🪡 Improvements

• Find and Replace now matches curly and straight apostrophes as the same character across every chapter, so searching for "don't" finds all of them wherever they are.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Your comments now come through a version restore safely.

• The comments sidebar now refreshes the instant a restore finishes, so what you see always matches the page.

• Deleting a comment now clears its highlight from the manuscript right away.

• Renaming a note now sticks reliably, even when the same note is open on another device.

• Dialogs now resize around the on-screen keyboard on tablets, so Save and Cancel are always reachable.

• Dialogs sit comfortably clear of the status bar and Dynamic Island on iPhone.

⚡ Performance

• Searching a very large project now returns results faster, with a clear indicator when there are more matches than we can show at once.

🔒 Reliability & Security

• Scheduled backups now rotate fairly through the queue, so every connected account gets its turn.

• When Google Drive or Dropbox occasionally asks us to slow down, backups now wait before resuming.

🔭 Coming Soon

• We've laid groundwork behind the scenes for the Planning tool, which is coming soon. In preparation:

  • Planning notes now show a double stroke on their chip and appear at the bottom of lists.

  • Planning notes now show a count in the note sidebar and can be collapsed.

  • You can now create planning notes that aren't linked to a section. These show in the sidebar no matter which section you're in, while linked planning notes only show in their relevant section.

🪡 Improvements

• The mobile formatting bar now appears only when you've selected text, rather than showing all the time.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Text now displays exactly as you typed it, including any double spaces that were previously being hidden. If you notice spacing you don't remember typing, it was likely already there. Find & Replace can help you clean it up.

• Word counts are now more accurate. As a result, some projects may show a slightly lower count than before, since previous totals had been inflated for a portion of writers who had duplicated projects.

🪡 Improvements

• Word export now carries chapter and scene breaks through more cleanly into formatting tools like Atticus and Vellum.

• Find & Replace can now search for double and multiple spaces.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Capital letters and other anomalies are handled better when you change your email address in Novlr.

🔒 Reliability & Security

• Reliability improvements when opening notes.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that could lead users in an onboarding loop. You'll now only receive the onboarding welcome the once.

🪡 Improvements

• Scroll with your keyboard: Page Up/Down, Home, End and the arrow keys now move you through your manuscript, lists and dialogs anywhere in Novlr.

• Notes on mobile: the formatting bar now rides above your keyboard, so bold and italic are always within reach.

• Delete warnings are now clearer that it's permanent.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Changing your email address in Account settings now updates your billing and Novlr emails at the same time, so everything follows you to your new inbox. It also handles changes in upper/lowercase better.

• Improved pluralising so the app doesn't say things like "Write 1 words this week."

• The Community Stat on Writing Progress emails is fixed and showing correctly.

⚡ Performance

• Notes now save as you type rather than waiting for a pause, and the save status under each note is clearer about where things stand.

• Writing Progress Email calculations are now much lighter on the backend.

💳 Billing & Subscriptions

• Upgrades and billing changes now apply to your account more reliably right after checkout, and if one needs a moment longer, we'll say so.

• Your next billing date is now shown on your account page.

• Starter and Studio users now have a way to upgrade straight to Lifetime.

🧹 Behind the Scenes

• The What's New link now takes you straight to the changelog rather than the old updates page.

• Deleted some old code as part of ongoing cleanup.

🪡 Improvements

• Planning notes fixed to show both the project and section where linked.

• Notes now save as you type rather than waiting for a pause, and the save status under each note is clearer about where things stand.

🪡 Improvements

• Share pages are tidier; your synopsis appears once rather than twice when it's already on the cover, and your "show cover and synopsis" preference now carries through to link previews when you paste a share link into social media or chat.

• Novlr Sites has a nicer demo/default site.

• RTF and Scrivener imports now better distinguish the line wrapping inside the file itself from the line breaks you intended, so your paragraphs arrive the way you wrote them.

• Search now looks inside your synopsis too, so you can find a project by what it's about.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Very large manuscripts are now divided between paragraphs when imported, rather than sometimes splitting mid-sentence.

• Share links now always show your current synopsis, picked up from wherever you've written it.

• Pulling a book from your Novlr library into your Novlr Sites now brings your synopsis across with it.

🪡 Improvements

• Copy and paste from version history. You can now select and copy text directly from an earlier version while previewing it, then paste it back into your current draft.

• Your website's social media icons are now the real logos for each platform, including X, Threads, Goodreads, Substack, and Bluesky.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Splitting a chapter into two used to briefly flash a blank white screen. That's fixed, so the transition is now seamless.

• Fixed the Pricing, Themes, and FAQ links on the Novlr Sites menu, which were leading to page-not-found errors.

💳 Billing & Subscriptions

• Novlr Sites now appears on the novlr.org pricing page, both in the plan cards and the full feature comparison, so you can see it's included with Studio ($6/month or $60/year on other plans).

• Clearer wording in the Sites editor and FAQ about what upgrading unlocks.

🧹 Behind the Scenes

• We merged the "Planning" and "Outline" note types into one - Planning - in preparation for the new planning tool.

🪡 Improvements

• Retired author websites now show a friendly notice instead of just going blank, with a link to set up a new site on Novlr Sites.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Weekly Writing Progress emails now reach addresses with a "+" in them (e.g. name+tag@gmail.com).

• Fixed a versions bug stopping smart pruning over time (so you don't get thousands of versions with almost no change).

🔒 Reliability & Security

• We tightened how certain internal database functions are called behind the scenes.

🧹 Behind the Scenes

• We deleted old code we used to migrate accounts from the previous version of Novlr.

🪡 Improvements

• Every note now shows its word count: on notebook cards, in the writing screen's notes panel, and in a new sortable "Words" column in the Note Library. These are not counted toward your project word count. A live count now runs in the note editor's footer as you type, bottom left, beside the save status.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Outline notes created from the Notebook or Note Library used to stay hidden in the editor's notes panel because they weren't linked to a chapter or section. They now show up alongside your other notes.

• The formatting bar (bold, italic, and more) is now fully tappable when editing notes on your phone. Taps no longer land on the text behind it.

• Synopses were missing from project cards, and where a project had more than one, the oldest was shown instead of the newest. Cards now reliably show your latest synopsis.

• Progress emails will more reliably arrive due to some behind the scenes optimisation.

🔒 Reliability & Security

• Private comments stay private on shared links. Comments, proofreader suggestions, and older imported annotations are all stripped from shared links now.

• Author websites are are more secure.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Fixed an error that blocked subscriptions to Novlr Sites

🪡 Improvements

• Version history now works on your phone and tablet. You can open a document's version history, scroll back through earlier versions, preview them, and restore, all from a mobile or tablet screen. Until now this was only available on larger screens.

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Words in notes stay where you put them. We fixed a rare but frustrating bug where typing in the middle of a note could send your new words to the bottom of the page, causing an error. Your cursor and your words now stay exactly where they belong.

• Note word counts improved. Notes now keep an accurate word count however they are written or imported, and we are refreshing the counts on your older notes too.

• Your project word count shows up first time. Opening a project straight from a bookmark or a new tab sometimes flashed "0 words" until you visited your projects list. Your real total now loads immediately.

• Your Monday progress email is back. We rebuilt the engine that gathers everyone's weekly writing, so your Monday progress email arrives reliably as Novlr grows.

✨ New Features

• Weekly Writing Progress emails are here. Every Monday you'll get a recap of your week's writing: words written, your streak, goals, and the project you worked on most. You can turn it off or adjust it any time in your notification settings.

🚀 Big Releases

• Version History, improved.

  • Save a version any time, and name it (like "Draft one complete"). Versions you save are kept for good.

  • "Load more" lets you browse all the way back through your writing history, not just the most recent changes.

  • Big rewrites are now flagged, so the turning points in your draft are easy to find.

  • A clearer timeline: every change from the last 24 hours, then hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots, so you always have milestones to return to.

🧹Behind the Scenes

• We’ve released a small infrastructure update to start testing writing progress emails

🪲 Bug Fixes

• The proofreader got a tune-up. Suggestions now land in exactly the right place (no more highlights drifting mid-sentence), adding a word to your dictionary immediately re-checks the page, and old suggestions clean themselves up properly after edits. Fewer false alarms, tidier margins.

• No more surprise formatting while you type. A few of you noticed that typing certain characters (like backticks or a # at the start of a line) could suddenly change your font or turn a line into a heading — that's fixed, so your formatting stays exactly as you typed it.

🪡 Improvements

• Sharing looks better. Shared chapter links now show the chapter's actual title in previews (in messages, social posts and the like), and outdated links now land on a friendly explanation page instead of an error.

🧹 Behind the Scenes

• A round of behind-the-scenes improvements to keep everything fast and dependable.