Highland App Reviews

After Adobe Story decided to delete 95% of my sceenplay, I decided it was time to give Highland a try. Luckily I had saved a pdf of the script before the incident. I draged it into Highland and it converted it right to fountian format and I was good to go! All that I need now is an iPad app!! I’ll use Editorial for that in the mean time. Thanks John August and anyone else who helped make this app come together. Keep up the good work!

Incredibly simple software. After writing for close to a decade on FinalDraft, it’s nice to finally have a program that doesn’t inhibit your writing flow. Highly recommend. On top of that, the support staff is amazing and insanely fast. I had a question, received an e-mail response almost immediately.

I am four months in on a screenplay. I decided to use Highland to write it. In the four months, here’s what I’ve found: 1) The editor is simple, clear, and elegant. There are two modes: writing and preview. Writing mode is focused on the text keeps you in your screenplay. The few text embellishments that the developers have chosen to provide are just right, specific to the needs of the presentation of the screenplay: text formatting (bold, italic, underline) and annotation ( sections, synopses, and notes). Text formatting is presented how it will appear in the screenplay. Annotations are colored text, informing the user that they won’t be visible at all. 2) Fountain, the plain text screenplay format that Highland is built on, is readable and completely stays out of the way. Because Fountain is an open standard, any app that interprets Fountain can read your screenplay. 3) The developers provide frequent updates and improvements. Every 3-6 weeks updates roll out, which consist of thoughtful, new features, and bug fixes. The developers are incredibly responsive to both bugs and suggs. It is clear that these folks care a lot about the quality of their tools. I have confidence knowing that my writing tool is well supported. I can’t recommend this tool highly enough.

I was unhappy with Final Draft but afraid to make a switch and learn somethign new. Wish I didn’t wait so long. Started using Highland and after writing one scene I got it and now only using it.

I love this app. It’s easy to hang of and once you do you can really get a good flow going. I hated writing with Final Draft, it was so wonky and I was constantly having to fix formatting errors. If you’re constantly cursing at your software it’s safe to say you’re not going to be at your creative best. Writing is hard enough to begin with. I imported my feature screenplay from a .fdx file, all of the formatting perfectly intact, and there is no turning back.

I’m profoundly liberated NOT to be writing in screenplay format. Will it become formated later? Of course. Do I keep checking the layout? Obsessively. But setting Highland to Dark Mode and focusing on writing first and layout second is a revalation. I simply write better because I’m not focused on battling a margin. Highland quickly became my new favorite screenwriting app, and I’m sure if I ever develop the patience for a novel I’ll write that in Highland as well. The friendly and dedicated staff help tremendously here as well. The last version had a small glitch, I reported it, got a swift and friendly response and a promise it would be fixed in the next version coming shortly. Here we are, a few short weeks later, and the glitch is no more. The software is young and the list of wants is still there. It would be greta if it could remember where you left off, but I’m used to keeping a marker where I leave my rewrite for the day so not a deal breaker. I’d like the ability to edit in preview mode, just to help cheat my wording to squeeze and extyra line out here or there, but I’m sure they are working on it. Overall, great work on a great app and all I ask now is for an iOS version so I can write on my iPad when I travel...

I like this app, it’s pretty good, but it’s not perfect. It misses auto complete, which speeds up writing tremendously. So I find myself typing character names over and over. Although it might get addedin the future. Dark mode is really good though and incorates color whereas the white mode does not. I’m not sure why not, but it doesn’t matter since I prefer dark mode anyway. This is one of those apps when you download, not sure what you are getting. It’s a text editor and won’t write the screen play for you, but it does work after you get used to it and I can see myself only writing in fountain from here on out. This also doesn’t auto format only until you hit preview, that can be good or bad. If you want auto formating, there is slugline for that, but that app costs a lot considering it’s almost the same app as this one. This one has dark mode which I like, but slugline has auto format which I like, put those 2 features together and I’d have my perfect app.

Love the app. Great stuff. One request on a feature though. How about a ‘typewriter’ mode that keeps your current typing point in the middle of the screen? A lot of the writing apps for Mac have this and it’s really handy. Thanks and keep up the great work.

I gave Final Draft 9 a try. I really did. But while Final Draft may be the de facto standard for screenwriting, its a clunky old piece of software. Its numerous keyboard shortcuts conflict with standard OS X text editing shortcuts. Its navigation is astrocious. And its just not fun to use. Then I learned about the Fountain markup language for screenwriting. Its not for everyone, but for me, theres no going back to clunky WYSIWYG editors. Fountain lets you focus on your scripts action and dialogue, rather than constantly fretting about how it looks on the page. Once you learn the language, even syntactic edge cases like dual dialogue are effortless to write. Of course, you can write Fountain in any text editor. I use Sublime Text on a daily basis for editing other kinds of text. So why use Highland? Well, Highland is simple, attractive, and lets you switch between editing and previewing your script with a keystroke. It has only the features you need for editing Fountain, which makes it very easy to find those features. And I have yet to run into a single bug. This is simply great software, and Im delighted to use it.

Beautiful app, but seems a little expensive for what it does. I can’t think of a better way to convert between Final Draft, Fountain (.txt) and PDF format — but for actually *writing*, you’ll probably want something with autocomplete at the very least. If you’re looking for a writing tool at this price you might as well just pick up Slugline and live without the Highland’s PDF “melting” feature. And people bragging about this “replacing” Final Draft never needed Final Draft or any of its specialized features in the first place, I suspect.

I really liked Highland for the first month or so that I used it. But then I started noticing two problems. 1) it would quit unexpectedly. This wasn’t a huge problem because it seemed like it could re-open easily enough without any lost (unsaved) work. That is, it seemed to just pick up right where it left off. But 2) the PDF output would drop text at the bottom on assorted pages. This was a much bigger problem. Dialog that I knew did not follow other dialog appeared in the PDF saved version, but in the input version, it was there. I could not figure out why this was happening and noticed that if I added an action, it would go away. But it would come back up eventually somewhere else. When you are talking about a 120-page screenplay, this is a huge problem. In fact, I registered a script that had this problem before I realized it and had to get the Copyright Office to reset the link so that I could upload a corrected version. I chose a different application for the second try, and have not used Highland again.

Love this app. I was using Adobe Story for a while but it was clunky and hard to use. It takes a little getting used to if you’re used to those auto-format screenwriting softwares but after some practice, it’s really easy to use. I like that you can switch the font you’re typing in around but it still shows up in Courier (or Courier New or Prime, depending on your settings) when you look at it in preview mode. My only critique with it is I would like to see some more added to it in future versions. I know it’s not meant to be a whole production software but add something as simple as scene numbers would be nice. A lock mode would be good too with revisions afterward (so it numbers pages with A/B, etc.). I know this is supposed to be very streamlined so it’s unlikely these things will be added but they would be a good bonus. Otherwise though, love how clean and smooth this software runs. Great stuff John!

It really is like magic how Highland works out the formatting so that the writer can go on writing. I have Final Draft 8 and instead of upgrading to 9, I upgraded to Highland. My only, constructive criticism is that it would be great to have the software remember some of the names that will repeat themselves somehow. This way we can save more time from setting up the names for Highland to format it properly. Again this is a minor, spoiled-bratty request from a truly grateful writer. This software actually makes me believe that I am, strangely as that sounds, rather than a programer trying to write a screenplay, the way Final Draft can.

Of all the screenwriting apps Ive tried, this is my favorite by far. Once you learn to write in fountain (its really not that hard; I promise), writing in Highland becomes intuitive. I hate having to tab through different screenplay aspects and becoming distracted by how your writing appears on the screen. It hampers the creative flow. Most of the other screenwriting apps out there are so busy and complicated, filled with cumbersome extras in order to make it appear its worth the high price. With Highland, you can just write and write and then convert it all into screenplay format at the end of the day. Fantastic. And because you write in plain text, you can write in pretty much any word processor and easily paste it into Highland. I often write scenes in Evernote on my phone when Im away from my computer, and then just paste it into Highland later. Ive never had any problems with this process. And thats just the writing portion of this app. The ability to convert files between PDFs, Final Draft, and fountain plain text is amazing. Thanks for making a great app!

When I bought Highland, I didnt think Id be using it to write anything. I mainly got it to convert fountain files into PDF. However, I finally tried it for the actual writing part, and I am VERY pleased. Its simple, handles fountain like a champ, and produces beautifully formatted screenplays that you can send to others. It gets completely out of the way so you can just WRITE. The dark mode is fantastic. With Highland (and also Slugline) we finally have a new way to write screenplays without needing Final Draft. HIGHLY recommended. I really hope this company makes an iPad app in the future!

I’ve been working in the Fountain format in Text Edit for a while but, really, I didn’t understand the power of Fountain until I used Highland. The ability to switch between the edit and view modes is fantastic and really helps with proofing because it shakes up your eyeballs and makes you look at the words fresh. However, that brings me to my one suggestion for improvement (and why I only gave 4 out of 5 stars). When switching between edit and preview (or vice versa) it frequently happens that the software will land you in wild places. You may be previewing page 4, notice a typo, switch to edit and find yourself on page 9. No good. My recommendation: while in preview mode, if you double click a word, you are instantly switched to edit mode with that word highlighted and 3/4 of the way up the screen. Anyway, that’s my suggestion. Great app. Great developer. Worth every penny.

Two things make this great. One: the way that you just write very simply and it handles the formatting is wonderful. And two: the way it can turns the files you make into PDFs and FDXs — and then also import FDXs AND PDFS — is amazing. Magic! Priced right and easy to use.

Highland provides a superficially elegant alternative to traditional screenwriting software. However, previous iterations have slowed my computer or caused it to crash. The current version crashes every time I try to close an open file, whether I press Command-W or select Close from the dropdown menu. Additionally, I cannot create a script in multi-camera format. I must use Final Draft to do that, which makes Highland at best unnecessary.

Highland is a phenomenal program. Fast to learn, easy to use. I can finally write anywhere I have access to a computer. At work - use word. On my iPad - use any note app. At home - use my mac. I can now write anywhere I want on any text editor and import it into Highland seemlessly. No longer am I wishing that I had my laptop with my screenwriting software. And the best innovation is the dark screen. And how can you argue with the price and the free updates. Highland, where have you been all my life. If anyone is interested, I have two versions of Final Draft for sale… *UPDATE* I’ve been using Highland for a while now and continue to love it. Sure, it doesn’t have the bells and whistles that a Final Draft may have but for my everyday, any place, screenwriting needs then this is the app to use. The support team is great and very responsive to email request/problems. And you still can’t argue with that price.

I purchased this to convert PDF to FDX or TEXT. Didn’t work at all. I wound up using Adobe Acrobat. I regret wasting my money on this.