Storyist is a powerful writing environment that lets you create, review, and revise your work wherever inspiration strikes.
“If I could have only one screenwriting app on my iPad, Storyist would be it.” – Taz Goldstein, Hand Held Hollywood.
“I'm currently traveling in Europe and am just now putting the finishing touches on the book that will be published in September. I'm using the Storyist app for my iPad Mini and it's sensational... a real godsend.” – Michael Brandman, Bestselling Author.
With Storyist, you can:
• Produce submission-ready manuscripts and screenplays. Storyist provides a rich text editor with support for comments, images, headers, footers, and style sheets so you can create properly formatted manuscripts and screenplays. And Storyist comes with manuscript and screenplay templates so you can focus on the writing, not the formatting.
• Work with your story at a high level. Storyist lets you sketch out a story using index cards and then refine it with customizable plot, character, and setting sheets. When you're ready to put words on the page, Storyist can even display your index cards next to your manuscript as you write.
• Review and revise on the go. Have a few minutes? Open Storyist and jot down a note, rewrite a few paragraphs, or annotate your manuscript with ideas for future changes.
• Keep all your writing organized and accessible. Storyist organizes your novel manuscripts, screenplays, notes, and other project-related writing so you can access them with just a few taps. And the Files app support lets you store your projects where you want and edit them in place.
Features at a Glance
• Rich text editor with support for fonts, colors, comments, images, headers, footers, and style sheets.
• Files interface with the ability to collaborate with other writers, browse version history, and sync with your favorite cloud storage service.
• Automatic manuscript and screenplay formatting with familiar tab and return key shortcuts.
• Color-coded index cards.
• Customizable story sheets.
• Easy import and export of text and images.
• Support for Storyist for Mac, RTF, Plain Text, Fountain, and Final Draft FDX files.
• Ability to export text files as PDF.
• Wireless printing with AirPrint.
• Courier Prime font for screenplays.
Try Storyist 4 for free for 14 days. After the trial period ends, you can purchase Storyist 4 to continue using the editing features or use the app in reader mode for free. Upgrade pricing is available for customers who purchased Storyist 3 for iOS. No subscription required.
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.
Update: Lost Everything with Upgrade
Angrysocialist
I just upgrade to IOS 14 and the Storyist update for it. Went to open a book that I’ve been working on and absolutely nothing was there. The word counter said there were so many words, but they were not on the page. Luckily I still have Storyist 3 and I have 4 on another computer, plus I have the book mostly backed up on other software so it is not much of a loss. Weird, though. Simply no words on the page. Wish: I wish there was a template in Storyist for non-fiction and such where you could do footnotes and all that kind of thing. Need that right now. Update: This problem kept going, then I found out more or less by accident what was wrong. Storyist 4 does not seem to save to Storyist icloud and it shut down when the Storyist 3/4 were running simultaneously, especially on the ipad. I had to save the projects in iCloud Drive and then they opened fine. To his credit, the developer was on it and I want to thank him for that here. To this end, I hope that Storyist 4 also adds the ability for footnotes/endnotes in future updates as I (and I am sure that there are many others as well) do much non-fiction on Storyist and need that feature. So problem is basically solved, developer was on top of it, and add a couple more features if possible. I bought/Downloaded the newest Storyist version on both mac/iOS. I have not had much time with it yet, but whenever I tried to open up a short piece I created to experiment with it on the IOS, Storyist 4 just crashes and shuts down. I am on an iPad Pro 10.5. I will not even let me create a new project, but just shuts down. Hmmm...
Developer Response
Hi Angrysocialist, Please send a quick email to support@storyist.com with the details so we can look into it. It would be helpful to know what version of iOS you're running, what cloud storage service you're using, and what else is running on the device when this happens.
Great, except when the iOS app eats styles
jessrunsontea
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.
Storyist sometimes deletes all your work!!!
RenderWizard
Huge danger warning here, I must echo previous reviews like the one posted by RyGuy486 and report that STORYIST SOMETIMES AUTO-DELETES ALL YOUR WORK. This happened to me twice now, the first time I thought it was because I was using OneDrive for file storage. But I switched back to the default Apple cloud file storage AND A WEEK LATER IT HAPPENED AGAIN. I’ve now lost hours and hours of writing, which is just so disheartening. I can see from Apple’s file versions that Storyist gets confused and starts to save the same version of a file over and over (instead of saving a version with any new modified work). Then if you power down, it auto-restores to that last version... and everything is gone.Perhaps this won’t happen if I just save files to the local iPad instead of any cloud storage? Perhaps it happened because I connected to a wireless network AFTER starting Storyist? In the end I don’t care why. This is just one of the worst possible bugs a program like this could have. Sorry to say this program is NOT reliable for professional work. Stay away.
Support for iOS 26 and iPadOS 26.
Version 4.7
The developer, Storyist Software, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
