Escribir

A fast, focused text editor for Markdown, Fountain screenplays, and plain text. What you save is byte-for-byte what you typed.

A wooden artist's mannequin riding a fountain pen like a rocket across a mid-century wallpaper of rounded squares, leaving a trail of handwriting behind it.

Free Download on the Mac App Store

Free, and free in the plain sense — no subscription, no in-app purchases, no trial that expires, no account to make.

New Now on Homebrew — see how to install ↓

Version 1.2 for Mac · iPhone & iPad coming soon

New in 1.2

Storyboards, previews, and dossiers

Escribir 1.2 adds storyboard panels inside your screenplay, a paged Markdown preview, character dossiers, and a control bar on every window. It is a free update.

Storyboards in the screenplay

Plan storyboard panels inside a Fountain screenplay. Each shot note shows as one compact row with its caption and settings. Click it to edit the prompt, style, model, and references in the Storyboard inspector (⌥⌘I). Preview shows each rendered panel in place with its caption, and a badge tells you when a shot has changed since it was rendered. Escribir writes the shot notes; the panels are rendered by Vinetas.

Markdown preview

Flip the Preview switch on a Markdown file to see it as paged, letter-size pages, with Mermaid diagrams drawn. Links to other files in your project open in Escribir, and the Share menu exports the preview as a PDF or HTML.

Character dossiers

A character’s .dossier folder shows as a single row in the project sidebar. Select it to read the character’s page in the project window.

A control bar on every window

Document windows get the same control bar as the project window: a switch between editing modes, and a serif/sans switch (also in View › Font) for Markdown.

Open folders and files

Drop a folder on Escribir’s Dock icon to open it as a project. Text, Markdown, and Fountain files open straight into the editor.

Smaller changes

Plain text and code files display in a monospaced font. The File menu groups the project commands together. One sheet makes Escribir the default editor for every file type it handles. Writing Tools no longer rewrites your Fountain or Markdown source. If a file changes on disk while you have unsaved edits, Escribir keeps your edits and shows a banner instead of overwriting either version.

See it in action

A Fountain screenplay open in Escribir with live styling: scene headings underlined, dialogue indented to screenplay geometry, and a live word count in the window's bottom bar. — Fountain, styled live — screenplay geometry as you type, with the source one keystroke away.

Escribir's script preview showing a Fountain screenplay rendered as a formatted script page, with title page block, centered character names, and indented dialogue. — Script preview — your screenplay rendered as real script pages.

Escribir's project window with a sidebar file tree over a folder and a text file open in the editor pane. — The project window — a sidebar over any folder, every text file a click away.

A Markdown document in Escribir with live styling: scaled headings, bold and italic text, and dimmed syntax markers. — Markdown, styled as you type — and saved byte-for-byte as plain text.

Live styling, honest source

.md and .fountain render as you type, and ⌥⌘S drops you back to plain source at any moment. The styling is a view, never a format.

A project window over any folder

Open a folder and work across its files with a sidebar, an in-window find bar, and recent-project memory. No import step, no library to maintain.

Find & Replace done right

Incremental search in a bar inside the window, not a floating panel — and Replace All is a single undo, not one per match.

Read any paragraph aloud

The paragraph well puts a play button beside the block under your pointer. ⌥Esc reads the one at the caret. Speech is synthesised on your Mac, in your system voice.

A page for Markdown

Markdown sits in a centred reading column about 80 characters wide, the way a screenplay sits on its page. Long lines no longer run edge to edge on a wide window.

Emphasis in screenplays

*Italics*, **bold**, and _underline_ in Fountain display styled in the editor, in Script Preview, and in exported PDFs.

Free, and only free

One download, everything in it. No subscription, no in-app purchase, no pro tier holding a feature back.

No accounts, no sync service

Nothing to sign into and nothing phoning home. Your documents stay on your device, and Escribir collects no data at all.

New: Homebrew

Install with Homebrew

Escribir is now a Homebrew cask. It is the same app as the one on the Mac App Store, signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, and it is just as free.

Install
```
brew install --cask intrusive-memory/tap/escribir
```
If Homebrew says it won’t load a cask from an untrusted tap, run this once, then run the install again:
```
brew trust intrusive-memory/tap
```
Update
```
brew upgrade --cask escribir
```
A Homebrew copy updates through Homebrew, not the App Store.

Needs a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 26 Tahoe or later. Pick one source: if you already have Escribir from the App Store, delete that copy from Applications before installing with Homebrew.