Scriby Download

A quiet place to write your book.

A word processor for authors, for Mac.

Your library is a bookshelf. The page is calm. Your words stay in plain files on your disk. No accounts, no subscription, no lock-in.

The Salt Road

Chapter 1 — The Lamp at Hollow Quay

Mara Voss had kept the lamp at Hollow Quay for eleven winters, and in all that time nothing had come out of the fog that she had not first heard coming.

That morning the fog sat on the water like a held breath. She climbed the ninety-one steps with the oil can knocking against her knee, and trimmed the wick, and told the sea, as she did every morning, that she was still here.

The sea, as usual, said nothing. But far out, where the channel bent toward the Skerries, a bell began to ring that had no business ringing at all.

Night Four rooms, one click apart. Yours is remembered.

Nothing pops up while you type.

Controls fade until you reach for them.

Chapters number and renumber themselves.

Drop caps open every chapter, because a book should look like a book.

Em dashes, true ellipses and curly quotes sort themselves out as you type.

There is no spellcheck while you write. Press ⌘; when you want it, and again to go back to the flow.

Mid-sentence and need a name, a fact, a date? ⌘⇧X leaves a mark and a sticky note, and you keep going.

The sea, as usual, said nothing.

But far out, where the channel bent toward the Skerries, a bell began to ring.

Chapter 2

By morning the fog had taken the quay.

One Enter, a new paragraph.

Two, a scene break.

Three, a new chapter.

Press Enter once for a new paragraph, twice for a scene break, three times for a new chapter. The goal is to keep writing.

A library that looks like one.

Labelled shelves you organize your way: by series, by status, by pen name. Progress bars on the covers show how far you are from your word goals.

Every new book is dressed in a seeded abstract cover, so no two stories on the shelf look alike. Drop in your own cover art, or let Scriby paint one from your text once a story passes a thousand words. Painted covers use your own OpenAI key and cost about a penny each.

The Scriby bookshelf: labelled shelves of book covers for works in progress and finished books

Move a card. The writing moves with it.

Every chapter and every *** section is already an index card, so you can plan before you write or tidy after. Notes show up on the page as a gray ghost paragraph.

  1. 1102 words

    Mara finds the lamp, and the bell.

  2. 261 words

    The harbourmaster disbelieves her.

  3. 371 words

    The boat and the coat.

  4. 451 words

    The old road under the bay.

  5. 532 words

    The descent.

  6. 629 words

    Low water.

Plotters start here. Pantsers get cards too, and can ignore them.

Kill your darlings. Keep the bodies.

Drag a passage onto the Darlings tab. It leaves the page and is never lost.

Cut. It waits in the drawer.

Restore it to the exact spot it came from.

She climbed the ninety-one steps with the oil can knocking against her knee.

The stairwell smelled of tar and old rain, and every step held the memory of a different winter, none of them kind.

At the top, the lamp was waiting.

Darlings0
The Companion panel beside the manuscript, offering an opening line and a character card for the story bible

A drafting partner that waits to be asked.

The Companion helps with a scene, a line of dialogue, a character, or the rules of your world. It runs on Claude, OpenAI or any compatible service, or on a model that never leaves your Mac through Ollama or LM Studio.

It speaks only when you press Send, and shows you exactly what goes with your message. Words reach the page only through Insert or Replace, and a replaced passage goes to Darlings first. Characters, places and rules live as cards in a story bible in your book folder; nothing is added unless you accept it. Your keys stay in the system keychain.

Open it with ⌘⇧K after turning on Show More Features.

Contents

English, Français, Français (Canada), Español, Português (Brasil), Português (Portugal), Deutsch, Italiano, Nederlands, Polski, Română, Русский, Ελληνικά, Magyar, 한국어, Türkçe.

Plain files, on your disk.

Everything lives in ~/Documents/NEO Library, one folder per book, with chapters as readable HTML and metadata as JSON. Open them in any text editor, sync them, back them up. Move the whole library anywhere, iCloud Drive included, from File → Library Folder.

Scriby has no analytics and no account. It works fully offline. Your writing leaves your Mac only if you send it: to a Companion model you chose, to OpenAI when you turn on painted covers, or when you email yourself a copy.

NEO Library/
  library.json          shelves and settings
  Backups/              a zip per day, two weeks kept
  book-<title>-<id>/
    book.json           title, chapter order, notes
    chapters/<id>.html  your text
    darlings.json       passages you set aside
    bible.json          the Companion's story bible

Install Scriby.

Scriby 1.6.0 needs a Mac with Apple silicon and a recent version of macOS.

Download for Mac
  1. 1

    Download Scriby-1.6.0-arm64.dmg from the latest release.

  2. 2

    Open it, drag Scriby onto the Applications folder, and eject the disk image.

  3. 3

    The first time, macOS says it could not verify the app, because Scriby is not yet notarized by Apple. Click Done, not Move to Bin. Then open System Settings, Privacy & Security, scroll to Security, click Open Anyway next to “Scriby was blocked”, and confirm. You only do this once. Prefer Terminal? Run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Scriby.app and open Scriby.

To update, download the newer DMG and drag Scriby over the old copy. Your library is untouched.

Questions

Does it need an internet connection?

No. Only the Companion with a hosted model, painted covers and update downloads use the network, and only when you ask.

Why does macOS warn me when I open it?

Scriby is not yet notarized by Apple, which needs a paid developer account. Follow step 3 above once and it is done.

Does it work on Intel Macs, Windows or Linux?

The current release is built for Apple silicon Macs. Other platforms are not part of this repository.

Can I use my existing NEO library?

Yes. Scriby reads the same NEO Library folder and the same plain files.

Is my writing safe?

Scriby autosaves as you type, takes a snapshot before each writing day, keeps a daily backup zip for two weeks, and never throws words away. Deleted passages go to Darlings or the system Trash.

Can I use it for my own books?

Yes, for any personal or commercial purpose of your own, and your books belong to you. The license asks for permission before you copy, modify, redistribute or sell Scriby itself.

Go write the book.

Download for Mac

Next: notarized builds so the first-launch warning goes away, a Mac App Store release, a consistency check between your story bible and your chapters, and end matter that updates every book at once.