One Year of Writing with Highland Pro

We have officially hit one full year of writing with Highland Pro!

Thank you to all the subscribers who've made this milestone possible! We want to share with you all some highlights, new features, and usage statistics that have made this a banner year at Quote-Unquote Apps.

New Features

Highland Pro is constantly evolving. Rather than putting out a big numbered release every few years like old-fashioned floppies-in-a-box apps (cf. Final Draft), we are continuously adding and refining features to Highland Pro.

Since launch, we have piloted and implemented amazing new features that enable writers to see their entire screenplay at a glance, share their work seamlessly for feedback, and ensure their work transitions effortlessly from Mac to iOS – while being backed up at every step of the process.

Highland Fling

In July, we launched our biggest new feature to date: Highland Fling, a seamless sharing feature that enables you to send a short-lived web version of your draft to friends, colleagues, or teammates. Fling lets you to collect notes and comments from multiple readers simultaneously while controlling which drafts are accessible to those readers.

Every note they make on your document is then automatically pulled back into Highland Pro for you to revise locally, in the new Comments View.

Watch the full release below or read the step-by-step guide to Highland Fling.

Fling was a big swing for us. It's our first time building a web-native feature. Integrating it with our existing macOS-native app was a rewarding challenge.

Overview

Overview is a new view in your toolbar, letting you see your whole document at a glance while highlighting elements like Scene Headers, Action, Dialogue, or specific Characters. Are scenes running long? Are your action beats over-stuffed? Has your talkative protagonist gone silent for 15 pages? Now you can peel back the layers of your screenplay and focus on what matters most to you and your story.

As a new feature, Overview was more classically in our wheelhouse. Nima had already done so much work in building our previews that downscaling it for Overview was relatively straightforward.

iOS and iCloud Syncing

Highland Pro was always envisioned as a cross-platform tool built to help you write wherever inspiration strikes with a seamless (and delightful) interface. However, at launch, Highland ran into a series of bumps in the seamlessness (and delightfulness) of that transition between macOS and iOS.

Users who switched back and forth between the Mac and iOS versions of Highland Pro found that changes weren't always being synchronized properly. It’s a tricky problem to solve, in part because iCloud syncing is a black box for developers. Apple chooses to update documents in the background according to its own schedule, and doesn’t clearly communicate what’s happening.

We fundamentally rebuilt the way iOS and iCloud synching works in Highland Pro. Now your drafts are always available in their most up-to-date form even when you switch from one device to another mid-writing session. These changes also massively improved the local and iCloud backup systems to help ensure you never lose your work whether you're writing on or offline.

Monthly Updates and Bug Fixes

Beyond that, we've been rolling out regular features, quality-of-life updates, and bug fixes on a monthly cadence that has seen significant upgrades to the overall writing experience of Highland Pro.

Some banner updates this year include:

• Greatly expanded image capabilities
• Updated features and customization options for both The Shelf and The Navigator
• Grammar Highlighting for fine-tuned editing that helps you identify and polish specific elements of your prose
• Title Page and Custom Page enhancements and expansions
• Bug fixes across the board on macOS and iOS
• Expansion of Highland Priority Support
• Not to mention all of the work that goes into supporting our other apps like Weekend Read 2, Bronson, and even Highland 2

But all of these updates, changes, and fixes wouldn't be possible without the tremendous support of the Team Highland community – in particular, our Beta Testers, whose vigilance and passion bolster and inspire us at every turn.

Growing Team Highland

From the earliest days of Highland (before Highland was even Highland) John, Nima, and the team worked tirelessly with the broader community to develop open-source tools that would benefit all writers curious enough to try them. Fountain markup syntax was developed in this spirit and now serves as the backbone for far more writing tools than just Highland Pro.

It's always been extremely important for us to invite writers of every stripe to the table to help us propel Highland into the future with real features that help writers get words on the page. So we're incredibly proud to report that the Team Highland Discord has doubled in size since the launch of Highland Pro and we encourage you to join for access to the latest features and news!

Beyond that, our commitment to supporting students and educators is unwavering. Anyone who is currently enrolled in, or teaching, a university-level writing course is able to access a Free One-Year Highland Pro License! There are no paywalls, no blocked features. This is a full license that grants you access to the most up-to-date version of Highland Pro across all of your devices. We have also sponsored pitch contests at NYU and Yale to engage directly with and empower young screenwriters.

Plus, Apple Family Sharing is enabled so your Highland Pro license goes further than ever. One license can now be utilized by an entire family (or found family; or writers group) to access Highland across Mac and iOS for the price of a single subscription.

What's on the Horizon?

So, with all of that in the books for year one, what's next? Plenty.

Our latest banner feature, Highland Fling, is poised to become the cornerstone of future Highland expansions. Our biggest hurdle developing Fling was transposing Highland from our app to the web.

With that achieved, Fling becomes the foundation for a lot of interesting hybrid potential between the app and web versions of Highland. A lot of features writers have been clamoring for are now possible. No spoilers!

Our immediate focus is to significantly expand our support features to help guide users through the full suite of Highland tricks, tips, and tools. Additionally, we'll be expanding support and functionality of all our major writing templates – novels, stage plays, graphic novels, MLA, and more – so that every style of writer can take advantage of the same great writing experience as screenwriters.

Because we believe writers deserve nice things.