Trelby Active
The veteran free screenwriter — and the best dead-format importer alive.
At a glance
- Maker
- Osku Salerma → community project
- First release
- 2012
- Status
- Active — still developed and sold
- Platforms
- Windows, Linux
- Pricing
- Free, open source (GPL)
- Native format
- Trelby (.trelby)
What it is
Trelby is the free, cross-platform workhorse: simple, fast, correct. Its superpower is imports — it still opens Final Draft binary-era files, Celtx desktop projects, Adobe Story’s .astx and Fade In, formats the rest of the world abandoned.
What people are saying
The good
Its reputation is built on being genuinely free with no strings, getting standard US formatting right, and its signature trick: importing and exporting nearly everything, including files from dead software like old Celtx and Adobe Story.
The bad
Users consistently find it feature-limited (no rich text styling, minimal tooling) and many move on once past the basics. The sharpest recurring warning is the missing autosave, with lost-work threads and occasional corrupted files. Much circulating commentary predates the project’s revival, so sentiment on the current build is sparse.
Paraphrased consensus from user reviews, forums and retrospective coverage across the web.
Where it came from
Began as the commercial Blyte (2003), was killed by lackluster sales, and was open-sourced and renamed Trelby in 2012 — the rare proprietary-to-FOSS resurrection story. Still maintained by its community, most recently through 2025.
Worth knowing
A dead commercial app resurrected as free software — now one of the only mainstream tools still reading Adobe Story files.
Getting scripts in and out
Imports: Final Draft (.fdx), Fountain (.fountain), Celtx (.celtx), Adobe Story (.astx), Fade In (.fadein)
Exports: PDF (.pdf), Plain text (.txt), HTML (.html), Rich Text (.rtf), Final Draft (.fdx), Fountain (.fountain)