Slugline Active
The minimal Fountain editor from the Fountain circle.
At a glance
- Maker
- Nima Yousefi & John August (Slugline 2: incl. Stu Maschwitz)
- First release
- 2013
- Status
- Active — still developed and sold
- Platforms
- Mac, iOS
- Pricing
- Free for first 6 pages; $49.99 one-time unlock
- Native format
- Fountain (.fountain)
What it is
Slugline writes plain Fountain with a fading-out chrome-free interface — you write, it formats. The current Slugline 2 continues the lineage for Mac and iOS.
What people are saying
The good
Loved for its minimalist, distraction-free take on Fountain, full of small well-considered touches, and a frequent favorite among iPad writers. Its plain-text foundation is praised as future-proof: the script is just text, openable forever.
The bad
Some users report crashes with real lost work, and “expensive for what it provides” recurs about the $49.99 unlock given the deliberately small feature set. There is no production tooling (no scene locking, no revision markup), which keeps it between a text editor and a full screenwriter.
Paraphrased consensus from user reviews, forums and retrospective coverage across the web.
Where it came from
Launched April 2013 by Nima Yousefi with John August — half the Fountain founding duo — and rebuilt as Slugline 2 (2019) with Stu Maschwitz among the team.
Worth knowing
Slugline, Highland and the Fountain format itself all intersect at one person: John August.
Getting scripts in and out
Imports: Fountain (.fountain), Final Draft (.fdx)
Exports: Fountain (.fountain), Final Draft (.fdx), PDF (.pdf)