Version 2026.1.1

Release Notes

This is a patch release that adds Catalan language to the app, and updates translation files for other languages. Some user interface labels for the Manuscript tool have been improved, and the documentation updated. A small fix resolves an error message printed to the log when launching the app on Linux.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed a DBus error message from Qt on Linux. PR #2790.

Improvements

• Clarified some of the GUI labels on the Manuscript tool. Issue #2762. PR #2768.

Internationalisation

• Catalan translations added by @jaumeplanas. PR #2793.
• Norwegian and US English translations updated by @vkbo. PR #2793.
• Japanese translation updated bu @hebekeg. PR #2793.
• German translation updated by @HeyMyian. PR #2793.
• Polish translation updated by @Nauthizz. PR #2793.
• Dutch translation updated by @risingphoenix73. PR #2793.
• Italian translation updated by Lou Cyper. PR #2793.
• Chinese translation updated by wcxu21 and @longqzh. PR #2793.

Documentation

• Fixed some typos in the documentation. PR #2773.
• Improved the documentation for the Manuscript tool. Issue #2763. PR #2768.
• Switched the documentation back to using uv for examples. PR #2766.

Version 2026.1

Release Notes

The 2026.1 release is based on the features added in 2026.1 Beta 1, Beta 2, RC 1.

See the website for complete Release Notes.

Detailed Changelog

Improvements

• When exporting manuscripts to DocX (Word), the document will no longer expand hard line breaks by when default when justified margins are enabled. Issue #2690. PR #2732.
• The "Add titles for notes" label in Manuscript Build settings has been updated and should now be clearer. Issue #2727. PR #2729.

Internationalisation

• A missing translation string for projects was added. Issue #2730. PR #2731.
• Norwegian and US English translations updated by @vkbo. PR #2738.
• Japanese translation updated bu @hebekeg. PR #2738.
• Dutch translation updated by @risingphoenix73. PR #2738.
• German translation updated by @HeyMyian. PR #2738.
• Polish translation updated by @Nauthizz. PR #2738.
• Latin American Spanish translation updated by @tmarplatt. PR #2738.
• Czech translation updated by Tomáš Zmek. PR #2738.
• Italian translation updated by Lou Cyper. PR #2738.

Version 2026.1 RC 1

Release Notes

This is a release candidate of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Note: There are no longer any Mac releases produced for novelWriter. See #2618.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where the editor and viewer header no longer changed colour when losing or gaining focus. Issue #2716. PR #2717.
• Fixed the project list tooltip on the Welcome dialog. Issue #2714. PR #2715.
• Fixed the size of spin boxes on config forms. Issue #2703. PR #2711.

Features

• A new setting in Preferences allows for the usage of single asterisks for bold formatting. Enabling this setting does not disable double asterisk bold. Issue #2718. PR #2719.

User Interface

• Adjusted some colours of icons in several themes to bring them visually in line with the rest of the theme. Contributed by @HeyMyian. PR #2712.

Internationalisation

• Updated translation strings. PRs #2721 and #2722.
• Updated Dutch translation by @risingphoenix73. PRs #2721 and #2722.
• Updated US English and Norwegian translations by @vkbo. PRs #2721 and #2722.

Other Changes

• GUI font emphasis is now handled by the theme class, and bold text on the GUI has been reduced in weight to semibold. Issue #2709. PR #2710.

Version 2026.1 Beta 2

Release Notes

This is a beta release of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Note: There are no longer any Mac releases produced for novelWriter. See #2618.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• An unchecked dependency on Qt 6.9 has been fixed. If the app was running in an environment with an older Qt version, the app would crash when opening one of the settings dialogs. This should only affect the Debian packages since the Windows and AppImage releases bundle Qt 6.11. Issue #2706. PR #2704.

Version 2026.1 Beta 1

Release Notes

This is a beta release of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Note: There are no longer any Mac releases produced for novelWriter. See #2618.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• The URL highlighting now also works if the URL has an exclamation point. Issue #2693. PR #2695.
• The margin settings in Manuscript Build settings now correctly shows icons to indicate margin type. PR #2647.

Features

• The novelWriter version number is now year-based. Instead of the next release being 2.9, it is now 26.1 or 2026.1 as shown in the app. Discussion #2667. PR #2669.
• Added the Lucide icon theme as a user-selectable icon theme. Issue #2605. PR #2632.
• It is now possible to split a document via text selection, or at the cursor position, from the right-click menu in the editor. Issues #1486 and #2571. PR #2688.
• The shortcuts Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down now move the cursor between paragraphs in the editor. Issue #2635. PR #2679.
• The size of the different heading levels can now be adjusted in the Manuscript Build settings tool. Issue #2439. PR #2650.
• Added a setting for manuscripts to use blank lines instead of margins in manuscript document formats. Issue #2648. Discussion #2646. PR #2649.
• A new "Heading Format" sections is available in Manuscript Build settings. The settings for bold and colourised headings have been moved there, and a new setting to make them uppercase has been added. PR #2647.

Improvements

• Added word or character units to count tooltip labels in project tree and novel view. PR #2698.
• The note document associated with a reference can now be opened in the editor from the right-click menu. Issue #2448. PR #2697.
• The Shift+Enter shortcut now also works in the project search, and opens the document in the viewer. However, it cannot show the actual search result since the search itself is performed on the raw plain text document and doesn't apply to the generated document in the viewer. Issue #2661. PR #2697.
• Backward searches in the editor can now also iterate backwards in project documents if the option to continue search in the next document is enabled. Issue #1451. PR #2696.
• Error handling when encountering file system issues has been improved and hardened. It should further prevent application crashes when encountering such issues. Issues #2529 and #2671. PRs #2675 and #2683.
• The document header in the editor and viewer panels have been improved. An issue with clipping of the descending characters have been fixed, and each part of the path can be clicked to highlight it in the project tree. Issues #2664 and #2674. PR #2677.
• Added a setting in Preferences that turns off scaling of headings in the editor, which is more consistent with plain text where all text is the same size. Issue #2636. PR #2670.
• Improved the way version numbers are shown in the Welcome dialog, allows the selected project to be opened with the Enter key, and using the arrow keys will move the selection up and down without first having to switch focus to the recent projects list. PR #2668.

Accessibility

• Improved screen reader support for remaining buttons, and improved reading of settings pages in various dialogs. Issue #2338. PR #2698.
• Two new light colour themes for colour blindness has been added. They are "Today Deuteranopia" for red/green colour blindness, and "Today Tritanopia" for blue colour blindness. Issue #2689. PR #2694.
• Added an option in Preference to show dotted lines under formatting codes in the editor. This is a visual aid in addition to highlighting colours. Issue #2691. PR #2692.

Internationalisation

• Updated translation files with some new translations since the 2.8 release. PR #2699.

Other Changes

• The fun Discworld themed titles shown on error windows have been extended with new titles to randomly select from. PR #2684.
• PDM has replaced UV as the dependency manager for development and testing. This should not matter to end users. Issue #2685. PR #2678.

Version 2.8.2

Release Notes

This is a patch release that fixes an issue with launching novelWriter via a project file on Windows, adds an alert when the spell check dictionary cannot be loaded, handles headings in HTML manuscripts the same way as for documents, and updates the documentation on how heading levels are handled in the manuscript build process.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue with the exe launcher on Windows where it didn't support spaces in the path when the user tried to open novelWriter from a project file. Issue #2643. PR #2645.
• Fixed an issue with the PDF manuscript format which stopped after about 600-700 pages when generating A4 pages. The limit is now in the 11000 pages range. Issue #2637. PRs #2638 and #2639.

Improvements

• Added an alert box when the spell check language selected for a project could not be loaded. Issue #2631. PR #2654.
• The HTML manuscript format now exports novel title and partition titles as paragraphs with a larger font size instead of HTML headings. This is more consistent with the other formatted document formats. Issue #2641. PR #2653.

Documentation

• Added information to the documentation about heading level promotion when building the manuscript. Issue #2641. PR #2653.

Version 2.8.1

Release Notes

This is a patch release that fixes an issue where the application could crash due to a change in PyQt/Qt 6.10. The issue is related to certain input methods, and is at least triggered when using Spotlight on MacOS.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fix an issue where the inputMethodQuery call to the Qt library returns an object that PyQt6 cannot convert to a Python object. The fix just disables the conversion since the return value is passed back to the Qt library anyway. The problem affects Qt/PyQt 6.10 and is triggered in MacOS at least, but it is not known if it affects other platforms. Issue #2622. PR #2623.

Documentation

• Removed references to the old colour theme system in the documentation. Issue #2619. PR #2625.

Version 2.8

Release Notes

The 2.8 release is based on the features added in 2.8 beta 1 and 2.8 RC 1.

See the website for complete Release Notes.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fix an issue where the app could crash when the user pasted from an empty clipboard. This appears to be a Qt or PyQt bug, and is not present on the later releases, but a fix has been added that ensures the bug is not triggered. Issue #2598. PR #2602.

Documentation

• Fixed a broken link in the updated 2.8 docs. PR #2595.

Internationalisation

• Updated Czech, German, US English, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian and Chinese translation files from the Crowdin project page. PR #2608.

Packaging

• Added qt6-svg-plugins as a direct dependency of novelWriter on Debian. This package was not always installed on some distros. Issue #2604. PR #2607.

Version 2.8 RC 1

Release Notes

This is a release candidate of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that would block the return key in the editor if French style space padding was enabled in Preferences. Issue #2586. PR #2587.
• Fixed an issue where dialog state was no longer saved properly when they were closed for many dialogs. This may be due to a change in the Qt framework, or a bug from a previous release. PR #2585.
• Fixed an issue where a confusing error would show up if the user cancelled the file dialog during example project creation. A new dialog now tells you what the actual issue was and sends you back to the welcome dialog. Issue #2590. PR #2592.

Features

• Vim mode has been added to the editor, and can now be enabled in Preferences. Contributed by @idealemu. Issue #2493. PRs #2499 and #2588.

Improvements

• Using format button from the editor toolbar will not apply the formatting on lines that cannot take formatting, like headings and meta data lines. Issue #2560. PR #2575.
• Added an option in Preferences that will try to centre the main app windows during startup. This effect is always triggered if the main window is scaled down at startup due to being opened on a smaller screen. Issue #2579. PRs #2580 and #2581.
• The example project has been updated and improved. Issue #2570. PRs #2572 and #2574.
• The spacing between icon and text in push buttons has been increased. PR #2582.
• The font selection dialog now remembers its previous size, and uses the new standard push buttons instead of the Qt defaults. PR #2584.
• It is now possible to override the manuscript language meta value for document formats that have this. The IETF BCP 47 language tag is used. Issue #2328. PR #2593.

Internationalisation

• Updated US English, Italian, Norwegian, and Japanese translations. PR #2589.

Version 2.8 Beta 1

Release Notes

This is a beta release of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• The editor now properly supports 4 byte Unicode characters without breaking the syntax highlighting and spell checker. Issue #2449. PR #2451.
• Fixed a bug in the font matching code where the style name property for the font was set, preventing Qt from picking a proper styled font. Issue #2502. PR #2503.
• Spell check dictionaries in the main menu are now updated when new dictionaries are installed using the add dictionaries tool. Contributed by @Reproog. Issue #2558. PR #2562.
• Fixed an issue where the Novel Tree panel heading would be greyed out if there was only one Novel root folder. Issue #2482. PR #2556.

Features

• Current line highlighting has been added and can be enabled in Preferences. Issue #1321. PR #2405.
• The Status and Importance labels can now use theme colours in addition to a user defined custom colour. The settings for these labels have also been made clearer. Issues #2357, #2366 and #2452. PRs #2400 and #2461.
• Markdown style highlighting tags are now supported in the editor. Issue #1894. PR #2412.
• Synopsis/short comments, story comments, and story notes can now be used multiple times under a heading. The text is just appended as a new paragraph each time the annotated comment type is encountered. Issue #2483. PR #2543.

Improvements

• You can now press Ctrl+T and Ctrl+Shift+T when in Focus Mode to exit the Focus Mode automatically and switch to the Project Tree or Outline View. Issue #1294. PR #2479.
• When creating a new document from a template, the first title of the template document is replaced with the label text set for the new document. Issue #2238. PR #2477.
• When the app is performing a potentially bulky and time consuming task, a small progress bar will appear at the top of the status bar to show the progress of the task. It is currently used when the index is rebuilt and when processing multiple documents in the Project Tree. Issue #2243. PR #2478.
• The auto-replace feature in the editor is now better at detecting opening and closing quotes when used in relation to markdown style markup. Issue #2488. PR #2489.
• The application window is now blocked from resizing itself to a size larger than the screen when opened on a smaller screen than it was previously opened on. Like for instance when it was connected to an external screen from a laptop. Issue #2354. PR #2369.
• Improved the CSS styling of HTML manuscript documents. Issue #2358. PR #2404.
• Trailing spaces are no longer highlighted in the editor with an error underline. Multiple spaces between words still are. Issue #2501. PR #2505.
• The rebuild index dialog is no longer showed if the index is rebuilt due to index structure changes when a project is opened for the first time in a newer version of novelWriter. This was confusing to some users who thought the dialog indicated an error. Issue #2513. PR #2537.
• A switch on the Manuscript Build Settings dialog now allows for automatic preview of the build when Apply or Save is clicked. Issue #2486. PR #2553.
• Formatting and handling of Story Comments and Story Notes have been improved, and they can be filtered separately in the viewer panel. PR #2421.

User Interface

• The GUI and syntax themes have been merged into a single theme, which means there are no longer separate settings for the general GUI and the document colour theme. Issue #2335. PR #2373.
• There are now two GUI theme settings in Preferences, one for light and one for dark mode. A new button on the sidebar allows you to switch between them, or it can be set to auto mode that follows the operating system's light/dark mode. Issues #1173 and #2487. PRs #2373 and #2545.
• More themeable settings have been added. The document active flag, the theme base colour, and the new GUI accent colour (if Qt version is high enough) is now available. Issue #2382. PR #2384.
• The highlighting colour for special white spaces, like non-breaking spaces, can now be set in the theme. Previously it used the emphasis colour. Issue #2547. PR #2548.
• The Welcome dialog background now follows the theme colours. Issue #2379. PR #2380.
• The dialog buttons now use icons from the selected theme, not from the host OS. Issues #2498, #2551 and #2561. PRs #2544, #2546, #2553, #2557 and #2563.
• Added semantic categories for icon colours which can be defined in the colour theme. PR #2549.
• Primer Dark and Primer Light themes added by @HeyMyian. Issue #2376. PRs #2377 and #2419.
• Horizon, Otium, Paragon, Selenium, Sepia, Sultana, Vivid, Warpgate, and Waterlily themes added by @HeyMyian. Issue #2407. PR #2495.
• Aura, B2T Garden, B2T Suburb, B4T Classic-O, B4T Modern-C, Everforest, New Moon, Full Moon, Nord, Nordlicht, Castle, Chernozem, Chalky Soil, Floral, Ruby themes added by @HeyMyian. PR #2450.
• Blue Streak themes added. PR #2388.
• LCARS theme added. PR #2399.
• Espresso and Noctis themes added. PR #2422.
• Various improvements to existing and new themes by @vkbo. PRs #2396, #2418, #2475 and #2481.
• Various improvements to existing and new themes by @HeyMyian. PRs #2506 and #2494.

Packaging

• The license info for novelWriter has been updated to include GPL-3.0-or-later, Apache-2.0, and CC-BY-4.0. Issue #2444. PR #2446.
• Updated Debian package build and added Qt6 plugin for WebP images as a dependency. PR #2401.

Documentation

• Added some info on how to get around the line heigh issue in the editor in the Tips & Tricks section of the documentation. Issue #2559. PR #2564.
• Fixed some typos in the documentation. PR #2542.

Code Maintenance

• Improved linting and added more mapped Qt constants. PR #2536.
• Added test coverage of the theme files to ensure they are up to date. PR #2378.
• Updated credits and license information of icon themes. PR #2474.
• Some fields have been dropped from icon and colour themes. PRs #2466 and #2423.
• Changed a few default settings in config, added automatic rebuild of the index in new projects, and fixed tests. PR #2395.
• Added test coverage and support for Python 3.14. PR #2538.
• Improved logging formatting by stripping HTML content. PR #2402.
• Cleaned up and improved pkgutils CLI tool. PR #2541.
• The project now uses UV as the primary dependency handling tool for development. PR #2540.
• Fixed the run_tests helper script for HighDPI monitors. PR #2496.