Storyist 4

• Free Trial — $0.00
• Storyist 4 — $19.99
• Storyist 4 Upgrade — $9.99

Last verified 6 Aug 2026

4.3 383 ratings · App Store

1. 4/5Still decent

   TL;DR - Functional, could be better. But still functional and works. The new UI needs to get used to, as it is rather simplistic and requires a few taps to navigate files. Default sync is iCloud instead of Dropbox, and it doesn’t look like we can change cloud services. While iCloud is nice, I don’t have much storage left and I much prefer Dropbox as all my previous Storyist 3 files were in there. There are three themes other than Classic. Light, Dark, and Storyist for Mac. They serve well for what they are, but honestly, I wish there was a few more themes. The editor is roughly the same as the legacy version. No major overhaul, and I don’t think I mind. The font is still that manuscript looking one - Courier I believe - and functions as a viewable font. Navigation, as I’ve said before, is a bit weird. There’s a “recent” and a “browse” tab at the bottom, meaning of you’ve a lot of Storyist files/documents, it might be a bit of a hassle to look for something. Files downloaded from Dropbox don’t appear in recent until you’ve opened them and edited the document(s) a bit. It looks a lot cleaner, but still a bit dated. I don’t know what it is, but the UI refresh feels a bit underwhelming. No three panel navigation for [Library], then [folder], and finally [editor], sort of like Ulysses or Bear. That type of navigation of the files is much better than the one provided here. Overall, this is a decent app if you hadn’t bought the Legacy version and was spoiled by the previous layout or by Bear or Ulysses. I still bought the full app because I appreciate the updates and the developers. Hopefully there would be a minor UI navigation change, as that is probably the only gripe I have for this app. Thanks for the update and the discount!

   Tomaganuk96 · 6 Aug 2026

2. 5/5Not worth upgrade unless you like folders

   I’m pretty disappointed that they chose to spin off storyist to add the feature request we've asked for for a long time. I love using the app, but small things always bothered me like no folder tree in mobile app (like macos has), Support via email never answered, and ability to extend the template system was nonexistant (still is). That being said i upgraded for the folder tree view since i use this app for my iphone, ipad and mac. So buy it for that convenience but I think for budget minded people google docs is way better for same and more features(sharing and group comments i copy over to google writer.)

   jo jo devil · 6 Aug 2026

3. 1/5Storyist sometimes deletes all your work!!!

   Huge danger warning here, I must echo previous reviews like the one posted by RyGuy486 and report that STORYIST SOMETIMES AUTO-DELETES ALL YOUR WORK. This happened to me twice now, the first time I thought it was because I was using OneDrive for file storage. But I switched back to the default Apple cloud file storage AND A WEEK LATER IT HAPPENED AGAIN. I’ve now lost hours and hours of writing, which is just so disheartening. I can see from Apple’s file versions that Storyist gets confused and starts to save the same version of a file over and over (instead of saving a version with any new modified work). Then if you power down, it auto-restores to that last version... and everything is gone. Perhaps this won’t happen if I just save files to the local iPad instead of any cloud storage? Perhaps it happened because I connected to a wireless network AFTER starting Storyist? In the end I don’t care why. This is just one of the worst possible bugs a program like this could have. Sorry to say this program is NOT reliable for professional work. Stay away.

   RenderWizard · 6 Aug 2026

4. 2/5Buggy...Missing Fetures...OK

   Overall: Just having the basic feature and a mobile sync that takes less than 10 minutes was enough for me to switch from Scrivener. But there are a lot of trade offs I’m not happy about. Bad: 1) Every time I open the app I’m locked from editing and need to “Restore Purchases” again. Super annoying. 2) It doesn’t really support transformations (allegedly it does for novels but I haven’t used those). If you use the other templates you’re going to hate exports, especially if you use the dark theme. Changing the fonts while editing (like using a white font for dark mode) means it will export as the font you edit with (in my case, white). In order for me to have readable exports I now have a several step process that involves a few apps to reformat the export and turn it into a PDF. Because I export infrequently, it’s tolerable but it’s a frustration every time. 3) It encourages you to keep sections / scenes within a single file and has a nice interface for reordering sections within a file. The downfall of this is that it’s painful to move scenes / sections from one page to another. Scrivener just has an arbitrary number of nested files that were easily sorted and moved around. I kind of like that better, but Storyist’s solution isn’t terrible - just inconvenient. Good: 1) It’s quick to load (I purchased Storyist to replace Scrivener due to Scrivener’s painfully slow mobile sync process) 2) It lets me use iCloud Drive rather than forcing me to use Dropbox 3) It’s rather easy to use 4) Some features like character suggestions in script editing are a little buggy, but overall work well enough to call it a win

   AndrewPirkola · 6 Aug 2026

5. 5/5Great app

   Love this app, and I use it for all my fiction writing projects. Great app, by far my favorite writing tool. I work entirely on iPad (with Bluetooth keyboard) and iPhone syncing to the cloud but able to work offline. I can access my work wherever I go and keep it well organized. The writing interface is very clean and the ability to see and rearrange the plot structure is intuitive and extremely useful. Much simpler than scrivener; for me that means fewer features to be distracted by and more focus on the actual writing. When they add a .doc format export and the ability to export/share just a section or two instead of the whole novel, it will be five stars.

   PTmacKim · 6 Aug 2026

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