Arc Studio Screenwriting Ratings and Reviews

Excellent app with few bugs

I had been looking for a new application to collaborate with others on projects with for some time and have to say I find Arc Studio to be one of the best I have experienced on a mobile device. I ended up subscribing to the full plan but did find a bug in which the modal window does not go away after finalizing the subscription. I found that a fix is to exit the app, remove it from background processes, lock the device and then launch it again. With the exception of this interface issue I am quite pleased with my experience.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for reporting, we are getting this fixed!

Interesting new age of screenwriting

One day I’m sitting at my mundane office job, realizing with the random free time I have at work I’d rather be at home screenwriting; a lot of the time I’m using iPhone notes to write ideas, yet eventually you gotta start working on a draft. This solved that for me. Being able to write even in the bathroom lol has been of great use, the cloud based saving is also convenient. Being able to Pick up where I left off on my computer is also brilliant. The only thing I’m not crazy about is being able to export it into a file has the stamp of the app name on it; which is unprofessional so I would have to copy and paste it into a different screenwriting template I have in order to draft any type of final draft or shooting draft. But for rough drafts this works very well.

UPDATED:
I have the paid version and for some reason when exporting to pdf from the phone app I get weird spacing errors; basically it is double spaced in places it shouldn’t be. As well I’m the actually phone app there’s big gaps between my writing at times and I assumed those were new page gaps but when I export that’s not the case. Any help?

Developer Response ,

Thank you for the review! The branding only exists on exports on the free version – we offer exports on free of course, but add branding so people help spread the word instead of paying for a subscription. Hope this makes sense.

Dissappointed

Let me start off by saying this app was absolutely my favorite app for screen writing I was using the free version that apparently is only a “7 day fee trail “( I had it free for much longer and never had any issues with it ). Now, I’m not really sure what they did to this app or what the changed when they got greedy and wanted to start charging you $70 a year for an app that was free for all and now all of a sudden has flaws and bugs and glitches up the A. Whatever you guys did to the app on the current update please change it back. I’m constantly having issues every 3-4 lines. I can’t use half the features on the app because they’re either the $90 a year version or they are completely unusable because of glitches. I understand having to pay for the app since it’s possibly become more popular and I forked out the money since the browser version is absolutely awful and useless, I’m seriously dissatisfied with my new experience in an app I used to cherish and love. It made writing so easy and seamless and now I find myself having to stop every 5-10 minutes to figure out a glitch or bug or the app completely crashes. Shame on you guys for messing this app up completely. I hope to see further improvements as I still am forced to use the software after spending $70 on it lol.

Developer Response ,

Hi Jackie, could you message support with a description of the glitches you are seeing – that definitely doesn't sound normal. We're happy to take a look at this and apologize for any inconvenience.

iPhone version kinda unusable

I enjoy Arc for the most part. But the iOS version is currently unusable.

I have the Pro Max and I can barely make out the text on screen it's so small. The setting to make text bigger is restricted too because of "the screen size" which is a bit ironic.

The app itself, and this kinda goes across all versions even the Mac, it's... "bouncy". Not sure another way to put it. Things bounce all over the screen. They disappeared and then reappear, sometimes they disappear and reappear at different parts of the screen. All around it's extremely difficult to use to even read the script your wrote on the Mac. Switching back and forth between views things just jump all over the place. If I go to contents then back to documents, I'm in a different place in the script. Why? Actually testing it now it's kinda funny, it moves 2 pages up in the script every time I nav back to the script.

Clicking on the comments nav bar button does nothing except show you a couple carrots at the top, I suspect it's supposed to take me from comment to comment but it doesn't. Nothing moves here at all when it should lol.

This app needs some major polishing. Features are there but usability is not. It's decent to use on Mac but still suffers from odd bouncing and window and sidebar formatting issues in a big way.

Promising until the price tag

I had high hopes that this could be a semi free application for all to use, but that isn’t the case. For any screen writers out there, you can do the same exact thing on this app, but on google docs through extensions and work arounds. It looks just as professional, and you don’t have to pay $100 a year to get full access to any garbage. Its all free. It’s really just complete greed from these guys, so please don’t bother.

It is possible to use this for free, but the roadblocks are too much. A watermark when you export a pdf? Only two scripts? I get that you have to run servers and everything, but why isn’t there a cheaper monthly plan? $5 a month is completely reasonable, and even with how pricy final draft is, it’s still cheaper with the same features. $100 is something you pay once, and they have the audacity to make you pay it again for another year. Don’t download until they change something.

Don’t waste your time with the web browser.

I got this app maybe in the middle of last month and it was perfect everything was amazing. After writing half of my script I took a 2 week break because I also had some family plans but when I got back on, it asked me if I wanted to go pro. I said no and it made me go on a web browser which didn’t seem to bad at the time but sometimes while I was using it would only show half of my work on the screen and I would have to exit out of the web browser and it still wouldn’t work. Honestly the writing features are pretty great but the whole web browser thing just wasn’t working great the way the app did and it kinda just messed it up for me. I honestly wish I could still use the app WITH the free version but that’s just my experience and opinion.

Developer Response ,

Hi Gabi, thank you for trying Arc Studio. Unfortunately, after the 7 day trial, we can only offer the browser app for free. I can understand that this isn't ideal if you're on a budget, but we have to make this a sustainable business, if we want to offer our service long-term. That said, you can write for free on the browser for as long as you want, with all the features to create an industry standard screenplay. We feel that's a pretty generous offer. We would appreciate if your feedback could reflect the features, not the fact that our app costs many (like virtually all professionally built tools).

Say Goodnight, Final Draft

Arc Studio Pro is the app that Final Draft should aspire to. It’s clean, neat and elegant. It helps you focus with your outline to the side and helps you with the pre-writing (populating character names, creating bios, as well as locations and story arcs.

This is a fully featured app as opposed to the extremely watered down version of FD. It allows you to take snapshots, tracks your revision history and creates a character arc timeline which allows you to see the journey of your characters across the entire script.

I highly recommend that you do the pre-writing because it will give you a clear path forward. Some people like to go for it, and the program allows that flexibility.

The app also keeps track of your writing activity and nags you when you’re slacking off (at your direction, of course).

It writes Final Draft files as well as Fountain files, which FD can read if your production company insists on using Final Draft.

The yearly subscription is well worth it.

App nearly unusable on iPhone14

The most recent update throws me to the bottom of the script each time I press “return”. Clicking on “Contents” to quickly get me back to the scene I was working on will also put me back at the bottom of the script no matter what scene I select. I cannot edit my script like this.

Last time I used this app on my phone, it worked just fine, although it’s been a long while since I’ve used this on my phone. However, in its current state, I’m having a hard time using this app and one of the biggest reasons I subscribed to Arc was because of the app. Will re-evaluate when there’s an update. Happy Thanksgiving & Indigenous Peoples Day

An Absolutely PHENOMENAL Screenwriting App

As someone who works solely from an iPad, I was so relieved to find a screenwriting app that worked seamlessly. Yes, there are others (and I’ve tried them) - and NOTHING compares to Arc Studio. I wrote my first full-length screenplay in three weeks, and now halfway through my second - and AS makes it a breeze. I learned the software in under an hour and was blitzing through the shortcuts and leveraging the features like a pro!

Just as important as the functionality is, how an app is supported is a critical component. I can say, without hesitation, I’ve never received better customer service on for any app on the App Store.

That doesn’t say a lot, that says it all.

Thank you to the amazing developers and support team!!!

Have to pay after I work?

I’ve been script writing since high school and love it. I recently switched it IPhone and my favorite script writing app isn’t available for IOS so I downloaded it to get in and it’s a good app. I want to get some work done today, and it will not let me into the app unless I pay the plan of 100 dollars a year. I can’t pay that so I launch it in the browser and my script loads, but once I want to start where I left off, it doesn’t load after I get to the scene I need to work on, I can’t even view my work. MONEY HUNGRY! I’ve now lost 2 great scripts I can’t revisit and work on! THANKS!