Manuscripts is a Mac app for academics who’ve outgrown the spreadsheet. Draft, submit, revise: each paper with its own jacket. No cloud. No seats. Yours.
† One-time purchase; yours to keep. 30-day refund.
Two items want your attention today.
The biggest release yet. Manuscripts now walks with your paper through the whole journey — the dashboard shows where everything stands at a glance, the submission editor handles cover letters and editor decisions, and deadlines live on your calendar.
Draft the cover letter inside the submission editor, then record the editor’s decision when it arrives. The whole correspondence lives with the manuscript.
AI review analysis now runs on OpenRouter in addition to Claude and local Ollama models — pick any model, keep your keys on your Mac.
Refined motion, accent colours that follow your system, faster filtering, and list cards that are easier to scan and click through.
An endpoint typo could make activation time out. It now reaches the right server, first try.
Each manuscript a whole record, not a row. Each submission a visible state, not a note. Each version tied to where it went, and what came back.
Open a manuscript and see its whole life at a glance. Title, abstract, authors in order, the journal it’s with now, and where it sat before.
A standing roster of every collaborator you’ve published with: affiliations, ORCIDs, emails, roles. Add one to a new paper in two keystrokes. No more hunting through old submission PDFs for a spelling.
Every revision stored with a note, a date, and which submission triggered it. Scroll the timeline to remember what you wrote to the reviewers at Nature Medicine, and why the rewrite for Lancet Digital Health looked nothing like it.
Every submission gets a checklist (pre-submission, under review, proofs, all the way to published). Tick items off as you go. A bundled database of journal requirements means you won’t discover the figure format was wrong after the desk reject.
Upload the editor’s decision letter and Manuscripts turns reviewer comments into a structured task list, one section per reviewer, plus editor comments. Work through them systematically instead of scrolling a PDF.
Set deadlines on any manuscript and they flow straight into Reminders and Calendar. Your data is backed up automatically every time the app launches, and if something goes wrong, restore from any of the last ten backups in one click.
No subscription. No account. You buy the app, you keep the app.
No. Manuscripts is a one-time purchase. You buy version 1 and own version 1 forever, including every 1.x update. When 2.0 ships (not soon) there will be a small upgrade fee for those who want it.
On your Mac, backed up automatically on every launch. Back up to any folder you choose — including iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or an external drive. The app does not have a server and cannot see your data.
Not directly — Manuscripts tracks where your papers go, not the papers you cite. It doesn’t try to replace your reference manager; it assumes you already have one.
Not planned. Building one thing well, for one platform, is already a lot.
Yes — a 14-day free trial. Start it from the activation screen with your email; no credit card. If you buy after the trial and it isn’t earning its keep, there’s also a 30-day no-questions refund.
Site licences available at a discount for groups of five or more. Email [email protected] with your rough headcount.