Features
Longhand is a text editor built for professional authors and optimized for long-form writing. It provides a focused, beautifully designed writing experience with project-based organization to help you take your manuscript from first draft to final form.
Longhand organizes your work into projects. Each project keeps your manuscript chapters and research notes together in one place. Drag and drop to rearrange chapters, nest files for organization, and keep reference notes at your fingertips.
Three editor modes let you switch between writing, reading, and fully immersive focused writing. All changes are automatically saved as you type, so you never have to worry about losing your work.
Auto-backup preserves previous versions of your files. Whenever you open a file, a snapshot of its current state is saved. You can browse and restore older versions at any time using the Version History tool.
Themes let you personalize the look of the editor. Choose from 18 themes including light, dark, and specialty options like Solarized, Nord, Dracula, and Tokyo Night. Additional settings let you customize the font, font size, line height, paragraph spacing, auto-indentation, and spell checking.
Projects
A project is a folder on disk that contains your
manuscript, notes, and project metadata. When you create
a new project (File > New Project), you
select or create a folder and give the project a name.
Manuscript
The manuscript section holds the content of your book. Each chapter is a separate Markdown file. You can create new chapters from the navigator panel. New chapters start with a default heading that you can edit — when you change the heading, the file is automatically renamed to match.
Notes
Notes are for your research, character details, plot outlines, worldbuilding, and any other reference material. They are kept separate from the manuscript so they stay organized and out of the way.
Organizing your project
The navigator panel on the left side of the screen shows your project structure. You can:
- Drag and drop to reorder chapters and notes. Drop before or after an item to reorder, or drop onto an item to nest it as a child.
- Collapse and expand groups using the chevron icon.
- Right-click to rename or delete files.
Clicking a file in the navigator opens it in the editor. Any pending changes to the previous file are automatically saved before switching.
Editor modes
Editing Mode
Editing mode is the default mode. The full user interface is available: the navigator panel on the left, the tool panel on the right, and the status bar at the bottom. Markdown annotations are revealed when the cursor is on them, but otherwise stay hidden. Auto-indentation and spellchecking are enabled. The status bar shows the file path and word count.
Switch to editing mode with
Cmd+1.
Reading Mode
Reading mode provides a unified view of your entire manuscript. All chapters are assembled into a single scrollable, read-only document with chapter headings and separators. The navigator panel is hidden so you can focus on reading. The status bar shows your chapter progress ("Chapter 1 of 5 — Title") and the total manuscript word count.
Switch to reading mode with
Cmd+2.
Focused Mode
Focused mode provides the ultimate distraction-free
writing experience. The app enters full screen and all
UI chrome is hidden — no navigator, no tool panel, no
status bar. Press ESC to exit focused mode
and return to your previous mode.
Switch to focused mode with
Cmd+3.
Markdown
Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax. Its design allows it to be converted to many output formats. Markdown is a modern way to create rich text documents using plain text. It is particularly well suited for distraction-free writing as inline annotations help keep you in the flow when writing.
Below is a quick reference of the supported features:
| Markup syntax | How it looks like |
|---|---|
| # Heading 1 |
Heading 1 |
| ## Heading 2 |
Heading 2 |
| ### Heading 3 |
Heading 3 |
| #### Heading 4 |
Heading 4 |
| ##### Heading 5 |
Heading 5 |
| ###### Heading 6 |
Heading 6 |
| **Bold** | Bold |
| *Italic* | Italic |
| ~Underline~ | Underline |
| ~~Strikethrough~~ |
|
| ==Highlight== | Highlight |
| ==🟨Highlight== | Yellow |
| ==🟩Highlight== | Lime green |
| ==🟥Highlight== | Pink |
| ==🟦Highlight== | Blue |
| ==🟧Highlight== | Orange |
| ==🟪Highlight== | Purple |
| `Code` |
Code
|
| > Block quote |
Block quote |
| 1. Ordered list |
|
| * Unordered list |
|
| --- (line separator) |
You can also mix markup as needed. ***Bold italic*** becomes Bold italic.
Colored highlights
Longhand extends the standard ==highlight==
syntax with colored highlights. Place a color emoji
immediately after the opening == to choose
a color: yellow (🟨), green (🟩), pink (🟥), blue (🟦),
orange (🟧), or purple (🟪). Without an emoji,
highlights default to yellow.
The markup and color emoji are hidden when the cursor is away from the highlighted text. When you place the cursor on a highlight, a marker pen icon appears — click it to change the highlight color.
Common Markdown has some special requirements, like separating paragraphs with two newlines. Longhand works differently: the editor displays text like a print book, continuous and without requiring extra blank lines. At the same time, when saved to a file, Longhand will convert this to the common Markdown syntax to maintain compatibility.
Tools
The tool panel on the right side of the screen hosts auxiliary tools that assist your writing. Click a tool icon to activate it; click it again to hide the panel. Tools are available in editing mode and reading mode.
Minimap
The minimap shows a scaled-down view of the entire document, giving you a bird's-eye view of its structure. A viewport indicator shows your current scroll position. Click anywhere on the minimap to jump to that section, or drag the viewport indicator to scroll through the document.
Table of Contents
The Table of Contents shows a hierarchical outline of headings in your document. In editing mode, it lists headings from the current file, nested by heading level (H2 under H1, H3 under H2, etc.). In reading mode, it reflects the navigator's manuscript hierarchy — if Chapter 1 is nested under Part 1 in the navigator, it appears the same way in the table of contents, with sub-headings nested within each chapter.
Click any heading to jump to it. The currently visible heading is highlighted and the status bar shows your position as a breadcrumb path (e.g., “Part 1 — Chapter 3 — Section 2”).
Search
Search across your entire project. In editing mode, search finds matches across all manuscript files and notes, showing each result with surrounding context. Click a result to open that file and jump to the match. In reading mode, search finds matches within the assembled manuscript. Use the scope filters to narrow results to manuscript only or notes only.
Grammar Checker
The grammar checker analyzes your text and surfaces issues grouped by category: grammar, style, punctuation, capitalization, and readability. Each issue shows the problem in context along with suggested fixes. Click an issue to jump to it in the editor, or click a suggestion to apply the fix.
Export
Export your documents to PDF or Word (DOCX). Select
your format from the dropdown and click Export to save
the file. In editing mode, the current file is
exported. In reading mode, the entire assembled
manuscript is exported as a single document. Line
separators (--- and ***)
become page breaks in the exported file.
Version History
Version history shows saved snapshots of the current file. Longhand automatically creates a snapshot whenever you open a file, so previous versions are always preserved.
Click a snapshot to preview it without changing your working copy. From any snapshot, you can restore it (which saves your current version as a snapshot first, so nothing is lost) or delete it. Click "Current Version" to return to your working copy.
Clipboard
An important note on how Longhand leverages the
clipboard: copying text in Longhand will put both text
and HTML on the clipboard. If you then paste in a plain
text editor, you will see the Markdown content, including
markup characters like *. On the other
hand, if you paste this in a rich text editor like Word,
you will get rich text, already formatted.
Similarly, if you paste formatted HTML from the clipboard, Longhand will convert this to Markdown and try to match the formatting of the clipboard content.