 Oct 7, 2026

Fixes and Improvements

  • • Added: Exported books use the language of the book. "Chapter 1", "Contents", "Author" and the other words NovelOS adds to an export now follow the language set on the Overview, not the language of the app. This works in Word, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, plain text and RTF for every language. PDF and Book Preview do the same, except in Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, which keep the English words there for now.
  • • Added: Places and lore can be linked to each other. Open Connections on a place or a lore entry and click Add Link; the link shows on both.
  • • Added: Spark: video cards have an Upload Video button, like image and audio cards.
  • • Improved: Write by voice shows what it is doing: Starting, Loading, then Listening once the microphone is really open. A first-time download shows as Downloading with a percentage, and repeated words no longer flicker while a sentence is forming.
  • • Improved: Publish has one PDF format. PDF (Digital) and PDF (Print Ready) made the same file, so they are now a single PDF. Saved presets and export history keep working.
  • • Improved: The Oracle, The Architect and the logline generator write cleaner text: no stray symbols or internal ids, and a character description that fits its field.
  • • Improved: Family trees: a new tree opens with room to drop a parent, partner or sibling, and a sibling added to a child of two partners belongs to both parents.
  • • Improved: Plot boards and Spark boards open at normal size and remember the view you left them in after Fit view. A card dragged onto a plot board lands under the pointer. Sticky notes look like notes, and open as the same card on the phone.
  • • Improved: Easier reading: headings in every editor grow with the text size you choose, and map labels are clearer on every map style.
  • • Improved: Translations were reviewed in all 22 other languages. Words used in the wrong sense, missing plural forms and leftover English were corrected, and Traditional Chinese no longer contains Simplified characters. Text that was still English everywhere is now translated: plot point types, genres, default names for new items, import messages and more.
  • • Improved: Replacing or removing a picture frees its file when nothing else uses it.
  • • Fixed: AI features could stop working until the app was restarted, with the saved key seeming to vanish.
  • • Fixed: The main tabs (Overview, Spark, Cast & World, Blueprint, Manuscript) slid sideways while you typed the book title. They now stay in the middle of the window.
  • • Fixed: Export: EPUB files from the desktop app had no cover, and the title page could split a long word across two lines. The title is now set slightly smaller when a word would not fit.
  • • Fixed: Manuscript: opening it could change the word count by one without any edit, the margin note icon sat in the wrong place after leaving Read mode, and the status bar called the standard text size BASE instead of Standard.
  • • Fixed: Cast & World: the Waterways switch in Cartography had no effect, and Clear Visuals appeared on characters that only had an uploaded portrait.
  • • Fixed: Spark: Tidy Up could lay a card over a link card.
  • • Fixed: Search and select lists jumped up and down while typing.
  • • Fixed: Other languages: the link to get an AI key was missing from Settings outside English, and several word counts fell back to English wording in Polish, Arabic, Hebrew and the Romance languages.
1.4.0 Oct 3, 2026

Write by Voice, Margin Notes and Book Preview

  • • Added: Write by voice: press Dictate in the status bar and speak. Your words appear in the chapter as you talk, with punctuation. It runs on your own computer, so nothing you say is uploaded. English projects only for now.
  • • Added: Book preview: on Overview > Book Layout, open a separate window that shows your book as printed pages at your trim size. It updates as you write or change the layout, and you can zoom in and out.
  • • Added: Margin notes: select a word or a sentence and leave a comment on exactly that text, or drop a bookmark. A new Notes button lists every comment and bookmark in the book in reading order, with search. Tick each one off when you have dealt with it, and click one to jump to its passage.
  • • Added: Scenes can now be linked to a chapter, and several scenes can share one. Scenes you keep outside the book can be marked as Unplaced, Backstory, Cut scenes or Reference.
  • • Added: The timeline is now arranged by chapter. Drag a scene onto another chapter to move it there, and click a scene to open it.
  • • Added: Scenes have a status (Idea, Draft, Revised, Final), a viewpoint character, and an optional picture.
  • • Added: The Alchemist can now polish just the words you select, not only a whole paragraph.
  • • Added: The Oracle and The Architect show their suggestions side by side in a larger window, so you can compare them before choosing one.
  • • Added: Your goal now shows how many words are left and how many you need to write each day to finish by your deadline.
  • • Added: Line spacing can be changed from the status bar while you write.
  • • Added: Short explanations under Target Audience, Logline and Synopsis, for anyone unsure what each one is for.
  • • Added: The activation screen and the map biome names are now translated into all 22 other languages.
  • • Added: Mobile: write by voice. Tap the microphone in the editor toolbar and speak. It runs on the phone itself, English projects only, like on desktop.
  • • Added: Mobile: book preview. Overview > Book Layout > Open Book Preview shows your book as pages, with page turning and zoom, and the same trim sizes as desktop including A4.
  • • Added: Mobile: the timeline now matches desktop. It lists every scene by chapter, with Outside the book below. Hold a scene to drag it to another chapter, or use Move to.
  • • Added: Mobile: add, replace or remove a scene picture, and add sticky notes to a plot board.
  • • Added: Mobile: save a chapter search, fold chapters that have sub-chapters, see the words a comment was left on highlighted in the text, and delete every note on a paragraph at once.
  • • Added: Mobile: font size and line spacing sit together in the Writing & Reading drawer. The word count and theme picker are in the project header.
  • • Added: Mobile: the Alchemist polishes the paragraph your cursor is in when nothing is selected. The @ menu shows pictures.
  • • Added: Mobile: Word exports carry your comments, export presets can be renamed, and Overview lists your recent writing sessions.
  • • Added: Importing a project that is already on your phone now asks whether to replace it or keep both.
  • • Improved: Chapter Snapshots keep your paragraphs, bold and italics when you compare a snapshot with the current text.
  • • Improved: Characters, places and lore now show their picture wherever they are named: in pickers, in the @ mention menu, in scene lists and on the timeline.
  • • Improved: The character page is simpler: shorter labels, fewer headings, and the appearance details fold away until you need them.
  • • Improved: The lists in Cast & World, Scenes and the family tree editor are easier to scan, with names in full-strength text and roles no longer in capitals.
  • • Improved: Switching between Plots and Scenes, or between Cast, World and Lore, returns you to what you had open instead of the first item.
  • • Improved: The typing cursor is now the height of the text instead of the whole line.
  • • Improved: Messages from the app now appear inside the app instead of as system alert boxes.
  • • Improved: Word counts are more accurate for languages written without spaces, such as Chinese, Japanese and Thai.
  • • Improved: Mobile: the app icon no longer looks cropped when installed on a phone.
  • • Fixed: Mobile: Export & Backup on a phone could arrive as a .zip, or as a folder of loose files, which the desktop app could not import. The phone now saves a single .novelos file. Import no longer goes by the file name at all: it reads the file itself, so a project file imports whatever it was renamed to, and anything else gets a clear message.
  • • Fixed: On a Mac, the app could freeze at launch while macOS was asking for permission to read your saved AI key. It now opens normally and only the AI features wait.
  • • Fixed: Importing a project that already exists on your computer now asks before replacing it.
  • • Fixed: Backups left out audio and video placed on a Spark board.
  • • Fixed: Exports and the audiobook put chapters in the order they were created, not the order shown in your table of contents.
  • • Fixed: With narrow margins, the page number in a PDF could overlap the last line of text.
  • • Fixed: Deleting a project left its chapters, characters and notes behind in storage.
  • • Fixed: The @ mention menu could insert a different character or place from the one highlighted.
  • • Fixed: A chapter that opens with a quotation mark or a number lost it in PDF and Word exports. Names starting with an accented letter, and chapters in Cyrillic or Greek, now get their proper first letter too.
  • • Fixed: Replacing a project by importing it kept the old title, cover, goal and writing history. The imported ones are now used.
  • • Fixed: When writing a comment in Japanese, Chinese or Korean, pressing Enter to accept a suggested word posted the comment early.
  • • Fixed: With the Monospace book font, PDFs in Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Russian and other languages could come out with missing letters. A monospace font that covers them is now built in.
  • • Fixed: The daily word count treated cut-and-paste, and undoing a deletion, as new writing. It now counts the net words you added today.
  • • Fixed: Pressing Enter at the very start of a paragraph that has a comment left the comment on the new blank line. It now stays with the text.
  • • Fixed: Moving a project between phone and computer: the project word total dropped after a phone edit, Spark notes could show as code or lose their formatting, scenes, boards and characters came back in a shuffled order, and a deadline, cover or picture removed on the phone reappeared. All fixed.
  • • Fixed: A project that went to the phone and back arrived on the computer as a second copy. It now comes back as the same project, and the computer offers to replace it.
  • • Fixed: Importing a project on the phone replaced the phone's language, theme and editor settings with the ones in the file. The phone now keeps its own.
  • • Fixed: Photos in formats such as HEIC were silently left out when a phone project was opened on the computer. They now travel, and an import tells you if any file could not be read.
  • • Fixed: A backup made on a computer where the system keychain was unavailable could contain your saved AI key. Backups now contain project data only.
  • • Fixed: Mobile: PDF export could not print Cyrillic, Greek, Polish, Turkish or Vietnamese letters and ignored the Book Layout page size. Mobile: bold, italics, lists and quotes were lost from exports of chapters not yet opened on the phone. Both fixed.
  • • Fixed: Mobile: Read mode dropped lists, quotes and pictures. It now shows everything the editor shows.
  • • Fixed: Mobile: word counts were wrong for languages not written in Latin letters.
  • • Fixed: Deleting a project left its export history behind.
  • • Fixed: Mobile: a project whose deadline was set on an older desktop version crashed the phone's project shelf. A project that never had margins set crashed the phone's Book Layout tab. Both found with a real 49 MB project, both fixed.
  • • Fixed: A deleted project could come back the next time the app opened, and the last change before quitting could be lost, because two saves made close together could land in the wrong order. Saves now always land in order.
  • • Fixed: Opening a project on the phone and sending it back changed its word total even though nothing was edited.
  • • Fixed: On phones with an older browser (Chrome before 122, Safari before 18.4) the mobile app could fail to open at all with "Studio could not open". It now opens.
  • • Fixed: Smart Import could not read a PDF on the phone, and on Macs whose system browser engine lacked a newer feature. PDF import works on both now.
  • • Fixed: A character's name could be turned into a mention when it only appeared inside a longer word.
  • • Fixed: The writing heatmap could show a day's words on the wrong date depending on your timezone.
  • • Fixed: Hovering a mention reloaded its picture every time.
  • • Fixed: Hover buttons in the manuscript reacted behind an open dialog.
  • • Changed: PDF export now follows the trim size, margins and font chosen in Book Layout. Before, every PDF came out as A4 whatever you chose. A project that never changed its layout will now export at 6" x 9", the size Book Layout has always shown. Pick A4 there to keep the old size.
  • • Changed: Mobile: the timeline shows every scene in the project, not only the cards on the open board, and no longer includes plot points.
  • • Changed: Pasting or inserting more than 500 words in one go no longer counts toward your daily goal or streak, so imported and generated text does not inflate your progress.
  • • Changed: In the timeline, scenes that have not been given a chapter yet appear under "Outside the book". Their position and length on the timeline are unchanged.
1.3.3 Sep 19, 2026

Fixes and Improvements

  • • Fixed: Mobile: Export & Backup on the Overview page downloads your .novelos project file again. Since 1.3.0 it only opened the Publish page, so a project could not be moved from a phone to a computer.
  • • Fixed: Importing a project on desktop no longer replaces your editor, AI and narration settings with the ones saved in the file.
  • • Fixed: Images in a project that had been through the mobile app showed as broken on desktop, and exporting that project from desktop again left them out. Both work now, including for projects you already imported.
  • • Fixed: Desktop exports left out images placed inside chapters.
  • • Fixed: Moving a project from desktop to mobile and back could lose a chapter's word count.
  • • Fixed: Desktop exports included the snapshot history of every project, not only the one being exported.
  • • Added: Chapter Snapshots now travel with your project between desktop and mobile.
1.3.2 Sep 12, 2026

Fixes and Improvements

  • • Fixed: On older Macs the app opened to a blank, unstyled page. It now looks and works the way it should.
  • • Fixed: Keyboard focus outlines were missing on older Macs, which made the app hard to move around without a mouse.
  • • Fixed: On older Macs, translucent panels lost their blur, soft fades rendered as hard edges, and interface labels could be selected like body text.
  • • Added: Support diagnostics now record which browser engine the app is running on, so a display problem can be pinned down from a single report.
1.3.1 Sep 1, 2026

Fixes and Improvements

  • • Fixed: License activation failed on Windows and reported valid keys as invalid. It now activates correctly.
  • • Fixed: The character art generator briefly showed raw internal labels (like 'figure') while painting a portrait.
  • • Fixed: A Spark board added to a character's notes showed raw data instead of the board's contents.
  • • Fixed: The Connections panel showed a placeholder label instead of a helpful hint when an entry had no manuscript appearances yet.
  • • Fixed: Biome names in the procedural map editor were not translated.
  • • Added: Activation screen: a Copy debug info button that packages the exact failure reason, so support can diagnose a key that won't activate.
1.3.0 Aug 30, 2026

Bring Your Book

  • • Added: Smart Import: import a manuscript from Word, EPUB, PDF, Markdown or plain text. Chapters are detected automatically. On desktop and mobile.
  • • Added: New search engine behind every search box: it tolerates typos, works in languages written without spaces, highlights matches, and drops weak results.
  • • Added: Saved searches: save a search as a collection and reopen it later.
  • • Added: Find in chapter: press Ctrl+F to search the open chapter, with matches highlighted.
  • • Added: Chapter Snapshots: each chapter keeps a version history. Compare any snapshot with the current text and restore it. On desktop and mobile.
  • • Added: Writing history: the Overview shows your sessions and daily progress, counted in your timezone.
  • • Added: 22 themes, a custom palette editor, and a theme picker in the navbar.
  • • Added: Named export presets: save export settings under a name and reuse them. On desktop and mobile.
  • • Added: Comments you leave in the manuscript appear as Word comments in DOCX exports.
  • • Added: Mobile: Read mode, Zen mode, narration with the phone's voice, and Smart Import.
  • • Fixed: Pages went blank when moving between sections.
  • • Fixed: Snapshot restore failed to apply the snapshot and duplicated the history.
  • • Fixed: Zen mode: the toolbar is reachable again, Escape exits, and on mobile it covers the full screen.
  • • Fixed: Vanishing mode fades your text again.
  • • Fixed: The Overview showed the same progress figure twice.
  • • Fixed: Imports dropped chapter numbers and front matter. Both are kept.
  • • Fixed: Narration plays on devices where it failed to start.
  • • Fixed: Mobile: the editor stays visible when the keyboard opens, sheets sit above it, the manuscript stops saving every half-second, your session survives iOS clearing cookies, boards respond to touch, and tap targets and clipped layouts found by an accessibility audit.
  • • Improved: Theme switching is instant.
  • • Improved: The app announces updates in-app. Mobile offers a refresh when a new version is ready.
  • • Changed: Version history is now called Snapshots, with a dialog built around comparing versions.
  • • Changed: The app re-checks your licence with the store when online. Offline use is unaffected.
1.2.0 Aug 23, 2026

Hear Your Book

  • • Added: Read chapters aloud, with the voice generated on your own machine, so it needs no account and no internet connection once the voice has downloaded
  • • Added: The words light up as they are spoken and the rest of the chapter dims, so it is easy to follow along
  • • Added: Audiobook export from the Publish page, as MP3 or WAV, with one track per chapter
  • • Added: Narration voice and speed settings, with the voice downloaded on demand rather than bundled into the app
  • • Added: OpenAI alongside Gemini for Muse, with an automatic switch to the other provider when one is unavailable
  • • Added: Sidebars can be dragged to any width in Manuscript, Spark, Blueprint, Cast & World, Cartography and Genealogy
  • • Added: Spark cards can be resized from any edge or corner
  • • Added: Image and audio can be uploaded into Spark, and generated images can be downloaded
  • • Added: Spark notes open in a full rich-text editor
  • • Added: The Spark drawing editor gained shapes, selection, panning, zoom and a custom colour picker
  • • Added: Tidy Up in Blueprint, to lay the board out again after editing
  • • Added: The mobile app gained narration, audiobook export, the full drawing editor, card resizing, media upload and download, and the new settings layout
  • • Fixed: The blinking cursor in the manuscript editor was taller than the text
  • • Fixed: A Spark note reported "Updated a minute ago" the moment it was opened, before any edit
  • • Fixed: The drawing tools sat underneath the zoom controls on phone-sized screens, which left Fill and Eraser impossible to tap
  • • Fixed: The drawing canvas was not announced by screen readers
  • • Fixed: Muse blamed a missing API key for problems that had nothing to do with keys, such as rate limits and provider outages, which sent you to re-enter a key that was already working
  • • Fixed: Every Muse setting except creativity was lost when a project moved between mobile and desktop, including prompts you had written yourself
  • • Fixed: The OpenAI key field asked you to paste a Google key
  • • Fixed: Inactive Spark cards showed a blue outline, and their title sat too far from their content
  • • Fixed: The drawing editor in the mobile app was missing the tools the desktop editor has
  • • Improved: Sidebars follow the cursor while being resized instead of lagging behind it
  • • Improved: Blueprint now drafts a tighter outline of at most five beats rather than filling the board
  • • Improved: Colour swatches in the drawing editor meet contrast requirements against any background
  • • Improved: Chapters are narrated several sentences ahead in parallel, so playback does not stall between paragraphs
  • • Improved: Interface wording reviewed across all 23 languages
  • • Removed: Expand Idea in Spark
  • • Changed: Spark notes and drawings now open in their own editor rather than a small inline field
  • • Changed: The licence key description no longer mentions premium features, which this one-time purchase does not have
  • • Security: Muse API keys now live in the operating system keychain, and in encrypted browser storage on mobile, instead of app settings; a key saved earlier is moved across on first launch
  • • Security: API keys are no longer written into .novelos project archives, which are shared and backed up
1.1.0 Aug 8, 2026

NovelOS on Your Phone

  • • Added: Mobile app for iOS and Android, installed from the browser at app.novelos.studio
  • • Added: Manuscript, Blueprint, Cast & World, Spark, Overview and Export on mobile
  • • Added: Cartography and Genealogy editors on mobile
  • • Added: Activation with the same lifetime licence key as the desktop apps
  • • Added: Export to DOCX, EPUB, PDF, RTF, Markdown, HTML and TXT from mobile
  • • Added: Project transfer between mobile and desktop
  • • Improved: Install instructions now match the browser you are using, including Chrome and Firefox
1.0.0 Jan 29, 2026

Initial Release

  • • Added: Initial Release
1.0.0-beta.6 Jan 7, 2026

Fixes and Improvements

  • • Added: Support multi-languages
  • • Fixed: Genealogy Editor glitch
  • • Fixed: Cartography Editor translations
1.0.0-beta.5 Dec 27, 2024

The Ownership Update

  • • Added: Refined Editor & Typography settings with writer-friendly labels.
  • • Added: Dynamic synchronization between typography settings and the main editor.
  • • Added: New 'About' section in settings with official branding and mission statement.
  • • Fixed: Responsive grid layout for novel cards (5/3 column logic).
  • • Fixed: Project sorting by last updated timestamp.
  • • Fixed: Splashscreen and window state visibility conflicts.
  • • Improved: Standardized global text sizes for better accessibility.
  • • Improved: Enhanced 'Typewriter Mode' with smoother scrolling and better descriptions.
  • • Improved: Premium paragraph spacing and line height options for a literary feel.
1.0.0-beta.4 Dec 20, 2024

Fixes and Improvements

  • • Added: Initial Beta release of the core writing environment.
  • • Added: Support for multi-chapter manuscripts.
  • • Added: Character and World-building databases.