Final Draft Go

No offence to the devs, but I wouldn’t know how to rate this app properly, as it won’t even allow me to cut & paste into it! I opted for the yearly sub (only $15) but it’s still almost half my hourly wage and money down the drain. Support is quick and helpful with their suggestions, but after trying several fixes, it still doesn’t work. I’ve since downloaded WriterDuet, whilst not amazing, at least I can cut & paste large amounts of text into it without any problems. I just need to get cracking, so it will have to do for now. So for me, Final Draft Go is kinda pointless at this stage. I’m not really a Mac person, so I’m pretty bummed atm as I was really looking forward to using the app btw iOS devices.

When I download the app and start writing it won’t let me write or type

I already have a subscription and as another user has commented, I cannot access the app without subscribing again. I ONLY subscribed on my iPad and now I can’t use it on my iPad. I’ll be reaching out to the developer directly and I hope they can fix me up or refund me my money because I don’t like subscribing to something and then NOT being able to use it!

look, if I could give them zero stars I would. This app is dangerous for your phone. Please keep in mind. I’m only talking about the mobile app. This app was being used in the middle of the night to start writing a script. In the middle of writing the app crashed. Now, I read some reviews about this app crashing. I thought nothing of it because apps can crash from time to time. however, this app crashed and froze my phone. Not only could I not turn the phone on, but I could not even charge the phone. After doing some googling, I found out that my phone was frozen and locked. this caused it to be unable to charge or turn back on. I had to Google the method to factory reset this phone or hard reset, I can’t remember what it was called. After leaving it on the charger all night it still would not charge thanks to some help from a family member. I was able to get the phone back on and deleted the app so that I would not have to deal with this again. I never had any trouble with the software on a computer, but as far as this app goes, it is terrible and it will destroy your phone. This was all after I paid the annual subscription fee. What a terrible experience.

You can’t print your script from this. You press print and it doesn’t bring up a print dialogue. You can’t email your script from this. You send your email and it just doesn’t go anywhere. You can sometimes export PDF but then when you try to open that PDF to print it, it is greyed out. this app makes no sense. Did they even try it out before they released it? It’s a shame because real Final Draft was good back in the day.

How is it possible you have this app for iPad yet it still doesn’t work with the keyboard after all these years? What do you guys do all day?

What a let down. I’ve been waiting forever for Final Cut to develop a proper iPad app- something comparable to arc studio. Well, here it is— I went ahead and installed it on my iPhone, held my nose and paid for the subscription… it’s basically the same as the old mobile app. Fair enough. I got to check it out on my iPad, and… the subscription doesn’t carry over between devices. Are you serious? I didn’t get to check out the app. I’m just gonna uninstall, undo the subscription on my iPhone and fully transition over to arc studio. They took waaaaay too long for something still missing the desktop features and with a miserable 2x subscription model. No thanks.

This app is a disaster. I’ve been using Final Draft desktop for 20 years without issue, but this Final Draft Go has nothing to do with the Mac version, and is unusable. The underlying reason: the development team refuses to test the app on an iPad with Magic Keyboard (or similar third party keyboard with integrated trackpad). Partial list of issues: You CANNOT select a word with your trackpad. You click on a word (or anywhere) and nothing happens. No cursor. You CANNOT de-select a selection by clicking outside of the selection. If by frustration you click on your trackpad and HOLD to hopefully insert your cursor in the body, a pointless 2010-era magnifying glass comes up. Undo/Redo keyboard short cuts NO NOT WORK. If you try to click-drag a word, it’ll skip the first letter. If you try to click-drag a word and the curser drifts up or down the *slightest* amount, it’ll select the entire next line. Every other word processor has a tolerance to prevent this from happening. If you drag-select more than one line, the selection will expand in the OPPOSITE VERTICAL DIRECTION. E.g. If you click-drag a line and then move your cursor upwards, your selection will go DOWNWARDS. This is literally the opposite of every other word processor in existence. If you DOUBLE CLICK to select a word, there is a one second delay. This on an M1 iPad. If, again, you DOUBLE CLICK to select a word, you CANNOT then drag that word to a different part of the body. I’ve banged my head on the wall for YEARS working with ‘Support’ (including sending multiple video clips), only for them to finally admit that they don’t prioritize a real iPad keyboard, and don’t even own one. Stay away. PS - I’m a professional writer/director (two theatrical features released so far) who’s now writing my fourth screenplay. And yes, I’m one of thousands of screenwriters who use their iPad Pro with Magic Keyboards to get work done.

There’s nothing more painful than writing for 2 hours straight. Getting into the flow, then the app freezes for no reason & crashes. Nothing was saved. I don’t need fancy features, I just need my work to save after every line. Why is that so hard to implement!

I guess it’s not meant to be a fully functional version of Final Draft, but there are so many fundamentals that don’t work properly that it’s hardly a functioning writing tool at all. Probably the worst is that the app doesn’t work with the Magic Keyboard’s trackpad, and moving the cursor with it is basically impossible. So editing becomes a matter of navigating with the cursor keys. I love the desktop version, despite the weaknesses, but it’s hard to believe they’re expecting people to pay for this app when they don’t seem to have taken the time to test it.