Beat 1.998.0 is out NOW on App Store, and it’s the biggest update to Beat in a while, bringing in a lot of fixes, optimization and new features.

Here’s a quick look at everything that was added:

Focus Mode

Focus mode highlights the current sentence you are working on. You can toggle it on/off via View menu.

Scene Snapshots

Sometimes you want to take a peek at some other scene in your screenplay while editing another, without actually navigating there. You can now do exactly that in sidebar outline view. Just hover your mouse on a scene heading for a second to see a quick snapshot.

Character editor

You can now add a biography and age for your characters in sidebar character list. It’s still relatively simple, but the data is also directly available for plugins, so it’s possible to create some nice extensions for character relations etc. (nudge, nudge, anyone who’s interested!)

Synopsis Editing in Index Card View

You can now edit scene synopses directly in index card view, making it possible to stay in card view while outlining the story. It’s is still a bit experimental, so dread lightly 🙂

For more serious and powerful outlining, I’d recommend downloading FTOutliner from Plugin Library.

Better QuickLook Plugin

The QuickLook plugin was somewhat overlooked and forgotten for the longest time, so I decided to rewrite it from scratch. It’s now much more native-looking and faster, so you can quickly and easily skim through your screenplays in Finder.

Shots (Mini-Slugs)

Mini-slugs are a lesser known (and actually undocumented) feature of Beat. You can add a mini-slug using two exclamation marks: !!YOUR SLUGLINE . These sub-headings behave like scene headings – they won’t be the last thing on a page and will always stay together with the content that follows next – but don’t add a new scene. Until now, shot headings weren’t exposed to the UI, but now there’s a menu item for adding them, and you can also stylize the shot headings to your liking.

Full Patch Notes

New Features

  • Focus mode (found under View menu)
  • Slovenian localization (thanks to Martin Srebotnjak!)
  • Character editor
  • Stylizable shot lines
  • Much better Fountain QuickLook plugin for Finder

Bug Fixes

  • Caret position is loaded correctly again
  • Fixed bugs with restoring plugins on load
  • Issues with notepad color scheme fixed
  • Review notes are again loaded correctly in sidebar
  • Changing page size again formats content margins correctly
  • Tons of minor other issues fixed

This version should be out on Jan 16th. After that, I’ll be working on finishing the iPad version for first release!

I’d like to also express my extreme gratitude to every single one of my patrons. This is the biggest update to Beat in a while, and was made possible by user feedback, bug reports and feature requests. The community that has been slowly building around the app has really made the development much more gratifying, and has also inspired many of these new additions.

You can support Beat by joining the Patreon or making a one-time payment. Every penny, counterfeit bill will help keep the project alive!

All the best,
Lauri-Matti