Final Draft

This is a wonderful app. And mind you, how much the desktop version costs. First off, The Final Draft people were the FIRST to make screen writing software...back when the Mac was just beginning with a 9 inch screen. That means they worked out all the bugs. Also, Final Draft Mobile uses a custom scrolling feature that specifically shows you where you are in the the screenplay...so you can quickly find what you’re looking for. And to all those people who say “It doesn’t hav Dark Mode” or “It doesn’t have Night Shift” or “It doesn’t have dictation,” as the Final Draft technicians have said, that’s a part of your system if it supports it. All three are supported in iPadOS 14. In iPadOS 14, just choose the “Display and Brightness” heading in the Settings app to enable Dark Mode or Night Shift systemwide. And if you want to dictate in Final Draft Mobile, it’s in the keyboard. As I only have iPadOS 14, I cannot speak for any other IOS systems. It exports to .FDX and .PDF. Prints with Apple’s Air Print feature. Emails from within the program.

- Lachlan S

Cursor behavior on iPad On my iPad Pro (2020), I'm getting weird cursor behavior with Final Draft Mobile. When I click after the last sentence in a dialogue section, the blinking line appears to the left of the period. If I start typing it acts as if the cursor was actually to the right of the period, so it's kind of okay. A much worse behavior is in trying to highlight a section of text. The way I usually do it is to click at one end of the selection, then shift-click at the other end. It works on every editing app I've ever used. Not this one. The cursor just moves to the other end, with no highlighting. The workaround would be to shift-click-drag, but that doesn't work either. It just moves the cursor without any highlight. I've contacted Final Draft support about this. Apparently their iPad acts fine. For me, it makes the mobile version almost unusable. I have to say, the desktop version, much pricier, has none of these problems. Since I do my work half-and-half on my Mac and my iPad, it will probably keep me from using Final Draft as my main editor. Too bad, because it has several nice features. Same behavior exactly on my 2015 iPad. Further research indicates that Final Draft expects you to double click a word, and then drag the little wings out to select a section of text. Then they provide a (Copy/Cut) balloon above. This is not good. One needs to be able to use the built-in editing capabilities on Apple products, IMHO.

- CalifJack

Update April 17th, 2022: in addition to the app crashing when working directly out of Dropbox (it is better with this issue when files are stored directly on the iPad Pro - which contradicts the ‘mobile’ point), the mobile app also turns ‘characters’ into ‘actions’ on occasion. I work on iPad Pro and have the Windows 10. I have been a Final Draft customer for almost 25 years. The short script is this; it crashes periodically when working with files in Dropbox, even with documents made available offline. It freezes… I quickly have to screenshot what I have done to ensure I don’t lose my latest work… then it crashes. I’m working on a current iPad Pro. I have Final Draft 12 on my computer, but use this mobile version when traveling or working away from home. Update: To FD - your ‘templated’ response is disappointing. Many people are currently having issues with FD Mobile. The Dropbox problem is very real. It makes this particular process frustrating and the app impractical to use. Instead of writing ‘99% of users are crash-free’, why not look into the actual problem?

- British Paul