Finding your way around the editor

The editor keeps the writing surface clear and tucks everything else into a slim toolbar and a few panels you open only when you want them. Closed, they take up no room. This is a tour of what each one does.

The toolbar and status line

The toolbar runs in a single row across the top and sits flush under the navigation bar. From the left you have your save menu, settings (the piece’s writing type and tags), Format, Find, your writing mode, and a More menu that holds everything else. If the row is ever wider than your screen, it scrolls sideways instead of wrapping. Just under it, a status line tells you where your work stands: saving, saved, unsaved changes, or saved only on this device when a save could not reach the server. For what those states mean and how saving works, see Saving and recovering your work.

Word count and the writing timer

A small bar under the toolbar keeps a running word count and a writing timer. The timer counts the time you spend actually writing and pauses on its own when you stop, so it measures work, not the minutes a tab sat open. Both are just for you.

The bar is yours to shape. Click it, or the gear icon at its end, to open the settings. From there you can pin extra readouts (characters, sentences, paragraphs, reading time) so they sit next to the word count, and you can unpin the timer if you would rather not watch the clock. The word count always stays. Your choices are remembered across pieces.

Writing goal and deadline pacing

Set a Writing goal for a piece from that same settings panel and the bar grows a progress meter. Give the goal a Finish by date and Inkbreaker works out how many words to write today to land on time, then splits the work across the days you actually plan to write. Pick those days with the Writing days chips: leave them all on to write every day, or turn off the days you take away from the desk and the pace shifts onto the days that remain.

You get two bars. Draft tracks the whole piece against the goal. Today tracks the words you have written this session against today’s pace, and the line beneath spells it out: “Write 91 today to stay on pace.” A session resets each day, so today’s bar always starts from where you begin. Want a flat daily number instead of a deadline pace? Set Today’s goal and the second bar follows that. Pass the goal and the bar turns green. Miss the deadline and the line tells you how many words are left.

The goal, deadline, and pacing are yours alone. They never show to readers and never change the piece. Focus mode keeps the same bar, so you can chase today’s number with the chrome out of the way.

Status and labels

Open Settings in the editor toolbar and you can mark where a piece sits in your process. Pick a Status from To do, Drafting, Revising, or Final, or type your own (Beta read, On submission, whatever fits how you work). Each status carries a color, and the panel shows the current one at a glance. Set it back to nothing whenever you like with Clear.

The same panel holds Tags, your own labels for a piece. Status and tags are private organizing tools: they never show to readers; they are there to help you keep a long project sorted in your notebook.

Formatting your page

Select Format to set how the piece looks. The menu is grouped into sections you open as you need them:

• Font and size for the body text. The font is a search box: start typing a name (Garamond, Georgia, Verdana, Courier, and more) and pick it from the list. Size is a number you set directly, a point at a time with the arrows or typed straight in.
• Spacing: line spacing with the usual presets plus a custom value, and separate spacing before and after each paragraph.
• Margins for the page, with Narrow, Normal, and Wide shortcuts.

These settings belong to the piece. They travel with it into the published view and into anything you export, so a Garamond, double-spaced manuscript reads the same everywhere.

At the bottom is your reading font, a separate choice that changes only how the editor looks to you while you write. Pick OpenDyslexic, designed to be easier to read for dyslexic writers, or Atkinson Hyperlegible, the high-legibility face from the Braille Institute. It is free for everyone, you can turn it on or off whenever you like, and it never changes the piece, the published view, or your exports. More in Accessibility and reading comfort.

A different font for one passage

The Format menu sets the page default. To give just a stretch of text its own look, select it and use the font control (the T) in the selection toolbar that pops up. Pick a face or a size to override the page default for that text, or choose Default to drop the override so it follows the page again. These per-passage choices travel into the published view and into Word and HTML exports; PDF uses the page font.

The ruler

On a computer, a ruler sits above the page. Drag the markers along the top edge to set the left and right page margins, and the markers along the bottom edge to set the current paragraph’s first-line, left, and right indents (drag the first-line marker left of the others for a hanging indent). Everything snaps to a clean eighth of an inch, and you can nudge a selected marker with the arrow keys.

Find and replace

Press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) or select Find to open a bar below the toolbar. Type to highlight every match and see how many there are, step through them with the arrows, and turn on match case when you need it. Open the replace row to swap the current match or all of them at once. Close the bar to clear the highlights.

The More menu

More keeps the secondary actions out of the way until you want them:

• Notebook opens the panel for jumping between pieces (below). The notebook is part of Pro, and your free trial counts.
• Outline lists the piece’s headings and page breaks so you can jump around a long piece (below).
• Tools opens the tools panel (below).
• Comments opens the inline comments panel. See Inline comments.
• Collaboration opens the collaboration pane, with a Changes tab (invite writers, turn on live co-editing, and review proposed edits) and a Chat tab. See Collaborative editing and Track changes.
• Focus mode clears the screen down to the words.
• Backdrop sets a calm theme for the whole editor, in any of eight palettes.
• Typewriter mode keeps the line you are on centered, so you write from the middle of the screen instead of the bottom.
• Export saves the piece as Markdown, HTML, JSON, Word, PDF, or an EPUB book, or sends it to your printer. The document formats are free for everyone, and your font, spacing, and margins come along. EPUB builds a designed ebook: switch to The Press to set a cover, theme, drop caps, chapter numbers, and front and back matter you can lay out page by page, then export. The plain EPUB is free; the designed layer is part of a paid Pro plan (not the trial). Word Online is also a paid-Pro format. If the piece has a book cover, it rides along: the EPUB opens on it as the cover, and Word and PDF lead with it as a full first page. Design one in the Cover Studio, reached right from The Press. Full walkthrough: Making an EPUB book.
• Import brings a file in from your device.

Jumping between pieces

Open the More menu and choose Notebook for a panel that moves between your pieces without leaving the editor. On a computer it slides in from the left. On a phone it rises from the bottom. It stays closed until you open it, so it never crowds the page you are writing, and it stays open as you move, so you can hop through several pieces in a row.

Inside are tabs:

• Favorites and Recent are there for everyone.
• Folders, Worlds, and Series group your pieces the way you already organize them. These come with Pro.

The piece you are on is marked so you always know where you are.

Switching is safe. Inkbreaker saves the piece you are leaving before it opens the next one, so you never lose a sentence by clicking away. If a save cannot reach the server, it keeps you on the piece and tells you instead of moving on. Your work is held on your own device until it lands. See Saving and recovering your work.

Favorites

Star a piece to keep it close. The star sits at the top of the notebook panel for the piece you are in, on every row in that panel, and on every card in the file manager. Starred pieces collect under the Favorites tab, newest first. Favorites are yours alone and never show to readers. Anyone can use them, free or Pro.

Focus mode

Focus mode clears the screen down to the words. Choose Focus mode from the More menu to hide the surrounding chrome and widen the page, and choose it again to bring everything back. Your work keeps saving the whole time.

Writing backdrop

The backdrop sets a calm theme for the whole editor, and it stays put as you work instead of being a mode you enter and leave. Open the More menu and pick a swatch under Backdrop. The whole writing space takes the color: the desk behind the page, the page itself, the side panels, and the toolbar all shift together, in light mode and dark.

There are eight to choose from. Page is the plain default. Parchment is a warm cream, Slate a cool blue-gray, and Dusk a deep, low-light desk for night writing. Ocean, Sage, Rose, and Lavender each wash the editor in their own color. Your choice is remembered for next time, and Page turns it back off. The backdrop is free for every writer, and your work keeps saving the whole time.

Typewriter mode

Typewriter mode keeps the line you are writing on parked in the middle of the screen. The page scrolls up to meet you, so you never end up typing along the bottom edge. Choose Typewriter mode from the More menu to turn it on, and choose it again to turn it off. It works on its own or together with focus mode, and it is free for every writer. If you keep motion to a minimum on your device, the page jumps to the new spot instead of gliding.

The outline

The outline lists your headings and page breaks as you write. Open or close it from Outline in the More menu: on a computer it opens as a panel down the left side, and on a phone it rises from the bottom. Select any line to jump straight to it. On a phone you can also use the page chip in the toolbar to step through a long piece.

Page breaks

To split a long piece into pages, type / and choose Page break, or pick it from the insert menu. Inkbreaker does not paginate on its own, so the breaks are yours to place. Each one shows up in the outline and the page chip, and you can give it a label, so a break can read as “Chapter two” instead of just “Page break”.

GIFs

To drop an animated GIF into a piece, type / and choose GIF. Search for one, pick it, and it lands where your cursor was. The GIF shows up the same way for your readers on the published page. GIFs are free for everyone.

Spoilers

To hide a passage behind a click, select the text or put your cursor in it, type /, and choose Spoiler. The wrapped lines stay fully editable for you. On the published page a reader sees a blurred block with a “Spoiler. Tap to reveal.” cover, and the words appear only when they choose to click. Use it for a twist, a late reveal, or anything you want a reader to opt into. It’s free for everyone.

The tools panel

Open the More menu and choose Tools to open a panel on the right (a sheet from the bottom on a phone). The top holds a prompt you can write toward, which everyone can use. Below that, Pro writers get the worldbuilding tools for the piece’s world: the World Bible, the Time Weaver, the Relationship Web, the Consistency Sentinel, and the name generator. Each one has its own guide under Worldbuilding tools.

Inside a tool, each section header folds shut when you tap it, so a long list (every entity in the piece, the whole world to browse, the plotlines a piece sits on) collapses out of the way when you don’t need it. In the World tool, Open World Bible stays pinned to the bottom of the panel as a footer, so the full workspace is always one tap away no matter how far you have scrolled.

The workspace opens over the editor with every World Bible surface (Builder, Reference, Pieces, Images, Updates, and the rest), and your draft stays exactly where you left it. A Back to editor link in the top left closes the workspace and returns you to the panel.

A Help and docs button (the life-ring icon) sits at the top of the panel. It opens the documentation in a new browser tab on purpose, so your draft and its autosave stay untouched while you read. Nothing in the tools panel ever navigates you away from a piece you’re writing.

See also: The editor and notebook, Organizing your work.