Enquire
A free app for writers
Sapphire is a free writing studio for Mac, Windows and Android. Your books, poems, notes and research live in one folder on your own computer or phone. No account, nothing uploaded, nothing in the way.
What is inside
Every screen below is the real app. Click any picture to see it larger.
Write
A blank page and a shelf to start. Everything else is one tab away.
Manuscript
Write in clean chapters on a page that looks like a page. Pinch or scroll to zoom it, and pick the font and theme that suit you.
Outline and darlings
Your outline grows from the chapters you write. The sentences you love but have to cut go to Darlings, where you can bring them back or let them go for good.
Atmosphere
Switch on typewriter keystroke sounds and a carriage-return bell, or a soft soundscape of rain, ocean, fire or a café. Focus modes dim everything except the paragraph or sentence you are on.
Plan
Give your plot, your characters and your sources a place of their own.
Canvas
Drop notes anywhere, connect them with lines, group them on shapes and drag a scene straight into a chapter. Scene notes open the chapter they belong to.
Canvas, your way
Choose dots, a grid, lines or crosses behind your notes, as fine or as bold as you like, and see the change as you drag the sliders. When you are done, export the whole canvas.
Research
Keep notes, links, quotes and images in a board tied to the book they belong to. Tag them, search them, and open the board beside your manuscript while you write.
Poems
Short work deserves a quiet room of its own.
Poems studio
A library of every poem you have written, sorted by status and gathered into collections for your chapbooks. Each poem sits on a clean page with a signature of your own at the foot.
Forms and templates
Sonnet, haiku, villanelle, ghazal, pantoum and more. Every form shows its shape, and the margin checks the syllables and refrains as you write.
Progress
A private, honest look at the work, with no scores and no sharing.
Insights
See your pacing across chapters, how easy the writing is to read, the words you lean on and the sentences that run long. Make the dashboard yours: add, move, resize or remove any chart.
Streaks
A heatmap of the last 26 weeks, your current and longest streaks, and milestone badges for the words you have put down. No guilt and no notifications.
Submissions
Fill in a few fields and Sapphire writes the letter beside you. Prepare a synopsis, a manuscript format sheet and a tracker for who you sent what to.
Yours
Looks and keys that fit how you write.
Themes
Light, dark, sepia, midnight blue or high contrast, with an accent colour and an interface font of your choice. The page can follow the theme or stay on paper.
Hotkeys
Every command in Sapphire has a shortcut you can change, from the menus to the studios. Search for a command, click, press the keys you want.
Plugins
Canvas, Insights, Poems and the rest are plugins you can switch off. Turn off what you do not use and the app gets quieter.
Private
Sapphire has no accounts and no cloud. It cannot read your writing because it never leaves your computer.
Vaults
The first time you open Sapphire you choose a folder, a vault. Everything is saved there in tidy, named folders: Books (one folder per book, one Markdown file per chapter), Poems, Outline, Canvas, Research and Exports. Open any of it in any app, with a daily backup and a safety copy before every update. Switch between vaults whenever you like.
Passcode lock
Turn on a passcode and Sapphire locks itself after the time you choose. Wrong guesses slow down, and the lock holds even if someone tries to get around the screen.
Download
Free for Mac, Windows and Android. No sign-up.
Sapphire is new and independent, so your computer or phone asks you to confirm it once. This is normal and takes a few seconds.
Sapphire checks for new versions now and then. On Windows it downloads and installs the update by itself when you quit. On a Mac it tells you a new version is ready and opens this page. On Android, download the newest Sapphire-android.apk and install it over the old one. Before any update, Sapphire saves a safety copy of your vault.
Each release lists SHA256 checksums on the releases page. Compare yours if you like.
Questions
Yes. Every feature is free, with no trial and no account. If it helps your writing you can support it below, and that is always optional.
No. Sapphire works fully offline. It only goes online to check whether a new version is available.
In a folder on your computer called a vault, which you choose the first time you open Sapphire. Inside it are folders named Books, Poems, Outline, Canvas, Research and Exports. Each book is a folder named after it, with every chapter as its own Markdown (.md) file, and each poem is a file too, so you can read, back up or move them yourself. The Android app uses the same folders.
Yes. Copy the vault folder to the new computer, install Sapphire there and choose "Open folder as vault".
Yes: plain text, Markdown, web page, PDF, Word and EPUB, and you can import existing manuscripts.
No. Sapphire is free to use for your own writing but it is not open source, and it may not be copied or redistributed. See the licence that comes with the app.
Please tell us. Writers shape what Sapphire becomes.
Support
I made Sapphire and keep improving it on my own. If it helps your writing, you can support it with any amount you like. It is always optional.
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Inside Sapphire you can also scan a QR code from the Support button.
Download Sapphire and start your first book in a minute.