Release 2.8#
Release Notes#
Release 2.8 of novelWriter focuses primarily on the look and feel of the application, with a new way of handling colour themes, and updated icons colours and buttons. The theme colours can now also be used for your own document status labels.
Theme Revamp#
The major change in 2.8 is that the colour theme is now uniform for the entire application. You no longer need to select a separate theme for the app and the documents separately. Instead you can now select your preferred light and dark theme, and switch between them using a new button on the side bar. You can also set the theme to automatically follow the light or dark mode choice of your operating system.
In addition to a redesign of the colour theme system, a large number of new colour themes have been added. Many of them were contributed by Myian. There are several new choices for both light and dark themes, and a lot of them come in matching pairs.
New Features#
- Vim Mode
You can now enable Vim mode in the text editor panel. Vim mode gives you access to Vim-style command modes and commands. You can enable this feature in a new section called “Features” in Preferences. This feature is still experimental and may be changed or extended in future releases. Vim mode was contributed by Alexis Dumelie.
- Markdown Highlighting
You can now use Markdown highlighting tags in the text, like this:
Some text with ==this part highlighted==.
This does the same as the shortcode
[m][/m]tags, but the difference is that the text is visually highlighted also in the editor.- Current Line Highlighted
A new setting is available in Preferences under Text Editing which enables highlighting of the current line. That is, the line where the cursor is will have a different background colour.
- Repeatable Annotated Comments
Specially annotated comments, like Synopsis, Short Description, Story Structure, and Story Notes, can now be repeated under a heading and all comments preserved in the outline and its export.
Other Changes#
You can now switch to the Project Tree or Outline View using keyboard shortcuts while in Focus Mode.
When creating a new document from a template, the main title of the template document is replaced with the label chosen for the new document.
The auto-replace feature in the editor is now better at detecting opening and closing quotes when used in relation to Markdown style markup.
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.
Trailing spaces are no longer highlighted in the editor with an error underline.
A switch on the Manuscript Build Settings dialog now allows for automatic preview of the build when the Apply or Save button is clicked.
The editor now properly supports 4 byte Unicode characters without breaking the syntax highlighting and spell checker.
Patch Releases#
Patch 2.8.1#
Release Date: 28 December, 2025
This patch fixes an issue where the application could crash due to a change in the framework novelWriter is built on. The issue is related to certain input methods, and is at least triggered when using Spotlight on MacOS. It could potentially affect other platforms too.
Patch 2.8.2#
Release Date: 25 January, 2026
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.
Older Releases#
Past release packages are available for download on GitHub.