Will Composition mode remain?

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
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Hi,

The feature I like the most, in Scrivener, is Composition mode. It lets you forget the huge power of the program, and immediately immerse yourself in your story, free from distractions from the surrounding environment. You choose your font, font size, font color, and background color – everything is there at once, with no delay between your idea and the act of writing.

I really hope this feature will survive the Liquid Glass revision, and remain the same despite the changes in the rest of the program. Can you make a pinky promise to me?

Paolo

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Well, now that you mention it…
(Just kidding. – I doubt the OS could become so problematic that Literature and Latte would have no choice but to remove this or any other feature they’d rather keep.)

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I have MacOS 26.2 Tahoe and also the latest Scrivener 3.5.1. Composition mode works just fine. Not sure how Liquid Glass or any other future iteration of the GUI theme will require its removal. (Forum members more knowledgeable than I about these things can weigh in.)

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It’s extremely unlikely that Scrivener will ever fully adopt that system look. It hasn’t even adopted the previous take on this idea, which I believe started in macOS 11 when it was called “Vibrant” instead of “Glass”. It hasn’t used the simple stock system sidebar because it wouldn’t be capable of doing all of the things we do with it. For example, I don’t think it can be easily recoloured, which we would of course need for Collections (never mind appearance settings). There are probably other limitations with it as well.

Really the only thing we did specifically for the new look was fix where the stock application toolbar was broken by changes made to it. Some of the custom widgets, like Quick Search, needed to be resized and such.

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Thank you! I’m sincerely relieved!

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I use layouts to hide/show sidebars to get something close to Compisition mode without losing macOS’s native split screen. I need Apple Notes (or another app) open in a split when I work, usually. I do love Composition mode for purely drafting, but editing and rewriting (which has been me this year) I’ve not used it once. I wish I could screen split AND use Composition mode at the same time.

(edited for clarity… pre coffee words were not good…)

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So do I. For editing, the normal view, maybe in the standard Full Screen mode for maximizing the space, is perfect.

But for deep immersion into writing – no. I want everyone out of my room, all the lights switched off, no noise at all.

Paolo

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I’ve posted about it elsewhere, but for me it has always been more productive to have that kind of stripped down UI, like Composition Mode gives you, but with the seamless option for more. Bear in mind the Scrivener project window can be reduced down to this:

Couple that with a saved Layout that is set to be your full screen default,[1] and now you’ve got “composition mode” that is ultimately capable of doing everything a project window can do, in bits and pieces, precisely for only what you need of it. Maybe focusing on a big freeform corkboard can be just as important and productive for what you’re doing right now, as filling up a column of text. One can have just as much focus when editing, if that is what they want.

  1. I haven’t tested it, but I think that would also trigger when splitting the screen between software. ↩︎

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