Storyist 4 4+

A little frustrating but better than the others

I’ve compared this one to all the other screenplay applications, including Final Draft. I’d say it’s a close one between this and Final Draft. This one is a little more user friendly. But this does have a lot of UI problems when entering split screen mode on iPad. On the phone, when you tap on an area to type, it automatically zooms in so you can get a closer look at what you’re typing. But... it zooms in the wrong area. So I cannot see what I am typing. So I manually zoom out and try to type again and it zooms in again to try to be helpful. But it keeps zooming in the wrong area over and over again. So it has its problems on both iOS and iPad OS, but at least it’s somewhat usable. There are workarounds such as entering the “phone-optimized view”. So it doesn’t have to zoom in and out. The others apps... forget about them. It seems that no developer knows how to make a screenplay application, but Storyist is closest to a professional screenplay app you would expect coming from a desktop.

Not worth upgrade unless you like folders

I’m pretty disappointed that they chose to spin off storyist to add the feature request we've asked for for a long time.

I love using the app, but small things always bothered me like no folder tree in mobile app (like macos has), Support via email never answered, and ability to extend the template system was nonexistant (still is).

That being said i upgraded for the folder tree view since i use this app for my iphone, ipad and mac. So buy it for that convenience but I think for budget minded people google docs is way better for same and more features(sharing and group comments i copy over to google writer.)

Developer Response ,

Hi jo jo devil, Thank you for your support and for the kind words about the app. We're grateful for our long-time users. If you're curious about what else has changed in version 4, tap the App Support link on this page and check out the article titled "Storyist 4 for iOS Overview." It covers the new features (edit in place, iCloud sharing, tags, themes) and enhancements (navigation, dynamic type) in some detail.

Great, except when the iOS app eats styles

I’ve used Storyist for years on desktop and iOS, but recently, if I make a change to any style via the iOS app, within minutes the edited style vanishes and anything uses it reverts to the default style. If I change the default style, ALL styles disappear and the entire document becomes a wall of text. To correct this, I have to go to my desktop install of Storyist, re-create all styles, and re-apply them line by line to the entire document—because they’re totally wiped out. Chapter titles, separators, section text. Gone. Not the worst when it’s a short story, but I found this out working on a 70k draft.

Storyist 3 never had this problem; it’s new to the Storyist 4 app and I hope it’ll be corrected soon, otherwise I might finally switch to the competition. Writers should be able to safely change fonts on an iPad without worrying that all of the styles will be stripped. This bug is a deal breaker.