novelWriter

A plain text editor for novels

A markdown-like text editor designed for writing novels and larger projects of many smaller plain text documents.

It is designed to be a simple text editor that allows for easy organisation of text files and notes, with a meta data syntax for comments, synopsis, and cross-referencing between files, and built on plain text files for robustness.

novelWriter is Free and Open Source, and runs on Linux, Windows and MacOS

Latest Release

Version 2026.2 Patch 2 – Released on October 11, 2026 – Read the Release Notes

Linux

Download

Linux AppImage

Flatpak

Package Repositories**

Installation Help

Windows

Download

Setup Installer*

Installation Help

* Code signing on Windows is sponsored by SignPath.io, certificate by the SignPath Foundation. See the Code Signing Policy.

** Free package repository hosting is graciously provided by Cloudsmith.

Note that as of release 2026.1, MacOS DMGs have been discontinued.

We are working to bring back the DMG releases soon. Stay tuned!

The only current method of running novelWriter on MacOS is to set up a Python environment and install the novelwriter package. See Installing from PyPi for additional details.

Other Install Options

Add the Linux Repo provided by Cloudsmith (Help).

curl -sLf \
  'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/saga-soft/stable/cfg/setup/bash.deb.sh' \
  | sudo bash
sudo apt update
sudo apt install novelwriter

Install from the Python Package Index (Help)

pipx install novelwriter

Install on Fedora 41+

sudo dnf install novelwriter

Add the Ubuntu PPA (Deprecated)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vkbo/novelwriter
sudo apt update
sudo apt install novelwriter

Notes

• The Fedora package is maintained by Fedora package managers and will have a delayed release cycle.

• For more download options, including pre-releases and checksum files, see the Downloads page.

• The Ubuntu PPA is deprecated and will soon stop receiving updates. Please migrate to the Cloudsmith repository.