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Download Drafter

The desktop app is free, with no account and no serial number. Or skip the download and write at drafter.dev, with nothing to install.

These links are for Drafter 0.27.0. A new release’s files can take about 20 minutes to appear after the site updates; if a link doesn’t work yet, the latest release has every file.

Windows

Or get it from the latest release, under Assets.

Open the installer and it installs at once, for you alone and with no administrator, with Drafter in the Start menu and .fountain files opening in it with a double-click.

Windows on Arm: there’s no Arm installer yet. On Windows 11 on Arm (a Snapdragon laptop, or Windows 11 in a virtual machine on an Apple silicon Mac), the x64 installer runs under Windows’ built-in emulation, a little slower than a native app would. Windows 10 on Arm can’t run it. Settings → System → About shows which processor you have.

“Windows protected your PC”: the installer isn’t signed yet, so Microsoft Defender SmartScreen may stop it. Choose More info, check that the app is the Drafter-…-setup.exe you downloaded, then choose Run anyway. Edge may also say the file “isn’t commonly downloaded”: choose … → Keep → Keep anyway. Only do this with an installer from Drafter’s own release page.

Linux

  • Download the .debUbuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, and other Debian-based systems (amd64): Drafter-0.27.0-linux-amd64.deb, version 0.27.0 Then: sudo apt install ./Drafter-0.27.0-linux-amd64.deb
  • Download the AppImageAny other distribution, with nothing to install (x86_64): Drafter-x86_64.AppImage, version 0.27.0 Then: chmod +x Drafter-x86_64.AppImage && ./Drafter-x86_64.AppImage

Or get it from the latest release, under Assets.

Use the .deb on Ubuntu 24.04 and later: the AppImage needs FUSE 2 (libfuse2), and on those versions an AppArmor profile for Chromium’s sandbox. After installing the .deb, start Drafter from your applications, or with drafterdev in a terminal.

Mac

Coming: a signed Mac download.

A Mac app from the internet has to be signed and notarized with an Apple developer account, which Drafter doesn’t have yet. Until then, the same desktop app builds on your own Mac with one command, and opens there without any warning. With Node 22.13 or later, pnpm 10 (corepack enable), and git, in Terminal:

  1. git clone https://github.com/cschweda/drafter.git
  2. cd drafter
  3. pnpm install
  4. pnpm desktop:mac

Then drag apps/desktop/release/mac-arm64/Drafter.app (on an Intel Mac, apps/desktop/release/mac/Drafter.app) to Applications. To update, run git pull, pnpm install, and pnpm desktop:mac again.

Or skip the build: open drafter.dev in Chrome or Edge and install it as an app, with the install button in the address bar. It sits in your Dock, works offline, and saves straight back to your files.

Updates

A few seconds after it starts, the desktop app asks GitHub once whether there’s a new version. It never installs or restarts by itself: it says a new version is ready, or available, and waits for you. Turn off Check for updates in Settings and it makes no network request at all, unless you choose Help → Check for updates…. See Privacy.

Every release