mastodon 4.7.3novelWriter is an open source plain text editor designed for writing novels. It supports a minimal markdown-like syntax for formatting text. It is written with Python and Qt for cross-platform support.
This account is managed by @veronica@mastodon.online
A major feature update that is currently in the planning stage is to merge novelWriter's separate editor and viewer panels into a unified editor/viewer, where you can change mode via a single toggle button.
The advantage, of course, is that you will have the option to edit both open documents in parallel if you wish to. Perfect for updating the notes while working on a scene.
novelWriter 2026.2 Beta 1 is available for testing.
This release includes a number of new features, like an improved project search, epub support, writing goals tracking, and many other little details.
Under the hood, the spell checking has been reworked for improved performance.
Remember, this is a beta release for testing, so there can be more bugs and stability issues than normal.
novelWriter 2026.1 Patch 2 is available.
This release comes with updated Japanese and Russian translations, fixes a possible crash when searching through many documents rapidly, and a small change to how the app is launched on Windows that should make the novelWriter icon stay on the taskbar.
https://novelwriter.io/releases/release_26_1.html#main-release-26-1-2
It is 7 years today since the first release of novelWriter!
novelWriter 2026.1 Patch 1 is available.
The main changes is an added Catalan translation, and updates to other translations. There are also some minor updates to the app and the documentation.
https://novelwriter.io/releases/release_26_1.html#main-release-26-1-1
novelWriter 2026.1 Beta 1 is now available for testing.
Note that we have now switched to year-based version numbers.
This release is a collection of many smaller requested features, mainly related to the text editor panel and formatting of the final manuscript.
novelWriter 2026.1 RC 1 is available for testing.
Not much has changed since the Beta 2pre-release, but a few minor bugs and issues have been fixed. There is now also a new setting to enable single asterisks to be used for bold formatting.
The full release of 2026.1 is planned for 26 April.
novelWriter 2026.1 is out!
This release focuses on adding improvements to several existing features of novelWriter. There are new settings for the manuscript tools, improvements to the text editing experience, and a few new features for the editor. A new icon theme has also been added, and a couple more colour themes.
novelWriter 2.8 RC 1 is now available for testing.
2.8 Beta 1 included a complete revamp of the theme system. The RC 1 release also includes an optional Vim mode, which has been in development for a while.
See the release notes for more details on new features in 2.8.
novelWriter 2026.1 Beta 2 is available for testing.
This release fixes a dependency issue with 2026.1 Beta 1, which expected a core library version that is not available on older Linux distros. This has now been fixed.
The Windows and AppImage versions of Beta 1 will still work, but it will not run properly on Ubuntu 24.04 and Linux distros of similar age.
novelWriter 2.8.2 is now available.
This is a patch release that fixes an issue with launching novelWriter via a project file on Windows, adds an alert when the spell check dictionary cannot be loaded, handles headings in HTML manuscripts the same way as for documents, and updates the documentation on how heading levels are handled in the manuscript build process.
https://novelwriter.io/releases/release_2_8.html#main-release-2-8-2
novelWriter 2.7.3 is now available.
This patch release fixes a few minor issues in Preferences. One is a bug that caused a crash in an underlying Python package, and the other changes are improvements to how some dialogue highlighting settings are handled.
https://novelwriter.io/releases/release_2_7.html#main-release-2-7-3
novelWriter 2.8.1 is now available
It fixes an issue where the application could crash under certain conditions, like when using Spotlight on MacOS. The cause is outside of novelWriter, but this patch release works around the issue. It is unknown if the issue affects Linux and Windows.
(The root cause of the bug is related to the Qt library version 6.10.)
https://novelwriter.io/releases/release_2_8.html#main-release-2-8-1
novelWriter 2.7.2 is now available.
This is a patch release that fixes several issues related to DocX and PDF manuscript documents, improves how line breaks, alignment and indentation is processed, and fixes some issues with displaying tags for novel documents on the user interface.
The documentation on alignment, indentation, and line breaks has also been improved.
https://novelwriter.io/releases/release_2_7.html#main-release-2-7-2
novelWriter 2.8 Beta 1 is now available for testing.
This release includes a major redesign of the theme and icons framework. The app now properly supports light/dark mode switching with desktop integration. There are also a large set of new themes to choose from, and the separate document theme is gone. You custom document labels can also be tied directly to theme colours so they follow along when you switch theme.
For more, see the preliminary release notes.
https://novelwriter.io/releases/release_2_8.html#main-release-2-8
novelWriter 2.7 RC 1 is now available for testing,
Several issues have been fixed since the Beta 1 release, and a few features that were not fully complete have been completed.
If there are no major issues, the full release should be out in a few weeks when the translators have had a chance to catch up.
novelWriter 2.7 Beta 1 is now available for testing.
Among new features is a complete update of icons in the application. There are now 3 themes across 9 styles, and the icon colours match the chosen GUI theme.
The major new feature for 2.7 are story structure comments. They are intended for the very organised writers who love to analyse their writing. An excerpt of the new documentation is included in the release notes to explain what this is.
novelWriter 2.6.3 has recently been added to the Fedora 41 and 42 repositories. At the moment, the internationalisation files are missing in the released package, but an updated release is on the way.
https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/novelwriter/novelwriter/
novelWriter 2.7.5 is now available.
This is a patch release that fixes an issue related to crashes when using the completer menu under certain conditions, and improves positioning of the input box for CJK languages.
https://novelwriter.io/releases/release_2_7.html#main-release-2-7-5
novelWriter 2.7.1 is now available.
It fixes the following:
- An issue with the auto-complete menu blocking the return key on Windows.
- Updates a complete Czech translation.
- Many had issues running the 2.7 AppImage. The image build has been improved. Hopefully the issues are resolved.
https://novelwriter.io/releases/release_2_7.html#main-release-2-7-1
