Typerino is a writing studio for screenwriters, novelists, and playwrights. It runs on your computer, opens instantly, and gets out of your way so the writing can happen. Your scripts live as files in folders you control. There is no cloud lock-in, no Markdown, and no syntax to memorize.

These docs are organized the way the app is organized. The left sidebar lists every feature area; click a topic to read about it. If you are new, the next four pages walk you through the shape of a Typerino document.

What to read first

• Choose a format: Typerino formats four kinds of writing. Pick the one that matches the script you want to write.
• Your first document: how a new document is created, named, and saved.
• Smart flow: the single feature that explains why writing in Typerino feels different from typing into a word processor.
• Keyboard shortcuts: a complete reference, grouped by what you are trying to do.

Where Typerino keeps your work

Every Typerino document is a single .type file on your disk. You choose where it lives. Many writers put their projects in a folder backed up by Dropbox, iCloud, or Google Drive, and Typerino is happy to open and save them there. See Working with cloud storage for the full picture.

Typerino auto-saves continuously and keeps a quiet history of every version. If something goes wrong, Version history can put it back.

Typerino supports four formats, each with its own page rules and templates. Pick the one that matches the script you want to write. You can change formats later, but format changes can shift pagination, so it is easier to start in the right one.

Screenplay

Theatrical features and longer-form streaming originals. 12pt Courier on US Letter, 90 to 120 pages, one minute of screen time per page. The industry-standard look every reader, manager, and contest expects.

• FeatureA standard feature spec opening.
• Open ColdDrop the reader into the first scene with no preamble.

One-Hour Drama

Pilots and episodes for cable, network, and streaming dramas. Act structure varies by destination: broadcast networks run four acts, premium and streaming run five, and limited series often go act-less.

• Cable / Streaming Pilot (Cold Open + Five Acts)Five-act pilot for cable and streaming dramas. Better Call Saul, The Bear, Mr. Robot.
• Network Spec (Teaser + Four Acts)Speccing a four-act network drama. Grey’s Anatomy, 9-1-1, Chicago Med.
• Cable / Streaming Spec (Cold Open + Five Acts)Speccing an episode of a returning cable or streaming drama.
• Procedural Spec (Teaser + Six Acts)Speccing a six-act network procedural. Law & Order, NCIS, FBI.
• Open Structure / Limited SeriesNo act breaks. Premium-cable dramas and limited series. Succession, The Queen’s Gambit.

Half-Hour

Comedy and short-form TV. Single-camera and multi-cam variants are both supported. Multi-cam is a per-document setting that lives in Per-document settings; switching it on changes how the script paginates and exports for shooting-script conventions.

• Multi-Cam Pilot (Cold Open + Two Acts + Tag)Multi-cam sitcom pilot with scene letters and a tag.
• Single-Cam Pilot (Cold Open + Two Acts)Single-cam half-hour pilot. Closer to feature format than multi-cam.
• Multi-Cam Spec (Two Acts)Speccing an existing multi-cam sitcom. Two acts, scene letters.
• Single-Cam Spec (Two Acts)Speccing an existing single-cam half-hour.
• Open StructureSingle-cam half-hour with no act breaks. Atlanta, Fleabag, Ted Lasso.

Stage Play

Theater format from ten-minute pieces through full-length plays. Stage directions render in italic parentheses, character names sit centered above their dialogue, and the page is sized for submission-ready manuscripts. Stage plays default to a serif body font instead of monospace; see Editor fonts.

Two front-matter pages are first-class authored surfaces in stage-play documents: a Cast of Characters page (one entry per character, each with an optional short description) and a Setting / Time page (where and when the play takes place). Both render unnumbered ahead of the script body so the script itself starts at page 1, the way published acting editions read.

• Two-Act PlayFull-length play with an intermission. The standard two-act submission format.
• One-Act PlayA single continuous act, full-length or short.
• Scenes Only (No Acts)Scene-by-scene without act divisions. The Flick, The Humans.
• Ten-Minute PlayThe standard ten-minute festival format.

From the welcome screen, choose New document. Typerino asks you to pick a format (see Choose a format) and opens a blank page. You can start writing immediately; the document does not need a name yet.

Saving for the first time

The first time you press ⌘ S, Typerino asks where to save the file. Pick any folder on your disk. From that point on, Typerino auto-saves into the same file every time you type, so you never need to save manually again. Most writers never use ⌘ S after the first save, and that is fine. See Saving and Save As for the full picture.

What the file looks like on disk

Typerino documents are saved as .type files. The extension is yours: you can rename the file in Finder or Explorer, move it to a different folder, or open it from anywhere on disk. All of the script, settings, scene cards, character notes, and version history live inside that single file.

Picking a default save folder

If you want every new document to land in the same place by default (a Scripts folder, a Dropbox folder, etc.), set it in App preferences under Save location. You can still save individual documents anywhere; this just sets where the Save dialog points the first time.

Typerino can open scripts in four common formats:

• Final Draft (.fdx)
• Fountain (.fountain)
• Fade In (.fadein)
• Celtx (.celtx)

The fastest way is to drag the file onto the Typerino window. You can also use File menu → Import. Either way, Typerino reads the file and tries to detect what kind of script it is.

Confirming the format

After import, Typerino shows you which format it detected (Feature, One-Hour, Half-Hour, or Stage Play) and lets you change it before the import completes. Most of the time the detection is right; if you wrote a one-hour pilot in Final Draft and the file looks like a feature to Typerino, this is where you fix that.

What survives the import

Scene headings, action, character names, dialogue, parentheticals, transitions, dual dialogue, and inline formatting (bold, italic, underline) all come through. Scene numbers, if your source file has them, are preserved.

Notes come through too. From a Final Draft (.fdx) file, ScriptNote entries land in the Typerino Notes tab, pinned to the line they were attached to in FD; any color you'd assigned to a ScriptNote is preserved. From a Fountain file, inline [[note]] tokens land the same way.

The imported script becomes a new .type file. Your original .fdx or .fountain file is not touched.

Smart flow is the rule that makes Typerino feel different from a word processor. After you finish typing one element, pressing Enter takes you to the most likely next element. You never have to format manually.

The default flow

• After a Scene Heading, Enter takes you to Action.
• After Action, Enter takes you to another Action paragraph. Press Tab to jump to a Character cue.
• After a Character cue, Enter takes you to Dialogue.
• After Dialogue, Enter exits to Action. Press ⇧ Enter for a soft line break inside the speech itself.
• After a Parenthetical, Enter takes you back to Dialogue. Tab does the same.
• After a Transition, Enter takes you to a Scene Heading. Tab does the same.

Auto-detection

Common patterns format themselves as you type. Type INT. or EXT. at the start of a line and Typerino formats it as a Scene Heading. Type CUT TO: and it becomes a Transition. Type a name in all caps followed by Enter, and Typerino offers to make it a Character cue.

Override the flow

Tab and Shift + Tab cycle the current line through every element type. If smart flow guesses wrong, Tab once or twice to correct it. You can also hit any element shortcut directly. See Element formatting.

Hard breaks inside dialogue

Single Enter from dialogue exits to Action — the Final Draft–standard contract every reader expects. When you genuinely want a line break inside the same speech (a poetic stage-play line, an emphatic pause), press ⇧ Enter. The break stays inside the dialogue node and renders as a soft line break in the script and on export.

Smart flow handles most of your formatting. When you need to set an element directly, the shortcut keys map to numbers in screenplay order:

Two of the shortcuts depend on the format you're writing in. Transition is a screenplay element (feature, one-hour, half-hour) and doesn't apply to stage plays. Act Break is the opposite — a structural beat for episodic and stage work, not for features. In each case the shortcut is a no-op in the wrong format rather than creating an element that doesn't belong there.

Multi-camera half-hour scripts share the same element shortcuts. The differences in multi-cam (shooting-script pagination, all-caps action conventions on export) are handled when the script exports, not while you are typing. See Per-document settings for the multi-cam toggle.

Character names and locations from your script suggest themselves as you type. Start a Character cue or the location half of a Scene Heading, and matches appear. Use the arrow keys to move through them and Enter to accept.

Suggestions are scoped to the current document. They never leave your computer.

• ↑ / ↓: move through suggestions
• Enter or Tab: accept the highlighted suggestion
• Esc: dismiss the popup and keep typing

Characters appear in the suggestion list once they have spoken. Locations appear once they have been used in a Scene Heading. Renaming a character in one place does not retroactively rename them everywhere; for that, use Find and replace.

Character cue prediction

In the middle of a two-hander, Typerino guesses the next speaker. When you start a fresh Character cue and the previous four cues form a clean A-B-A-B alternation, the predicted name shows as ghost text at the cursor with a small Tab glyph next to it. Press Tab to accept the prediction (including any extension like (V.O.) the character carried last time); start typing anything else and the ghost disappears. The walk resets at every new scene heading and at every act break, so a fresh scene with a new pair of characters never inherits the previous scene's alternation.

Inline emphasis works the way it does in any word processor. Select text and apply with the keyboard:

• ⌘ B: bold
• ⌘ I: italic
• ⌘ U: underline

Typerino does not support color, font changes, or sizing inside the script body. The page is meant to look like a script, not a document. If you need to mark something for yourself, attach a note to the scene in Notes instead.

Inline formatting survives export to PDF, Final Draft, and Fountain.

Press ⌘ F to open the find bar. Press ⌘ ⌥ F to open it with the Replace field already showing. Either bar floats above the editor and dismisses with Esc.

Searching

If you have text selected when you open the find bar, that text becomes the search term. Type to refine it. Search is case-insensitive. Matches highlight in place; the count shows how many were found.

• Enter: jump to the next match
• Shift Enter: jump to the previous match
• Tab: move between the Find and Replace fields
• Esc: close the bar

Replacing

Type a replacement in the Replace field. Replace swaps the current match and moves to the next. Replace all swaps every match in the document at once.

Typerino paginates the script automatically. Sometimes you want to force a page break (the end of an act, a particularly heavy scene transition) or stage two characters talking over each other. These are the two manual moves.

Page break

⌘ Enter inserts a page break at the cursor. Typerino is smart about positioning: at the start of a block, the break goes above; at the end, below; in the middle, the block splits. The break appears in the editor as a thin horizontal rule and survives export.

Dual dialogue

⌘ D turns the current dialogue block into a dual-dialogue pair. If there is a dialogue block immediately before the cursor, Typerino pairs the two as left and right columns. Otherwise it creates an empty right column for you to fill in.

Inside a dual-dialogue block, Tab and Shift Tab cycle through Character, Dialogue, and Parenthetical the same way they do in normal dialogue. Enter on an empty line exits the block.

Once a document has a file on disk, Typerino auto-saves every edit. There is no Save button to remember and no spinner to watch. The first save (when you create a new document) is the only one you have to think about.

The first save

Press ⌘ S on a new document and Typerino asks where to put the file. Pick a folder, give it a name, and save. From that point on, every keystroke is auto-saved into that file in the background.

Manual save

⌘ S on an already-saved document forces an immediate save and shows a brief "Saved" confirmation. You almost never need this. The cases where it matters: right before closing your laptop lid in a hurry, right before pulling a USB drive, right before a system update reboots you.

Save As

⌘ ⇧ S creates a copy of the current document at a new path. Useful for forking an outline into a draft, or saving a version aside before a big rewrite. The new copy becomes the active document; the original closes.

If you want a snapshot you can come back to without changing what you are editing right now, use Version history instead. Typerino keeps those automatically.

Typerino takes snapshots of your document while you write, quietly, in the background. The snapshots live inside the same.type file. There is no separate folder of backups to manage; the history travels with the document.

Opening the history

File menu → Revert to Previous Version opens the version history dialog. You see a list of every snapshot, with a relative timestamp ("4 minutes ago", "2 days ago") and how the version differs from the next one in the list. Click any version to preview it.

Restoring

When you restore a version, Typerino first takes a snapshot of the current state, then replaces it with the version you chose. That means restoring is reversible: the version you were on before you reverted is now in the history, ready to restore again if you change your mind.

How often Typerino snapshots

Snapshots are frequent during active writing (every few minutes) and thinned out further back (one per day, then one per week). You always have a fine-grained record of recent work and a coarser record of where the script has been over its lifetime.

Typerino does not have its own cloud sync, and it does not need one. A .type file is a single file on your disk; put it in a folder that syncs and the script syncs.

Setting it up

Create a folder inside your Dropbox, iCloud Drive, OneDrive, or Google Drive folder. Save your scripts there. That is the whole setup. To make it the default for new documents, set the path in App preferences under Save location.

Working across machines

On a second machine, install Typerino and open the.type file from the synced folder. Everything comes with it: the script, your scene cards, character notes, the board, document settings, and version history.

Avoiding conflicts

Cloud sync conflicts happen when the same file is edited on two machines while one of them is offline. The fix is to not do that. If you do see a "conflicted copy" file appear next to your script, open both, decide which one to keep, and delete the other. Version history makes the recovery easier: open the older copy, scroll its history to the most recent edit, copy that text into the surviving file.

The scene navigator is the default tab in the left sidebar. It shows every Scene Heading in the script as a row, with the page number and the first few words of the action that follows. Click a scene to jump the editor there.

Coloring scenes

Right-click a scene in the navigator to set a color. Use colors however you like: by act, by storyline, by location, by character POV. The color shows in both the navigator and on the corresponding card in Scene cards.

Note count

If a scene has notes attached, a small count sits on the right edge of the row. Click it to switch the sidebar to Notes with that scene's notes in view.

Showing and hiding the sidebar

⌘ \ toggles the sidebar open and closed. ⌘ ⇧ \ cycles through the sidebar tabs (Scenes, Notes, Cast), so you can switch what the sidebar is showing without taking your hands off the keyboard.

Scene cards is a separate view from the editor. Open it with ⌘ ⇧ C or from the toolbar. Every scene in the script becomes a card; you see the whole shape of the story at once.

Editing in the card view

Each card shows the scene heading, an editable summary, the page number, and the color (if you set one). Click into the heading or summary to edit; changes flow back to the script immediately.

Reordering scenes

Drag a card to a new position in the grid. Typerino moves the entire scene (heading, action, dialogue, everything inside it) in the script. This is the only place in Typerino where you can reorder scenes by drag; the scene navigator is read-only.

Coloring

Each card has a color picker. Colors set in scene cards appear in the scene navigator too: the two views share the same underlying scene metadata.

Open the Characters panel from the sidebar (cycle to it with ⌘ ⇧ \). The list is generated from the script: a character appears here as soon as they speak.

Filtering and sorting

Filter the list by typing in the search field. Sort by name, by line count (loudest characters first), or by introduction order (the order they first appear in the script).

Per-character notes

Click a character to open their notes. Write whatever helps you: backstory, voice, what they want, what they would never say. The notes are plain text and live inside the document, not in a separate file.

Scene appearances

Each character's panel lists every scene they appear in. Click a scene to jump there. Useful for tracking continuity: if a character wears a coat in scene 12 and you wonder whether you gave them one in scene 9, the answer is two clicks away.

The Notes tab is for everything around the script that is not the script itself: research, todo lists, a reminder that the detective in act two should be left-handed. Notes anchor to the script in one of two ways. A scene-level note is attached to a scene as a whole. A paragraph-pinned note is anchored to a single line of action, dialogue, or character cue inside that scene — useful when the note is about that exact line and not the scene around it.

Adding a scene-level note

Three ways, all equivalent: click Add note in the Notes tab, press ⌘ ⇧ N while writing, or right-click in the editor and choose Add note about this scene. The note is attached to whichever scene your cursor is in. If you're not in a scene yet (title page, brand-new doc), Typerino opens a scene picker first.

Pinning a note to a specific line

Select the text you want to comment on, right-click, and choose Add note about this passage. The note opens in the Notes tab with a "Pinned to:" chip showing the line you selected. Pins follow the line if you edit around it — the anchor is an internal id on the paragraph, not a position in the file.

To re-pin an existing note to a different line, open it, select the new text in the editor, right-click, and choose Pin this note here. To convert a pinned note back to scene-level, click the small × next to the "Pinned to:" chip.

The headline-as-title convention

Notes are plain text — there's no separate title field. The first sentence of the note bolds itself as you write so the list view always has a clear heading for each note. If you'd rather your notes look uniform (or your notes don't follow a headline-then-body shape), turn it off in the three-dot menu at the top of the Notes tab under Bold first sentence.

Pin glyphs in the editor

Lines that have a pinned note show a small pin icon in the left margin of the script. Click the glyph to open that note in the Notes tab. Inside the open note, click the "Pinned to:" chip to jump the editor to the line. If the gutter pins are visually noisy, hide them under Show in editor at the top of the Notes panel's three-dot menu, or from the View → Show Notes menu — your notes still exist and still open from the panel, they just don't decorate the script body.

Finding notes

The list groups notes by scene, in the order the scenes appear in the script. Type in the filter field at the top to narrow the list to notes whose body, scene heading, or scene number match. Scenes with attached notes also show a small count next to them in the Scene navigator; click the count to jump to those notes.

If the line or scene gets deleted

Pinned notes whose underlying line was deleted keep their cached snippet — the "Pinned to:" chip renders in strikethrough with a "pinned line was removed" caption so you can read what the note was originally about, decide whether the note still applies somewhere, and either re-pin it or unpin it back to scene-level.

What survives an export

Notes never appear in a PDF — the file you send to a reader or producer is the script alone.

FDX and Fountain exports include your notes by default, on the right line of the script. In Final Draft they show up in the ScriptNotes navigator, color preserved if the note had a color from a previous import. In Fountain they appear as inline [[note]] tokens at the end of the anchor line. Round-tripping a script through Typerino → FDX → Typerino (or Typerino → Fountain → Typerino) keeps the notes attached to the same lines.

If you want to hand off a clean .fdx or .fountain with no notes attached, open Per-document settings and turn off Include notes & markers. The setting is per document, so a working draft you swap with a writing partner can include notes while a delivery copy excludes them from the same source .type.

See Importing for the inbound side (FDX ScriptNotes and Fountain [[notes]] coming into Typerino as Notes).

A mark is a colored stripe drawn over a span of text in the script. Where a Note is for words you want to write to yourself about a passage, a mark is for moments where the only message you need is "look at this again." Three categories cover most of what writers actually flag while drafting: Needs work (red), Revisit (amber), and Keep (green).

Adding a mark

Select the text you want to flag and press ⌘ M. The selection takes the default category. To choose a category explicitly, right-click the selection and pick from the Mark submenu (Needs work, Revisit, Keep). Pressing ⌘ M on text that's already marked removes the mark.

The Marks panel

Press ⌘ ⇧ M or click the highlighter icon in the toolbar to open the Marks panel. The panel lists every mark in the script with its category chip, the marked text, and any note you've attached. Click a row to jump the editor to that mark. Filter by category from the panel header to narrow the list to one color at a time.

Notes on marks

A mark can carry a short note — a few words explaining why you flagged the passage. Click the row in the Marks panel to open the note field. Marks with notes show the note text under the marked snippet in the panel; marks without notes show just the snippet.

Display options

The three-dot menu at the top of the Marks panel controls how marks render in the script and the panel:

• Show in editor: turn the colored highlights in the script body on or off without removing the marks themselves. Also reachable from View → Show Marks.
• Underline marks: add a thin underline under each mark for an additional visual signal.
• Snippet lines: how many lines of the marked text to show in each panel row.
• Show scene label: prefix each row with the scene the mark belongs to.

Clearing marks

The X icon in the panel header clears every mark in the document at once (with a confirm step — clearing all marks is irreversible except via undo or Version history). To remove a single mark, select inside it and press ⌘ M again, or right-click and choose Remove.

Marks vs. Notes

Reach for a mark when the visual flag is the message — you're triaging passes, sweeping for "I'll come back to this." Reach for a Note when you have actual prose to write about the passage and want a heading and body. The two surfaces complement each other; many writers use both.

What survives an export

Marks export to FDX and Fountain (when Include notes & markers is on under Per-document settings), encoded as colored ScriptNotes in FDX and inline [[notes]] in Fountain — the closest equivalent each format has. Round-tripping back into Typerino, however, brings them in as colored Notes rather than as Marks. Marks-as-marks are a Typerino-native surface; the colors and the text survive the trip, just on the Notes side.

The Board is a 2D space for cards. Open it with ⌘ ⇧ B. Use it for outlining, sequence planning, beat sheets, color-coded story lines, or just brainstorming next to the script.

Cards and dividers

Add a card and give it a title and body. Add a divider to break the board into sections (acts, sequences, story lines). Both cards and dividers can be color-coded; both can be dragged anywhere on the board.

Density

The Board has a compact and a standard density. Compact fits more cards on screen for a wide outline; standard is roomier for cards with more body text.

Where the board lives

The board belongs to the document. Each script has its own board. Open a different script and the board switches to that script's layout, untouched.

Focus mode hides the sidebar, the menu bar, and the title bar, and takes the window into native fullscreen so the dock, taskbar, and traffic lights step out of frame too. You're left with the editor and a small button in the corner for getting back.

Toggle it with ⌘ ⇧ F. Press Esc to exit.

Focus mode is the heaviest reduction in the app. For lighter touches, see Typewriter mode (cursor stays centered) and Spotlight mode (current paragraph is lit, the rest dim).

Typewriter mode pins the cursor to the vertical center of the window. As you type, the page scrolls under the cursor instead of the cursor drifting toward the bottom. You write into the same vertical position the whole time.

Toggle it from the View menu. Typewriter mode is per-app: once on, it stays on across every document until you turn it off.

It pairs well with Focus mode for a very minimal writing surface, or with Spotlight mode for the same minimalism plus a soft highlight on whatever you are writing right now.

Spotlight mode lights the current paragraph (the dialogue block, the action paragraph, the scene heading you are in) and dims everything else. It is a soft signal of where you are, not a hard hide of the rest. The dimmed text is still readable.

Toggle it from the View menu.

Spotlight is gentler than focus mode and easier to keep on for long sessions. Many writers leave it on permanently.

Typerino ships with three themes. The choice is about how the room feels, not just what color the chrome is.

Light

The default. Cream paper, warm charcoal ink, daylight chrome. Designed to feel like a desk in a room with windows.

Dark with light page

The chrome around the editor goes dark, but the page itself stays white. Good for late-night work where you want a quiet room but still want the page to look like printed paper.

Dark with dark page

The page itself becomes warm charcoal, with aged-ivory text. The fully immersive dark mode. Best in a dim room; reduces glare for long sessions.

Themes live in App preferences under Appearance. The choice is per-device, not per-document.

Zoom changes how big the page appears on your screen. It does not change the underlying format. The script still exports at standard size; zoom is a screen-only convenience.

• ⌘ =: zoom in
• ⌘ -: zoom out
• ⌘ 0: reset to 125% (the editor default)

Useful at a presentation, useful on a small laptop screen, useful at the end of a long day.

The PDF export produces a script in standard industry format: 12pt Courier on US Letter, 1.5-inch left margin, 1-inch right and bottom margins, page numbers in the top right. It is the file you send to readers, agents, contests, and producers.

What gets included

• The title page, if you have one
• Page numbers (configurable)
• Scene numbers (configurable, off by default for spec scripts)
• (MORE) and (CONT'D) on dialogue that breaks across pages (screenplay only — stage plays omit the convention per their own typesetting tradition)
• Watermark text, if you set one

Settings

Each document has its own export settings. Open Per-document settings and look under Export options to toggle title page, page numbers, scene numbers, and the watermark string.

Watermarking

The watermark is a diagonal text overlay that appears on every page of the PDF (CONFIDENTIAL, DRAFT, DO NOT DISTRIBUTE, your name and the date, whatever you need). Turn it on under Export options and type the text you want.

File menu → Export → Final Draft writes a .fdx file that Final Draft can open natively. Use this when you have to hand the script to someone whose workflow is built around Final Draft (most production offices, many staffed shows).

What survives

All standard screenplay elements (Scene Heading, Action, Character, Dialogue, Parenthetical, Transition) come through. Scene numbers, dual dialogue (as Final Draft's left/right column syntax), and inline formatting (bold, italic, underline) are preserved.

Stage plays

Stage-play structure rides FD-native paragraph types across the FDX boundary. Cast of Characters and Setting/Time front matter, act breaks, and stage directions all serialize to the right Final Draft element types, so the script opens in FD with its structure intact rather than as a wall of action text. Round-tripping back into Typerino preserves the same structure.

Notes round-trip

Notes are included in the exported .fdx by default, anchored to the same line they sit on in Typerino. Final Draft surfaces them in the ScriptNotes navigator; any note color carries through. If you are sending the file to a reader or producer and want to keep your private notes out of it, open Per-document settings and turn off Include notes & markers before exporting. The setting is per document, so a delivery copy can exclude notes while your working draft keeps including them.

Marks export as colored ScriptNotes too — Final Draft has no separate marks concept. The colors and any note you wrote on the mark survive. Re-importing that .fdx back into Typerino brings the marks in as colored Notes, not as Marks; that's a one-way trip.

For lossless interchange between Typerino and yourself, save the .type file and skip the export. The.type file is the canonical format; FDX is a gateway to other tools.

File menu → Export → Fountain writes a .fountain file. Fountain is a plain-text format for screenplays, designed to be human-readable and friendly to tools like git. If you keep your scripts in a code repo or want to diff versions outside Typerino, Fountain is your format.

What survives

Title page metadata and every standard screenplay element are preserved. Inline formatting (bold, italic, underline) is encoded with Fountain's markdown-style markers (**,*, _).

Dual dialogue

Fountain has no native dual-dialogue syntax. When Typerino exports a dual-dialogue block, the two columns export as sequential dialogue from each character. The visual effect is lost; the text is intact.

Notes and markers

Notes are included by default, appended as inline [[note]] tokens at the end of the line they're pinned to — Fountain's standard syntax for notes. Round-tripping a script back into Typerino re-anchors them to the same lines. To exclude notes from a particular export, turn off Include notes & markers in Per-document settings first.

Marks export as [[notes]] too (Fountain has no separate marks concept), with their text and category labels. Re-importing the file brings them back as colored Notes, not as Marks — that's a one-way trip.

Per-document settings affect the script itself: how it is typed, how it formats, how it exports. They live inside the.type file and travel with the script across machines and collaborators.

Open Settings with ⌘ ,. On macOS the same dialog lives under Typerino → Settings…; on Windows and Linux it's under File → Settings…. Per-document settings sit below the app-wide section in the same dialog.

Script formatting

• Smart quotes: turn straight quotes into curly quotes as you type.
• Multi-camera format: half-hour scripts only. Changes pagination and export conventions to match shooting-script standards.
• Stage direction parentheses: stage plays only. Wrap stage directions in parens.
• Italic stage directions: stage plays only. Render stage directions in italics.
• Act break page breaks: insert an automatic page break at every act boundary.

Export options

• Include title page: prepend the title page on PDF and FDX exports.
• Include page numbers: show page numbers in the top right of every page.
• Include scene numbers: show scene numbers in margins. Off by default for spec scripts; on for production drafts.
• Include notes & markers: when exporting to FDX or Fountain, include your Notes and Marks, anchored to the lines they're attached to. On by default. Turn it off for a delivery copy you're handing to a reader or producer who shouldn't see your private margin scribbles. No effect on PDF — notes and marks never appear in PDF either way.
• Watermark: a checkbox plus a text field. The text is overlaid diagonally on every page of the PDF export.
• Character notes sidecar: when on, every export writes a companion Title - Characters.md Markdown file next to the main export, holding the character notes you've kept on the side.
• Story board sidecar: same idea for the Board. Writes Title - Story Board.md next to the main export so beats and outline cards travel with the script.

Editor-view toggles (show scene numbers in the editor, show CONT'D previews, bold scene headings) live alongside these but are app-wide rather than per-document. See App preferences.

App preferences are about how Typerino looks and behaves on your machine. They do not travel with documents; if you open the same script on a second computer, that machine has its own preferences.

Open them with ⌘ ,, or from Typerino → Settings… on macOS and File → Settings… on Windows and Linux. The app-wide section sits above the per-document section in the same dialog.

Appearance

• Theme: Light, Dark with light page, or Dark with dark page. See Themes.

Save location

• Default folder: where the Save dialog points the first time you save a new document. Set this to your Scripts folder, or your Dropbox folder, or wherever your work lives.

Editor view

These affect what you see in the editor; they do not change what gets exported.

• Show scene numbers: numbers in the margin next to every Scene Heading. Also a row in View → Show Scene Numbers.
• Show CONT'D previews: when a character speaks two consecutive dialogue blocks, preview the (CONT'D) marker. Screenplay only; stage plays don't use the convention.
• Bold scene headings: render Scene Heading lines in bold for visual scanning. Also a row in View → Bold Scene Headings.
• Check spelling while typing: off by default. When on, the system spellchecker runs on Action and Dialogue only — Scene Headings, Character cues, Transitions, Parentheticals, and Act Breaks stay unchecked since their formal vocabulary is not in any dictionary.

The editor font is the typeface you write into. Typerino picks a sensible default for each format (Courier Prime for screenplays, Source Serif for stage plays); you can change it per document. The font is purely a writing-experience choice. Exports use the format-standard typeface regardless of what you picked in the editor.

The screenplay fonts

• Courier Prime: the default. The cleanest of the screenplay typefaces.
• IBM Plex Mono: rounder, more contemporary. Easier on the eyes for long sessions.
• JetBrains Mono: tighter, more technical. Good if you came from coding.
• DM Mono: warm, slightly humanist. A softer mono.
• Geist Mono: precise, geometric. For writers who like their type to feel engineered.
• Special Elite: stylized typewriter, with intentional inkprint imperfections. For the typewriter feel without the noise.

The stage-play default

Stage plays open with Source Serif, a body serif more appropriate to the typeset feel of a published play. You can override it with any of the monospace fonts above if you prefer.

Where to change it

The font picker lives in Per-document settings under Appearance. Each font shows a small preview so you can see it before committing. The choice is per document, not app-wide; switching to a different script keeps its own font.

Your Typerino account holds your subscription, your active sign-in sessions, and your recovery codes. Open the Account page from the avatar in the top-right corner of the window. Subscription state, devices, and recovery sit on the same page so you don't have to hunt for any of them.

Sign-in identities

You can sign in with Google or Apple. One Typerino account can carry multiple identities — sign in with Google one day and with Apple the next, and Typerino recognizes you as the same user as long as the verified email matches. This means losing access to one provider doesn't lock you out of your account; the other provider, or a recovery code, still gets you in.

If both providers are unreachable

The recovery code is the cabin-after-reinstall safety net. See Recovery codes for what they are and how to use one.

A recovery code is a 16-character string Typerino emails you the first time you become a paying customer. It looks like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX using letters and numbers from a reduced alphabet (no I, L, O, or U, so the code is easy to read aloud). Each code is single-use and is the only way to sign in to your account when you can't reach the email attached to your Google or Apple identity.

What to do with the one you got

Save it somewhere durable. A password manager is the right answer for most writers. A piece of paper in a desk drawer is fine too. Don't keep it only in the inbox it was emailed to, since that inbox is exactly the thing recovery is for when it's the thing you've lost.

Getting a new code

On the Account page, scroll to the Recovery code section and click Get a new recovery code. The plaintext appears once, with a Copy button. When you dismiss the dialog the code is gone from the screen forever — Typerino never re-displays a code after the moment of generation.

Generating a new code does not invalidate any older code you still have. Each code is independently single-use; redeeming one consumes that one. If a code goes stale because it's been years and you'd rather have a fresh one in the manager, just generate a new one — the old one keeps working until someone redeems it.

Using a code to sign in

On the welcome screen, click Sign in with a recovery code below the Google and Apple buttons. Paste the code; the field auto-formats it with the dashes for you. The email field is optional — fill it in if you remember which email the code was issued to (Typerino uses it as a typo guard), or leave it blank and the code alone identifies you. Submit and you're signed in to a fresh session on this device.

Once redeemed, that specific code can't be used again. If you think you'll need to recover again later, generate a new code from the Account page right away and save it.

Sign in on every machine you write on. Typerino has no device limit, and the same script lives on every signed-in install. Take your laptop from the desk to a cafe to a flight; the work follows.

Active sessions

The Account page lists every device you're signed in on, with a "Last seen" stamp on each and a "this device" pill on the row matching the install you're reading from. Sessions sort most-recent first, so an old laptop you haven't touched in months sits at the bottom of the list.

Sign other devices out

Click Sign out other devices to revoke every session except the one you're using. Useful if you're handing over an old machine, suspect a session you don't recognize, or just want to clean up the list. Your current device stays signed in. The button greys out when only one session exists, since there's nothing to sign out from.

Write offline

Typerino keeps writing through any reasonable disconnected stretch. When you sign in or refresh, the app caches a license bound to your billing cycle plus a grace buffer; as long as the license is valid, every document opens, saves, and exports normally without a network round-trip.

• Annual subscriptionAcross the entire billing year, plus 14 days past renewal. A multi-month retreat sits comfortably inside the window.
• Monthly subscriptionThe remainder of your current billing month, plus 7 days. Reconnect anytime to reset the window from the new period.
• Free trialThrough the exact end of your trial.

When you reconnect, Typerino refreshes the license silently and the window resets. Subscription changes that happened while you were offline (renewals, cancellations) take effect on that next refresh, not while you're still disconnected.

Every keyboard shortcut in Typerino, shown for the platform you are reading on. The in-app version of this list lives under Help → Keyboard Shortcuts and has a search field; this page is the static reference.

General

Element formatting

Transition is screenplay-only; Act Break is for TV and stage plays; Parenthetical works in every format. See Element formatting for the per-format detail.

Text formatting

Insert

Navigation and view

Zoom

Most problems in Typerino are recoverable. The two features that do most of the recovery work are Version history (every document keeps its own snapshots) and undo (⌘ Z, which goes back further than you might expect).

"I lost a chunk of my script"

First try undo. ⌘ Z walks back through every edit since you opened the document. If undo does not reach the version you want, open File menu → Revert to Previous Version and pick a snapshot from before the loss. Restoring is reversible: Typerino snapshots the current state before reverting, so you can come back if the older version is wrong too.

"I see a 'conflicted copy' file in my Dropbox folder"

That happens when the same document was edited on two machines without sync catching up between them. Open both files in Typerino, decide which has the changes you want to keep, delete the other. If both have changes, copy the missing parts from the loser into the winner before deleting.

"A file will not open"

Try opening the file from a different folder (drag it to the desktop, then open from there). If iCloud is involved, the file may be off-loaded; opening it should trigger iCloud to download it, but the download can take a while on slow connections.

"The PDF export looks wrong"

Open Per-document settings under Export options and check that the right toggles are on (title page, page numbers, scene numbers). If pagination looks off (a character cue stranded at the bottom of a page, a scene heading orphaned at the top), insert a manual page break a beat earlier.

"I want to ask a real person"

Send a message and Charlie will get back to you. Include a screenshot if you can; if the document is the problem, attach the .type file (it includes the version history, so we can see how things got to where they are).