Version 2026.2 RC 1

Release Notes

This is a release candidate of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Note that 2026.2 Beta 2 and newer upgrades a project on first load, so it can no longer be opened in an older version of novelWriter. 2026.2 Beta 1 and newer also updates the main config file, but leaves the old one in place, so this is not blocking older versions but be aware that the config changes do not pass between the old and new config files once the new config file exists.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug in the updated drag and drop implementation in the project tree from the Beta 1 release. The tree no longer allowed an item to be dropped on top of another to make it a child of the item. Issue #2953. PR #2954.

Improvements

• Improved dialogue highlighting for single-quoted dialogue when the text included apostrophes. Discussed in #2633. PR #2956.
• Updated the new project builder so it doesn't claim the index is broken the first time it is opened. It is only "broken" in the sense that it is missing the first time. The index is now built when the project is created, so the warning no longer appears. Issue #2952. PR #2954.

Documentation

• Removed broken link and associated instructions on the dictionary install page. PR #2951.

Version 2026.2 Beta 2

Release Notes

This is a beta release of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where the wrong theme colours were used for the active and inactive icons in the project tree context menu. Issue #2941. PR #2946.
• Removed the placeholder text in the Manuscript Tool preview since it used the wrong text colour on dark themes and anyway is never visible for more than a few milliseconds. Issue #2942. PR #2946.
• Fixed a bug from the beta 1 release where selecting a piece of text and moving it would cause a crash. Issue #2917. PR #2918.
• Fixed a re-entrancy bug in the project search tool. Issue #2924. PR #2937.
• Fixed a re-entrancy bug candidate in the status bar message display logic. Issue #2925. PR #2938.
• Fixed a potential segfault candidate, and an incorrect thread pool runnable in the version check widget. Issue #2926. PR #2938.
• Fixed a bug in the loop that collects navigation headers in the editor, which was ignoring the max count. Issue #2930. PR #2939.

Improvements

• Added more granular theme variables to improve contrast for GUI components. Issue #2910. PRs #2911, #2915
• Updated themes with new colours and other improvements. By @vkbo and @HeyMyian. Issue #2910. PRs #2911, #2912, #2916 and #2943.
• Added five new themes, by @HeyMyian. PR #2943.
• Added a character count toggle for project writing goals. Issue #2913. PR #2919.
• Removed all usages of the Qt find block methods inside loops in the editor. These are binary searches, not lookups, so the cost is higher than I expected. Issue #2930. PR #2939.
• The word counter ran twice on every document search. First once in the editor, then in the indexer. The run in the editor was removed. Issue #2928. PR #2944.

Other Changes

• The way the check against overwriting documents that have been changed on disk is performed has been improved so that it doesn't always have to read the existing document before writing. Issue #2929. PR #2945.
• Project documents are now saved as a text document with the .md extension and a standard TOML header instead of the old custom format and extension. Issue #1964. PR #2945.
• Pinned the Python garbage collector to the main gui thread to prevent it from accidentally triggering in the Qt thread pool. Issue #2927. PR #2940.
• The index cache and project-local gui state JSON files are no longer written on every autosave. Instead they are only written on manual saves or project close. The index cache is verified against a revision number on open to catch any stale caches. This was also a potential problem before, so this change is a general improvement. A stale cache is rebuilt on project open. Issue #2931. PR #2944.

Installation

• Added flatpak for Linux installation. Based on work by @Ryex. Issue #1651. PRs #2906 and #2908.

Version 2026.2 Beta 1

Release Notes

This is a beta release of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue with kerning when printing the manuscript preview on Windows, and changed the page break marker to a dashed line instead of a solid text block. Issue #2640. PR #2838.
• Fixed tooltip and scrollbar colours not matching the selected theme, a compatibility issue with newer versions of Qt; custom stylesheets have been replaced with other styling methods, and the Fusion Qt style is now hard coded, to resolve this properly. Issue #2871. PRs #2877 and #2881.
• Fixed a reentrancy issue when opening documents, and removed a stray call that could delay cleanup of objects, improving overall application stability. PR #2840.
• Fixed five memory leaks related to freeing Qt objects created from Python, and added regression tests to catch similar issues in the future. PRs #2829 and #2830.

Features

• Added EPUB 3 as a new manuscript export format. Issue #2058. PR #2283.
• Added dialogue statistics to manuscripts, showing the number of characters used in dialogue and the ratio of dialogue to prose text. The statistics panel has been moved from below the manuscript preview to a new tab in the panel on the left. Issue #2096. PR #2841.
• Added a horizontal rule format for manuscript headings. Using four hyphens ("----") as a heading inserts a line across the page in all output formats. Issue #2755. PRs #2771 and #2772.
• Added a setting for the automatic backup interval, allowing backups to be limited to one per session, day, week, or month by overwriting the previous backup file, using an unambiguous ISO8601-based file name format. Issue #2754. PRs #2834 and #2835.
• Added a line height setting for the editor and viewer, applied consistently including to pasted text. Issues #654 and #2874. PRs #2817 and #2875.
• Added a text zoom feature for the editor and viewer, using the standard Qt zoom shortcuts. Issue #1280. PR #2822.
• Added highlighting of all search result matches in the editor, in addition to the currently selected one. Issues #2736 and #2798. PR #2820.
• Added a new format checker that highlights trailing spaces at the end of lines, alongside the existing check for multiple spaces between words. Issue #2800. PR #2821.
• Added hover cards for tags in the editor and viewer, with buttons to quickly open the referenced document for editing or viewing. Issue #2857. PR #2859.
• Added filters for text content, document type, and root folder to the project search tool, available in a new collapsible panel below the search box that updates automatically as root folders change. Issues #1927 and #2256. PRs #2847 and #2848.
• Added a collapsible panel widget, now used for the item details panel below the project tree and novel view, which can be hidden, and for the new project search filters panel. PR #2843.
• Added support for pasting rich text (HTML) into the editor, without stripping leading or railing whitespace. Issue #2601. PRs #2876 and #2878.
• Added project writing goals with daily progress tracking, shown as progress bars with sufficient colour contrast in all themes, and correctly reset when starting a new day. Also added an option to exclude specific root folders from the count. Based on work contributed by @BlayW. Issue #2223. PRs #2870, #2878, #2887, #2889, #2891 and #2892.
• The symbol auto-replace feature can now also be used in the editor's search and replace boxes, the project search box, and the header format field in Manuscript Build Settings, and can be toggled on or off in each. Issue #2261. PRs #2866, #2867 and #2868.
• It is now possible to recursively set the active or inactive state of all documents under a folder in the project tree from the right-click menu. Issue #2188. PR #2784.
• A checkbox now shows the active project's spell check language in the Tools menu, and the spell checker is re-run automatically when the language is changed. Issue #2311. PR #2785.

Improvements

• Manuscript Build Settings now has an option to enable or disable justify-expansion of lines with manual line breaks, extended to Open Document and Word Document formats. Issue #2764. PRs #2769 and #2770.
• The reference list panel now refreshes automatically when the references in a document change, instead of requiring a manual refresh. Issue #2124. PR #2782.
• Keypress handling in the editor's auto-complete menu has been improved: arrow keys navigate the list, Left and Escape close it, and Tab, Enter, Return, and Right accept the highlighted entry or close the menu if nothing is selected. Issue #2742. PR #2743.
• The editor's auto-complete menu has been rewritten to use Qt's native completer widget instead of a custom menu, improving its look and behaviour. PR #2856.
• Performance of the spell checker has been substantially improved by caching computed highlights and dictionary lookups, and syntax highlighting and spell checking are now skipped for excessively long paragraphs (over 20 000 characters) to keep large documents responsive. A related concurrency issue in the background word counter has also been fixed. PRs #2808, #2861, #2862 and #2863.

User Interface

• Toggle buttons, such as those in the search tools, are now more visible when active, using a new "toggle" theme colour. A new "searchMatch" theme colour is also used to highlight search matches in the editor and project search results, and now refreshes immediately when switching themes. Existing themes have been updated accordingly, including contributions by @HeyMyian. Issues #2827, #2845 and #2886. PRs #2833, #2844, #2846, #2882 and #2887.
• Restored the flat look of tabs in tab widgets, now implemented with a custom painter instead of stylesheets for better compatibility with recent versions of Qt. PR #2890.
• Fixed handling of long labels in switches, and in the quick link and header navigation menus. PR #2850.

Other Changes

• The document editor's underlying text widget has been switched back to a full rich text editor instead of a plain text editor, enabling several of the features in this release, such as line height, zoom, and pasting rich text; copying text from the editor still produces plain text as before. This also required narrowing down when the editor is re-initialised, which had caused some Preferences settings to stop refreshing the GUI properly. Issue #2815. PRs #2816, #2860 and #2878.
• Spell checking has been moved out of the syntax highlighter and now runs as a chunked, timed background process, using the same block-based caching approach as the new search highlighting. PR #2812.
• The application configuration file and all theme files have been converted from Linux-style config formats to TOML. PRs #2883 and #2885.
• The project search panel has been internally rewritten to use a model/view architecture, with no intended functional change. PR #2842.
• Internal handling of icons has been changed, with no expected functional impact. PR #2852.
• The viewer code has been merged into the editor folder ahead of further refactoring work. PR #2880.
• Cleaned up how menu actions with additional data, such as icons and custom data, are created internally. Issue #2828. PR #2832.

Code Maintenance

• Enabled branch coverage in the test suite, added tests for previously uncovered branches, and fixed a few minor bugs found in the process. PR #2807.
• Hardened flaky tests to reduce occasional segfaults during test runs. PR #2864.
• Updated the default Python version used for testing and embedded in builds to 3.14. PR #2786.
• Updated the Ubuntu versions targeted by packaging and CI. PR #2802.
• Updated icon packages, test helper scripts, and documentation build tooling. PR #2853.
• Added tests to the Debian package build process. PR #2896.
• Various internal linting, naming, and code style improvements, including dropping the redundant NW prefix from most class names. PRs #2779, #2826 and #2831.

Version 2026.1.2

Release Notes

This is a patch release that fixes a race condition when searching across multiple documents, restores the application's taskbar icon on Windows, and fixes a font setting that failed to load on older versions of Qt. Japanese and Russian translations have also been updated.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed a race condition when searching through multiple documents that could cause a crash if the next match button was pressed too quickly. Issue #2809. PR #2811.
• Fixed the application icon not showing on the Windows taskbar. Issue #2728. PR #2824.
• Fixed loading of a font setting saved with Qt 6.11 when running on older versions of Qt. PR #2849.

Internationalisation

• Japanese translation updated by @hebekeg. PR #2897.
• Russian translation updated by Kuro Ryuu (kuroryuu) and Konstantin Tan (@k1kimosha). PR #2897.

Version 2026.1.1

Release Notes

This is a patch release that adds Catalan language to the app, and updates translation files for other languages. Some user interface labels for the Manuscript tool have been improved, and the documentation updated. A small fix resolves an error message printed to the log when launching the app on Linux.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed a DBus error message from Qt on Linux. PR #2790.

Improvements

• Clarified some of the GUI labels on the Manuscript tool. Issue #2762. PR #2768.

Internationalisation

• Catalan translations added by @jaumeplanas. PR #2793.
• Norwegian and US English translations updated by @vkbo. PR #2793.
• Japanese translation updated bu @hebekeg. PR #2793.
• German translation updated by @HeyMyian. PR #2793.
• Polish translation updated by @Nauthizz. PR #2793.
• Dutch translation updated by @risingphoenix73. PR #2793.
• Italian translation updated by Lou Cyper. PR #2793.
• Chinese translation updated by wcxu21 and @longqzh. PR #2793.

Documentation

• Fixed some typos in the documentation. PR #2773.
• Improved the documentation for the Manuscript tool. Issue #2763. PR #2768.
• Switched the documentation back to using uv for examples. PR #2766.

Version 2026.1

Release Notes

The 2026.1 release is based on the features added in 2026.1 Beta 1, Beta 2, RC 1.

See the website for complete Release Notes.

Detailed Changelog

Improvements

• When exporting manuscripts to DocX (Word), the document will no longer expand hard line breaks by when default when justified margins are enabled. Issue #2690. PR #2732.
• The "Add titles for notes" label in Manuscript Build settings has been updated and should now be clearer. Issue #2727. PR #2729.

Internationalisation

• A missing translation string for projects was added. Issue #2730. PR #2731.
• Norwegian and US English translations updated by @vkbo. PR #2738.
• Japanese translation updated bu @hebekeg. PR #2738.
• Dutch translation updated by @risingphoenix73. PR #2738.
• German translation updated by @HeyMyian. PR #2738.
• Polish translation updated by @Nauthizz. PR #2738.
• Latin American Spanish translation updated by @tmarplatt. PR #2738.
• Czech translation updated by Tomáš Zmek. PR #2738.
• Italian translation updated by Lou Cyper. PR #2738.

Version 2026.1 RC 1

Release Notes

This is a release candidate of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Note: There are no longer any Mac releases produced for novelWriter. See #2618.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where the editor and viewer header no longer changed colour when losing or gaining focus. Issue #2716. PR #2717.
• Fixed the project list tooltip on the Welcome dialog. Issue #2714. PR #2715.
• Fixed the size of spin boxes on config forms. Issue #2703. PR #2711.

Features

• A new setting in Preferences allows for the usage of single asterisks for bold formatting. Enabling this setting does not disable double asterisk bold. Issue #2718. PR #2719.

User Interface

• Adjusted some colours of icons in several themes to bring them visually in line with the rest of the theme. Contributed by @HeyMyian. PR #2712.

Internationalisation

• Updated translation strings. PRs #2721 and #2722.
• Updated Dutch translation by @risingphoenix73. PRs #2721 and #2722.
• Updated US English and Norwegian translations by @vkbo. PRs #2721 and #2722.

Other Changes

• GUI font emphasis is now handled by the theme class, and bold text on the GUI has been reduced in weight to semibold. Issue #2709. PR #2710.

Version 2026.1 Beta 2

Release Notes

This is a beta release of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Note: There are no longer any Mac releases produced for novelWriter. See #2618.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• An unchecked dependency on Qt 6.9 has been fixed. If the app was running in an environment with an older Qt version, the app would crash when opening one of the settings dialogs. This should only affect the Debian packages since the Windows and AppImage releases bundle Qt 6.11. Issue #2706. PR #2704.

Version 2026.1 Beta 1

Release Notes

This is a beta release of the next release version, and is intended for testing purposes. Please be careful when using this version on live writing projects, and make sure you take frequent backups.

Note: There are no longer any Mac releases produced for novelWriter. See #2618.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• The URL highlighting now also works if the URL has an exclamation point. Issue #2693. PR #2695.
• The margin settings in Manuscript Build settings now correctly shows icons to indicate margin type. PR #2647.

Features

• The novelWriter version number is now year-based. Instead of the next release being 2.9, it is now 26.1 or 2026.1 as shown in the app. Discussion #2667. PR #2669.
• Added the Lucide icon theme as a user-selectable icon theme. Issue #2605. PR #2632.
• It is now possible to split a document via text selection, or at the cursor position, from the right-click menu in the editor. Issues #1486 and #2571. PR #2688.
• The shortcuts Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down now move the cursor between paragraphs in the editor. Issue #2635. PR #2679.
• The size of the different heading levels can now be adjusted in the Manuscript Build settings tool. Issue #2439. PR #2650.
• Added a setting for manuscripts to use blank lines instead of margins in manuscript document formats. Issue #2648. Discussion #2646. PR #2649.
• A new "Heading Format" sections is available in Manuscript Build settings. The settings for bold and colourised headings have been moved there, and a new setting to make them uppercase has been added. PR #2647.

Improvements

• Added word or character units to count tooltip labels in project tree and novel view. PR #2698.
• The note document associated with a reference can now be opened in the editor from the right-click menu. Issue #2448. PR #2697.
• The Shift+Enter shortcut now also works in the project search, and opens the document in the viewer. However, it cannot show the actual search result since the search itself is performed on the raw plain text document and doesn't apply to the generated document in the viewer. Issue #2661. PR #2697.
• Backward searches in the editor can now also iterate backwards in project documents if the option to continue search in the next document is enabled. Issue #1451. PR #2696.
• Error handling when encountering file system issues has been improved and hardened. It should further prevent application crashes when encountering such issues. Issues #2529 and #2671. PRs #2675 and #2683.
• The document header in the editor and viewer panels have been improved. An issue with clipping of the descending characters have been fixed, and each part of the path can be clicked to highlight it in the project tree. Issues #2664 and #2674. PR #2677.
• Added a setting in Preferences that turns off scaling of headings in the editor, which is more consistent with plain text where all text is the same size. Issue #2636. PR #2670.
• Improved the way version numbers are shown in the Welcome dialog, allows the selected project to be opened with the Enter key, and using the arrow keys will move the selection up and down without first having to switch focus to the recent projects list. PR #2668.

Accessibility

• Improved screen reader support for remaining buttons, and improved reading of settings pages in various dialogs. Issue #2338. PR #2698.
• Two new light colour themes for colour blindness has been added. They are "Today Deuteranopia" for red/green colour blindness, and "Today Tritanopia" for blue colour blindness. Issue #2689. PR #2694.
• Added an option in Preference to show dotted lines under formatting codes in the editor. This is a visual aid in addition to highlighting colours. Issue #2691. PR #2692.

Internationalisation

• Updated translation files with some new translations since the 2.8 release. PR #2699.

Other Changes

• The fun Discworld themed titles shown on error windows have been extended with new titles to randomly select from. PR #2684.
• PDM has replaced UV as the dependency manager for development and testing. This should not matter to end users. Issue #2685. PR #2678.

Version 2.8.2

Release Notes

This is a patch release that fixes an issue with launching novelWriter via a project file on Windows, adds an alert when the spell check dictionary cannot be loaded, handles headings in HTML manuscripts the same way as for documents, and updates the documentation on how heading levels are handled in the manuscript build process.

Detailed Changelog

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue with the exe launcher on Windows where it didn't support spaces in the path when the user tried to open novelWriter from a project file. Issue #2643. PR #2645.
• Fixed an issue with the PDF manuscript format which stopped after about 600-700 pages when generating A4 pages. The limit is now in the 11000 pages range. Issue #2637. PRs #2638 and #2639.

Improvements

• Added an alert box when the spell check language selected for a project could not be loaded. Issue #2631. PR #2654.
• The HTML manuscript format now exports novel title and partition titles as paragraphs with a larger font size instead of HTML headings. This is more consistent with the other formatted document formats. Issue #2641. PR #2653.

Documentation

• Added information to the documentation about heading level promotion when building the manuscript. Issue #2641. PR #2653.