New in 1.16 — research files that keep their names, composition-mode zoom, rendered citations on iPhone & iPad, simpler pricing →
Draft anything long — a paper, a book, a novel — the way you actually think about it: a binder of sections you outline, rearrange, and fold into a finished draft. Everything stays as plain text you own — portable Markdown and Typst files, on disk, forever.
Not a text box. A studio — with the structure, citations, and output a manuscript needs, on top of plain files.
Open and share a .folio project at cloud.foliowriter.app and edit it together in real time — no install, optionally end-to-end encrypted — then download it back, byte-compatible.
Open a .scriv project and rebuild it inside Folio Writer — the full binder hierarchy, each document converted from RTF to Markdown, with synopses, labels, and statuses carried across. Free.
Render the current document or the whole manuscript through the real PDF engine and proof the actual pages before you compile — with a flag when the text has moved on since the last render.
Fenced mermaid code blocks render as flowcharts, sequence diagrams, and more — right in the live preview, fully offline.
See how documents link — now with directional arrows and nodes colored by their binder folder, so chapters and sections read as clusters at a glance.
Sections, folders, and subdocuments you outline, drag to reorder, and lay out on a corkboard — Scrivener-style.
Keep references as .bib files in the project. Insert by author and year; see them rendered inline as you write.
LaTeX math, Markdown, and citations render right in the editor — the syntax steps aside as you read, returns as you edit.
Export to PDF, Word, LaTeX, Typst, HTML, or Markdown through pandoc — title pages, figures, cross-references, bibliography.
Write in Markdown, or keep a document as a native Typst file — mix both in one project and compile them together.
Type #tags inline or add Keywords in the inspector — one index, colored capsules everywhere, a project-wide Tag Index, and tag: search filters.
⌥⌘J opens today’s entry from your template. Entries file themselves by year, month, and day, and a calendar in the binder shows the days you wrote.
⇧⌘P runs any command; ⌃⌘L jumps to any document. Put two documents side by side with ⌥⌘\.
Conflict-safe merging, automatic version history synced to every device, and a live indicator under the binder: Saving… Syncing… Synced.
Sync across your Macs and the iPhone and iPad apps through iCloud, Dropbox, or any Files location — conflict-safe.
A distraction-free room, typewriter scrolling, sentence focus, and per-document, per-session word targets.
Take a snapshot before a heavy revision; browse, diff, and restore. Nothing you write is ever quietly lost.
Propose a change instead of making one — every suggestion carries its author, shown as a diff to accept or reject.
Send co-authors real tracked changes in .docx; Import Review brings their edits back as proposals — nothing lands without your say-so.
Elsevier, IEEE, AGU, Tufte, and NSF proposal templates — plus a lab notebook, a Quarto data-analysis report, a response to reviewers, lecture notes, and a Typst cover letter. Each opens with a page explaining how it’s meant to be used.
Pull references straight from your Zotero library, anchor comments to any passage — highlighted in the editor — and build a response-to-reviewers letter from them.
Switch to Suggesting and every edit becomes a reviewable insertion or deletion in your color, like Word — accept or reject each one, keep comments in the text where they sync, and export as native Word revisions or colored PDF markup.
Arrange the corkboard by label or status and drag a card between columns to reassign it — the lane highlights as you drag, kanban-style.
Execute Python or R cells right in the preview — matplotlib and ggplot figures render in place, via Quarto through the free Folio Helper.
Keep Python and R scripts in Research: edit with full highlighting, Run, and every figure lands in a Figures folder named after its label.
Write @fig:x or @fig-x — Folio Writer converts to pandoc-crossref or Quarto to match the renderer you compile with, your code left untouched.
Open a .folio in any browser and write together in real time — no
install, nothing to configure. Share by link with edit or view access, protect
links with a password, and download your project back, byte-compatible with the
Mac and iPhone apps.
End-to-end encrypted projects go further: documents, binder, and research files are sealed in your browser with AES-256-GCM before upload, the key travels only inside your link, and the server stores ciphertext it cannot read. Typeset preview, PDF export, and search all run locally in the tab.
.folio your Mac and iPad openOne project, seen every way you work — and what each view unlocks: Free and Premium.
Folio Writer is free to write in. Premium is a one-time purchase for macOS only — yours forever, on every Mac, for every future version. iPhone and iPad need their own one-time Pro unlock, purchased separately in that app; the Folio Writer subscription covers both. Free to try for 7 days.
Everything you need to write and organize a manuscript.
Everything Folio Writer does — finish and ship your manuscript, and work with co-authors and your other tools.
On iPhone and iPad, unlock Pro in the app — a separate one-time purchase, not included with Premium. Want everything on the Mac and iPhone and iPad together? Subscribe — $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year, with Folio Cloud included.
One monthly or yearly plan unlocks everything on both platforms — your Mac and your iPhone and iPad — for as long as it runs, with complimentary Folio Cloud storage, plus the things only the cloud can do.
Sold in the apps through the App Store; yearly is ten months for the year. Every plan is end-to-end encrypted, including Free. Need more storage? Contact us. Open the web app → Prefer your own server? Self-host →
The Mac app, its free tool helper, and the iPhone and iPad apps — a project is the same folder of plain files everywhere, and one subscription unlocks all of them. Windows and Linux apps are in the works.
.folio projects — plain files, so nothing to convertOne email when it ships. No newsletter, no sharing, no tracking.
Thanks — you're on the list. One email when the Windows and Linux apps ship.
Development notes, tips, and release news — @foliowriterapp on X.
Recent posts from @foliowriterappFeed not loading? Open @foliowriterapp on X →
A researcher who writes for a living, and built the tool he wanted to write with.
Folio Writer is made by bbchen — one person at the keyboard, a calico cat supervising, and the writers whose suggestions keep turning into features.
Folio Writer collects nothing and tracks nobody. The apps need no account and run no analytics; your manuscripts live in plain files on your own disk and your own iCloud. Folio Cloud is optional, and its end-to-end encrypted projects are ciphertext the server cannot read. Read the privacy policy →
Prefer your own infrastructure? Advanced users — and companies, universities, institutions and research groups — can run the Folio Cloud server themselves. Self-hosting → · Contact us for more information and technical support.