# Open Draft Screenwriting — Screenwriting Software > Free, open-source screenwriting software with real-time collaboration and visual planning. (iPhone/iPad app by Base Information Management Pvt. Ltd..) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/open-draft-screenwriting/id6761807809 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Base Information Management Pvt. Ltd.](https://appshunter.io/developer/506021550) - Category: Productivity, Utilities - Price: Free - Rating: 5.00/5 from 1 App Store ratings - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 15.0 · 21 MB - Languages: American English - Released: 2026-04-09 - Data updated: 2026-08-25 - Monetization: free - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/open-draft-screenwriting/id6761807809/reviews.md ## What is Open Draft Screenwriting? OpenDraft is a free, open-source screenwriting application — a modern alternative to Final Draft. PROFESSIONAL SCREENPLAY FORMATTING Write in industry-standard format with automatic element formatting for scene headings, action, character names, dialogue, and parentheticals. What you see is what you export. REAL-TIME COLLABORATION Co-write with your writing partner in real time with live cursors, just like Google Docs. No account required — just share a link and start writing together. BEAT BOARDS & INDEX CARDS Plan your story visually. Drag and drop scene cards, color-code acts, and restructure your screenplay without losing a single word. VERSION HISTORY Every save is tracked with Git-based version control. Compare drafts side by side, see exactly what changed, and restore any previous version instantly. CHARACTER PROFILES & PRODUCTION TOOLS Build character bibles, track dialogue stats, tag scenes for production, and manage your entire project from one place. EXPORT ANYWHERE Export to PDF, Final Draft (.fdx), Fountain, and plain text. Your work is never locked into a proprietary format. WORKS EVERYWHERE Available on macOS, iOS, Windows, Linux, and Android. Run it as a desktop app or self-host in your browser. WHY OPENDRAFT? - 100% free and open source (MIT license) - No subscription, no cloud lock-in - Works fully offline — no internet required - Privacy-first: no tracking, no analytics - Import from Final Draft, Fountain, and PDF ## Key features - Professional screenplay formatting - Real-time collaboration - Beat boards and index cards - Version history tracking - Character profiles and production tools - Export to PDF, FDX, Fountain, and TXT - Cross-platform availability ## Frequently asked questions about Open Draft Screenwriting ### What makes Open Draft different from other screenwriting apps? Open Draft is 100% free and open-source, offering real-time collaboration without requiring an account. It also provides robust version control and a privacy-first approach with no tracking or analytics. ### Can I collaborate with others on a script using Open Draft? Yes, Open Draft features real-time collaboration similar to Google Docs. You can co-write with others by simply sharing a link, and live cursors show who is editing where. ### What file formats can I export my screenplay to with Open Draft? You can export your work to industry-standard formats including PDF, Final Draft (.fdx), Fountain, and plain text. This ensures your work is not locked into a proprietary format. ### Is Open Draft available on all devices? Yes, Open Draft is designed to work everywhere. It is available on macOS, iOS, Windows, Linux, and Android, and can be run as a desktop app or self-hosted in a browser. ### Does Open Draft have ads? No, Open Draft is completely ad-free. As a free and open-source application, it focuses on providing a clean and uninterrupted writing experience for its users. ### How does Open Draft handle saving and revisions? Open Draft utilizes Git-based version control, meaning every save is tracked. You can compare drafts side by side, see exactly what changed, and restore any previous version instantly. ### What are the visual planning tools in Open Draft? Open Draft includes Beat Boards and Index Cards, allowing you to plan your story visually. You can drag and drop scene cards, color-code acts, and restructure your screenplay easily. ### What is the update frequency for Open Draft? The application was last updated on August 23, 2026, indicating active development. While specific update frequency isn't detailed, its open-source nature suggests community contributions can influence release cycles. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 1.7 — 2026-08-23 A REAL FONT LIBRARY Around 185 fonts, grouped by what they are: screenplay, typewriter, serif, sans-serif, monospace, display, handwriting, and Noto for most writing systems. Search by name, and every font is drawn in its own face. Courier Prime 12pt is still what a new script is. BRING YOUR OWN FONTS Format > Fonts takes TrueType and OpenType files from the Files app. The family name is read from the font itself, so its weights group together, and your font is embedded in exported PDFs. Fonts already on your iPad are offered too, and you can add one by name - iPadOS will not list them. YOUR FONT TRAVELS WITH THE SCRIPT Open a script on a device without the font and OpenDraft substitutes the closest match of the same kind - a typewriter face for a typewriter face - rather than dropping everything to Courier. The name is kept, so the font returns when you open it somewhere it exists. THE TITLE PAGE IS PART OF THE TEMPLATE Title, Credit & Author, Draft & Date, Contact, Copyright and Notes are formatting elements like any other, so you can set the title in a display face at 24pt and leave the contact block in Courier. What you change by hand outranks the template and stays. CUT, COPY AND PASTE All three now work from the menus. Tapping a menu item takes the selection with it, so Cut and Copy silently did nothing and Paste never worked at all. Pasted text also keeps the font it came with, and a highlight copied from Google Docs, Word or Notes arrives formatted instead of plain. NO MORE DEAD ENDS Leaving a project pushed a second copy of the projects list rather than returning to it, so Back walked into the project again - and again, with force-quitting the only way out. The same fault was in four more places, including read-only history and collaboration sessions. ROOM FOR THE WINDOW CONTROLS In a windowed app, iPadOS draws its own three-dot control over the top-leading corner, and no inset reports it. Projects, a project's files, Settings, the treatment editor, the scene navigator's tabs and the floating menu button each put their one way off the screen underneath it. All of them now leave room, and clear the status bar full-screen on a notched device. BUILT FOR A FINGER The toolbar starts comfortable, and the menus, font list and dialogs have finger-sized targets. Tapping the font picker used to do nothing at all - it closed itself the instant the keyboard appeared. The close controls on the asset viewer, the zoom panel and the save-failure banner were all too small to hit. HEADERS AND FOOTERS Format > Header & Footer, out of the bottom of Page Setup, with buttons that insert the page number, title, date and revision colour as you type. Double-tap a header or footer on the page to type into it - {page} stays a live page number. "Show on first page" replaces a page-number box, and a script opening on front matter can start numbering where you say. FILES AND EXPORTS A .fountain file could come back with ** around its scene headings and the action beneath turned into dialogue; emphasis, scene numbers and unusual headings now follow the specification. Imported .fdx, .fountain, .fadein and Word title pages arrive laid out properly. Scene headings get the industry-standard two blank lines. Word no longer counts the title page, Final Draft export carries your header and footer, and Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian and Georgian export to PDF properly. RECOVERING UNSAVED WORK The recovery copy is written a moment after you stop typing, not every ten seconds, and now covers beats, notes, tags, profiles and page setup. Leaving for Projects or Settings saves first, and after a crash OpenDraft reopens the script you had open. FIXES Images are stored outside the document, so a photo no longer costs you crash protection. General keeps text you deliberately indent. Take Photo no longer closes the app. Fade In and Open Screenplay Format files open from the Files app. ### 1.6 — 2026-08-19 HEADERS AND FOOTERS GET THEIR OWN DIALOG Format > Header & Footer, out of the bottom of Page Setup where nobody found it. Buttons insert the page number, total pages, title, date and revision colour into whichever slot you are typing in, and a preview of the first two pages shows what you will actually get. EDIT THE HEADER WHERE IT PRINTS Double-tap a header or footer on the page and type into it. You edit the template, so {page} stays a live page number rather than freezing as the number of the page you tapped, and every page updates at once. PAGE NUMBERING YOU CAN SEE A plain "Show on first page" checkbox instead of a number box you had to reason about — off is still the default, because a screenplay's first page is not numbered, and now it says so rather than looking like a bug. For a script whose opening sheet is front matter, set the number the first script page carries and everything after it follows. FOUNTAIN FILES SURVIVE BEING SAVED A screenplay opened from a .fountain file could come back with ** around its scene headings and the action beneath them turned into dialogue. Emphasis, scene numbers and headings that don't start with INT./EXT. are now written the way the Fountain specification asks, so a script reopens as the script you saved. Asterisks and underscores you typed yourself stay literal. THE TITLE PAGE STAYS A TITLE PAGE Exported scripts could open with the title, credit, draft and copyright piled at the top of page 1, the first scene heading directly underneath — a single blank line above the title was enough to cause it. A fully filled title page also lost its draft, contact and copyright off the bottom. Fixed, and an imported .fdx, .fountain, .fadein or Word title page now arrives laid out properly instead of as one near-blank page. TWO BLANK LINES BEFORE SCENE HEADINGS The industry standard, and Final Draft's default. OpenDraft already wrote two into every Final Draft and Fade In export while showing one on screen, so exported scripts came out longer than the app said. Existing scripts open unchanged and ask once whether to adopt it. Format > Formatting Template sets the blank lines before any element, and now reaches page breaks, PDF and Word as well as the screen. GENERAL KEEPS YOUR INDENTATION Text you deliberately indent in a General element stays indented, in the editor, in PDF and through Fountain and Word round-trips. Return on an indented line adds a line instead of asking you to pick an element type. CYRILLIC AND OTHER ALPHABETS EXPORT TO PDF A screenplay written in Cyrillic came out of PDF export as a run of unrelated Latin letters. Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian and Georgian are now written properly — same page layout, searchable and copyable. A script whose title is not in English is no longer saved as "Untitled". EXPORTS THAT MATCH YOUR DOCUMENT Word no longer counts the title page, so the script's opening page prints "1." and {pages} reads right, and a page 1 footer no longer vanishes when the header is set to skip it. Final Draft (.fdx) export now carries your own header, footer and page numbering instead of a fixed page number, and reads them back when you open one. RECOVERING UNSAVED WORK Losing power or force-quitting could still lose the last few lines: the recovery copy was written only every ten seconds. It is now written a moment after you stop typing. Beats, notes, tags, character profiles and page setup count as unsaved work too — they were not protected at all. And after a crash OpenDraft reopens the script you had open, instead of a blank page that made it look as though everything was gone. FIXES Choosing Take Photo to add an image no longer closes OpenDraft. Fade In (.fadein) and Open Screenplay Format (.osf) files now offer Open in OpenDraft from the Files app. Header and footer margins move the bands on screen, not only in the PDF. Long words and URLs no longer run past the right margin in PDF. ### 1.5 — 2026-08-14 WRITE IN MULTIPLE WINDOWS (iPad) File > New Window opens a second window, so you can keep an outline, an earlier draft or another script beside the one you are writing. Open a screenplay that is already open in another window and OpenDraft offers to switch to it rather than open a copy that would save over your work. OPEN AND SAVE FILES WHERE THEY LIVE File > Open from Files now edits a screenplay in place, wherever it lives — Files, iCloud Drive, Google Drive or Dropbox. Save writes straight back to the original file instead of importing a copy and exporting a new one. Works with .odraft, .fdx, .fountain, .fadein, .osf and .txt. AUTOMATIC BACKUPS Choose a folder and OpenDraft writes timestamped copies of your script while you write — complete with notes, tags, beats, characters and images. A copy is also saved whenever you leave the app, before iOS suspends it. Bring any of them back from File > Backups > Recover Backup. Backups use the same format on every platform, so one written on a Mac restores on your iPad. NEVER LOSE UNSAVED WORK If iOS shuts OpenDraft down, the next launch offers your unsaved changes back — including for a screenplay you never saved into a project. Each window keeps its own copy. FADE IN AND OPEN SCREENPLAY FORMAT Open .fadein and .osf files directly, and now export to Fade In as well, carrying elements, emphasis, colour and highlighting, fonts, page breaks, scene numbers, synopses, dual dialogue and the title page. PAGE BREAKS THAT DO WHAT YOU MEAN Force any element onto a new page with Format > Start On New Page. Templates can require it too: the 1-Hour TV Drama, Multi-Cam Sitcom and Stage Play formats break before every New Act, on screen and in PDF and Word exports. FONTS The typeface you choose now survives export to PDF, Word and Final Draft. The picker lists Times New Roman, Georgia, Helvetica, Verdana, Tahoma and Trebuchet MS, and styles just the text you selected. FOUNTAIN Paste Fountain from anywhere as real scene headings, characters and dialogue with Edit > Paste as Fountain. On import, emphasis, forced action, lyrics, centred text and page breaks are all recognised. GETTING AROUND A back button on the projects screen at last, File > Close everywhere, and every close control is now big enough to hit with a thumb. FIXES Saving a file opened in place no longer asks to recover it on the next launch. Shift+Enter line breaks survive every export. Manual saves keep per-script spelling settings. Opening Settings and coming back no longer leaves the editor blank. ### 1.4 — 2026-06-23 A polished release with a more capable Title Page and a better fit on phones. • Mobile-Friendly Title Page — The Title Page editor now adapts to small screens: the form and live preview stack vertically and the dialog fits your screen, so there's no more horizontal scrolling. • Insert Images — Add images anywhere in your script or on the title page via Format → Insert Image, paste from the clipboard, or drag & drop. Resize with the corner handle, set alignment, and they export to PDF and Word. • Redesigned Title Page — Add, place (top/bottom), align, and remove title-page images, choose a larger title font, and preview the page live. The editor, preview, and PDF/DOCX exports all match. • Mores & Continueds — A new Format dialog controls automatic character (CONT'D) and the (MORE)/(CONT'D) markers at dialogue page breaks, with customizable marker text. • Smarter (CONT'D) — (CONT'D) no longer carries across a new scene, and deleting it at a specific cue is remembered. Manually typed (CONT'D) is never removed. • Larger Font Sizes — The font-size menus now go up to 96pt. • Data-Loss Protection — A safeguard prevents a blank or just-loaded editor from overwriting a saved script with an empty document. Thanks for writing with OpenDraft! ### 1.3 — 2026-05-18 What's New Privacy Improvement Option added to Delete the user with all his data in system setting. Big spelling & grammar upgrade, plus a smoother editing experience. Smarter writing help • Real-time spell check with red squiggle underlines — fix typos as you type • Built-in grammar checker catches mistakes like subject-verb agreement, repeated words, and confusing articles • Writing Suggestions flags passive voice, weak words, and wordy phrases so your action lines stay sharp • Pick a different spell-check language per script — write in English, Hindi, Odia, and more • Add character names and screenplay-specific terms to your own dictionary, kept across every project Better editing • Bold, italic, font, and size changes no longer scroll you away from where you're typing • Zoom in up to 300% for comfortable editing on Retina screens • A "save changes?" prompt now appears before you start a new script or open another file, so nothing is lost • Clicking a scene, character, or search result jumps instantly instead of scrolling • Go to Page lands you exactly on the page you asked for Your account, your control • Forgot your password? Reset it from the sign-in screen • Optional two-step verification for signing in on a new device • See every device signed into your account — and remove the ones you don't recognise • Change your password or delete your account from Settings Peace of mind • If a save ever fails, you'll see a clear message instead of losing your edits silently • Edits keep flowing even if the storage hits a hiccup — everything is reconciled automatically when the database comes back iPad polish • Save, Find, Spell Check, and other dialogs now stay visible when the on-screen keyboard appears ## Apps similar to Open Draft Screenwriting | App | Rating | Price | Category | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [Scenarist](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/scenarist/id6762529535) | 5.0 (3) | Free | Productivity | | [Highland Pro](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/highland-pro/id6612007609) | 4.9 (13) | Free | Productivity | | [Fountain · easy screenwriting](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/fountain-easy-screenwriting/id6504728966) | 4.5 (29) | Free | Productivity | | [Story Architect Mobile](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/story-architect-mobile/id6743486540) | 4.5 (13) | Free | Productivity | | [Script Pro: Write Screenplay](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/script-pro-write-screenplay/id6760223449) | 5.0 (2) | Free | Productivity | | [Screenplay](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/screenplay/id322410822) | 4.1 (18) | Free | Productivity | ## More apps by Base Information Management Pvt. Ltd. - [Base-E12](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/base-e12/id662860114) - [iPresto](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/ipresto/id905883698) - [MySunpharma ESS](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/mysunpharma-ess/id1186132399) - [Proteus Vision](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/proteus-vision/id1217375829) - [Proteus Vision Workflow](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/proteus-vision-workflow/id6504269775) All apps by Base Information Management Pvt. Ltd.: https://appshunter.io/developer/506021550 ## Related topics [open draft screenwriting](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/open-draft-screenwriting) · [free screenwriting](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/free-screenwriting) · [final draft reader](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/final-draft-reader) · [beat screenwriting](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/beat-screenwriting) --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-25.*