Writing a screenplay? What better app to use than one created by a screenwriter? Highland Pro, the brainchild of writer John August, combines the simplicity of a text editor with advanced writing tools and automatic formatting.

What we love: How Highland lets you focus on writing by doing the busy work for you. Type a character’s name in uppercase; subsequent text is formatted as dialogue. Use common industry abbreviations like cut to, int, and ext, and the app makes them sections with headers. Create a parenthetical by simply putting text in parentheses, or add a note that won’t show up in exported screenplays by surrounding it with double brackets. As you write, Highland auto-completes character and location names and automatically indents sections to match industry-standard formatting. You can even use Markdown or Fountain syntax and let the app take care of styling.

Quick tip: Don’t miss the app’s tools for organizing and polishing your prose. The Navigator’s document outline gives you a customizable overview of your document and lets you reorder sections by dragging them, while the Shelf hosts comments, to-do lists, writing goals, and text you want to move or reuse later. Word Analysis checks for consistency and repetition, and Gender Analysis shows you the breakdown of speaking parts—and how it would change if you switched the gender of a particular character. Need a word definition, a synonym, or a fun fact while writing? The /lookup feature lets you type a request right in your document—say, /define unscrupulous, /capital of Bulgaria, or /country with lots of tulips—and get the answer without lifting your fingers off the keyboard.

Meet the creator: Led by screenwriter John August (Go, Charlie’s Angels, Big Fish, and 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are among his credits), Quote-Unquote Apps is a small team that makes screenwriter-centric apps and utilities, most of which August coaxed into existence to streamline his own writing life.