Slugline 2 4+

This is a beautifully minimalist screenwriting app, and currently the best vision of future-proof Fountain formatting vs. features in my view, especially in the iOS world. It gets out of the way when you write, yet produces perfectly formatted pages and makes producing them nearly effortless. It's a complete app as-is, but I hope it continues to receive some love from its developers.

Slugline 1.0 had stability issues on macOS, but on iOS it was downright dangerous to use, as it would – and did – corrupt files and ruin your work. The developers didn't take a responsible and professional attitude towards fixing those issues. Asking customers to pay for a new version now is a bridge too far. They haven't regained my trust, at least.

Beyond that, this a real dog's breakfast of an app at this point. It's now one of so many apps that promise to be minimal and distraction-free yet keep adding features that the developer has deemed necessary. The timeline view, while unattractive, is arguably kind of useful, but it's certainly not essential. Drag-and-drop outlining seems less buggy than the equivalent feature in Highland 2, but that's not saying much. Otherwise, the inability to change even the (awful) default font for headers and such is a bizarre restriction, but I suppose it's that kind of arbitrary limitation that lets the developers brand the app as comparatively simple or focused or whatever.

If you look at the functionality you're getting versus what a license for, say, Scrivener or Fade In costs, you'd be crazy to throw money at Slugline 2. Both of those apps have great screenwriting modes and are far more stable and capable, plus they can be used in a simplified distraction-free mode.

I've written in many different writing apps, and this one is by far my favorite. I wrote a feature film in the original Slugline, and it really delivered on the goal, which was to keep you typing, and stop you fiddling (or procrastinating, which is what I'm doing right now...)

I bought Highland 2 for the dark mode and typewriter function, which was a feature request I made on Slugline 1. And yet I find myself back to Slugline with their release of version 2.

When writing a screenplay, the auto formatting is really the only reason why you write in a specific screenwriting app.

Slugline 2 is beautiful and clean- even cleaner than Highland. It understands my writing intention, creating the proper formatting as I type with very little frustration. Highland on the other hand requires a double carriage return between elements to properly space things out. WHAT? That's right- you have to hit the return key TWICE to space properly between action and character heading for dialogue, or from scene heading to action. No thanks.

With Slugline 2 the formatting is nearly effortless, allowing me to focus on the creativity and leave the formatting to the app.

Thank you guys for continuing this labor of love and creating a wonderful app for the rest of us to enjoy. Charging for version 2 makes total sense, and I'm happy to pay for a wonderful product. Cheers!