Plain-text screenplays and novels, typeset live, with Git built in
River Writer is a free, open-source Mac app for writing screenplays, stage plays and novels. You write plain text on the left and the app typesets a properly formatted page on the right, live: scene headings snap into place, character names get their capital-letter pedestal, dialogue indents itself. It is MIT licensed, runs on macOS 13 or later, and the first release is v1.0.0, published on October 18, 2026.
Everything you write stays yours in the plainest sense: screenplays and stage plays are saved as .fountain files, novels as Markdown, and a project is just a folder on your Mac. Git versioning is built in, so you can commit a draft, browse earlier ones or try an alternate ending on a branch without installing anything else. Autosave and crash recovery come standard, and there are no accounts, no cloud sync, no telemetry and no AI features — the app makes no network connections at all.
The catch is the install: River is distributed as source, and you build it yourself with Xcode Command Line Tools, Rust, Node.js and pnpm (the project documents each step and the build takes a few minutes). There is no Windows or Linux version and no prebuilt download. For writers comfortable with a terminal, it is a rare thing: a focused, private writing tool with professional typesetting and real version control, entirely free.
Featured in our discovery: River Writer: Write Stories with Your Kids
Screenplay, Multi-cam, Stage Play or Manuscript formatting shown beside your text as you type, with PDF export.
Screenplays and stage plays are .fountain files, novels are Markdown, and a project is a plain folder you own.
Commit drafts, browse and restore earlier versions, and try alternate endings on branches, with nothing else to install.
Sidebar planning tools kept as plain files inside the project, plus autosave and crash recovery.
It is distributed as source: clone the repository and build it with Xcode Command Line Tools, Rust 1.96+, Node.js 22.12+ and pnpm 9. The README documents every step and the first build takes a few minutes.
No. The app makes no network connections at all: no accounts, cloud sync, telemetry or AI features. Everything stays in plain files on your Mac.