I’ve been following the messages about the new app lately and I’d really love to be able to participate in the beta if there are any spots available. I currently own Scrivener for Mac, Windows, and ios and 2026 is my Year of Writing. What I’ve seen of the new app makes me really want to try it out and help with the testing.
My background is in Software Development and QA, so I think I could give the app good test case coverage and feedback. Please keep me in consideration, as it would give me a great start to the year, and would give you some good test coverage.
Either reply here or DM me if interested in another capable tester.
Well, I believe it might be time to explore alternative sources for a new lightweight writing software. Given the extensive development process of the upcoming L&L lightweight writing app, I would be cautious about presenting it as an upcoming product until there’s a reasonable chance that the remaining development and resources will be sufficient to complete it.
I’ve recently started using Apple’s Pages and Notes apps. These are truly lightweight and fast, and Notes now supports saving notes in Pages format. Additionally, they sync across all Apple products in iCloud, and I have never lost any data so far.
There’s a saying in photography: the best camera in the world is the one you have on you. If Apple Notes & Pages are what you have right now, use 'em. I’d also highly recommending checking out {New App} when it’s launched because
{Pigfender has been Squid-Gamed for failing to comply with the first rule of Fight Club}
Good luck waiting out a release of Scrivener’s latest app, given the release of another new Apple ecosystem that will more than likely require additional coding. And then there’s Windows’ new uptakes, too.
About a year and a half ago, I moved from Scrivener to Pages. I’d mistakenly thought Pages was a lightweight program for making fliers and resumes, etc.
Using Paragraph Styles and the Table of Contents, you can quickly navigate book-length documents.
I thought I’d found a hidden gem.
What’s lacking:
No typewriter mode, so you are stuck constantly scrolling or looking at the bottom of the screen.
No split-screen view.
Pages documents can only be opened in the Pages app.
What works well:
• Quick navigation, even using an iPad with a large document. Using search is lightning fast, the same with the Table of Contents window.
• Mobile version has a reading and editing mode which reduces the chance of accidentally changing something.
• Exporting to EPUB is a breeze, and the EPUBs look pretty good.
• Syncing using iCloud is flawless.
• Moving to the next instance of search is executed by hitting the return key…something I wish Scrivener used instead of its CMD G.
• Pages cleanly exports to Word. According to William Gallagher on 58 Keys (YouTube), the track changes function may also work when exchanging documents with a Word user. I haven’t tested that.
Why I’ve returned to Scrivener for composition:
• One of the Tahoe updates caused Pages to become unstable. I lost work. Lost. Gone. Puff. No safety net to catch it. Three times, I lost text. (A subsequent OS update fixed the issue.)
• Apple’s OS updates. I hate Liquid Glass and overly rounded corners, blobby buttons, etc., that have crept into the recent version of Pages. But the worst of it is the nag screen that pops up on the free version of Pages, reminding me to update to version 15 of Pages, which also has a free version, but it comes with the Liquid Glass GUI.
• Pages is now considered part of Apple’s Creator Studio, a subscription model at $129/yr (US). While Apple has maintained that a free version of Pages will be available—less the AI garbage—I have my doubts.
I’ve been using Scrivener since shortly after its first Mac release. I recently moved all my Pages documents back to Scrivener and have no regrets. When the new L&L app is released, I’ll buy it. I trust these folks to produce quality. Apple, on the other hand, well, I have my reservations.
They’re different beasts, though. Pages is fine as a lightweight Apple-focused version of Word (as in… a do-a-bit-of-everything word processor), but it is very much not Scrivener (specifically a tool for writers).
The reason I moved from Scrivener had less to do with Scrivener and more to do with me. With Scrivener, I’d started using meta tags, creating extensive notes files, etc., all building stories tangentially, often losing the forward momentum. I needed the equivalent of horse blinders/blinkers to stop tinkering and get on with things.
The return to Scrivener has been a welcome one for me. I’ve kept the blinders on and stuck to using the editor, synopsis, and notes fields and little else beyond the binder.
I look forward to the new app’s release, but I’ve got Scrivener doing what I want.
The Pages document was intact, only the recent text and any edits from a short session were purged–on three different occasions. I do use Time Machine and SuperDuper to back up to external drives, and I run a daily remote backup, but these wouldn’t have caught that work.
Pages is supposed to auto-save, but in this instance, it did not.
Pages also has a rollback feature similar to Time Machine, so you can revert to an earlier saved version, which is pretty a pretty good trick. Apple seems to have fixed the Pages crashing issue with one of their later Tahoe updates.
Still waiting on anyone from L&L to let me know if I can participate in this app testing. I have much to bring to the testing if I were able to use it.
LibreOffice can also open .pages files. I ran across a comment on Reddit referring to that, and tested it. It can. It won’t save as .pages; you’d have to select another file type.
Thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, our beta program is currently full. In the event that we have openings in the future, there will be an announcement here in the forum.
